[working definitions] vulnerability

[kaberett]

I've been noticing, working my way through Brené Brown's books, that many of the ways in which she defines or exemplifies vulnerability are just... not intuitive to me. They don't stick; they're an active effort to think my way through every single time I try to engage with the concepts involved. "To be vulnerable is to be capable of being hurt; to be weak is to be unable to withstand injury" is a definition she suggests that sort of works for me on an abstract level -- I at least don't have to work to remember it -- but I don't experience any emotional resonance with it.

Here's an alternative I've been turning over: vulnerability is offering people more complete data so as to enable them to better model me.

On the one hand, I can sort of see that it might sound more impersonal, more abstracted, than the explanation proposed in the previous paragraph -- and on the other it's one that I am viscerally attuned to, to the point that typing it out leaves me hyper-aware of my belly and my throat, of my physical softness, of my -- yes -- vulnerability made manifest. ("The delicacy of my skin" might need to feature in a poem, hmm.)

It seems to be a succinct and internally intuitive way for me to encode the thought-shape of hope-and-fear inherent in letting people see me by showing them how to hurt me (by telling them how I work), with its mirror terror that even if I try I won't be understood.

Comments

[ewt]

So, a thing about vulnerability and authenticity is, we are all inherently vulnerable to the extent that we are interdependent. What that looks like in a particular context will depend on the various power balances etc, but ultimately "telling people the truth about myself" is inextricably linked to "and accepting that they may act on that information".

I don't think that offering more complete data makes one inherently and generally more vulnerable, because, well, interdependence is still a thing whether or not we acknowledge it. But I do think that the sort of authenticity and truthfulness and openness that is often meant by "vulnerability" *is* more risky in certain contexts, because humans are seldom on an entirely equal footing with one another. This authenticity, this vulnerability, is not a magic spell that makes relationships better; it only works if everyone is acting in good faith, and sometimes not even then. I do not want to be "vulnerable" around my childhood abusers. I don't want to have anything to do with some of them.

Things that, for me, lower the risk of injury and enable greater authenticity in communication with others include:
- hanging around with people who are trustworthy (it can take time to get data on this), so that the level of injury I calculate is lower
- improving my skills in the areas of self-care and recovery so that when injury does happen, it can be recovered from; with time and practice this is less terrifying. The more confident I am of my ability to recover from potential injury, the more willing I am to take risks.

Things that don't really help me:
- pretending that the capacity to be wounded is somehow morally bad
- pretending to not care if I am injured or that my injuries don't matter (I mean, this helps in the short term sometimes? But ultimately is not great: it leads to ignoring my own needs and getting massively over-extended. For me it's one of the most dangerous things about the way patriarchal expressions of Christianity emphasise humility, especially for AFAB people.)

TL;DR your version works better for me because words mean things and "vulnerable" and "authentic" aren't referring to the same thing, but frequently get used as if they are; authenticity is necessarily vulnerable, but vulnerability doesn't just vanish if we are inauthentic. And if I'm dealing with someone who has difficulty with opening up and "being vulnerable" my first assumption is, welp, they've obviously been in a bunch of situations where doing that wasn't safe or advantageous. That probably isn't anything to do with me, but it affects how I might want to behave around such people. My ideal course in such situations is to behave in ways that maximise safety for the other person while also working to compensate for any of my own emotional risk, which is easy to do if I'm in a particular role (teaching piano; leading a choir) and harder to do free-form.