Self-Care Tuesday- Vulnerability

When you read the word "vulnerable" what is your reaction? Do you picture a person that is vulnerable? A client perhaps?  Or a person with disability, a child or someone who is elderly?  Most people picture someone that they feel is worthy of protection, but what if that word is turned towards yourself?

"You are vulnerable."

How does that change your reaction?   It most likely does.  Aversion? Avoidance? Denial? Fear? Being vulnerable is scary.  If you work with survivors, being vulnerable is something that you apply to others, rarely yourself.  Vulnerability is seen as a sign of weakness, of an inability to do our work correctly, not serving others. Or is it?  Laura van Dernoot Lipsky in her book Trauma Stewardship wrote the following about fear:

"One of the reasons it is hard for us to connect with our fear is that it makes us feel so vulnerable.  It may make us uncomfortable to recognize that we have to much in common with our clients, who are also often fearful.  If we are working to stop pandemics or racing against the clock to save the environment, we may worry that if we open the door to fear, it will completely overwhelm us, leaving us so swamped with terror that we can no longer act at all.  In short, many of us opt to disconnect from our feelings of fear because it hits a nerve of our own fragility in life.  Such denial may feel like the only viable path, but it is worth holding up to question. [...] When we acknowledge our own fear, we have an opportunity to deepen our compassion, not only for ourselves, but also for every being that has ever been afraid."

Researcher/Storyteller Brene Brown says that "vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences".


There is a pose that I teach often in our Yoga for Advocates class called the Sphinx.  It is fairly simple, you lie on your belly and hold yourself up on your forearms.  It looks exactly likes its namesake.  Traditionally, sphinxes are placed in front of temples symbolically as guardians of that which is sacred.  The pose is a mild backbend and your heart is exposed.  I find it very poetic that in order to protect others you must have the most vulnerable parts of yourself open to attack.


This week, I challenge you to evaluate what makes you feel vulnerable. When do you feel vulnerable? How to do you emotionally react to that realization? And do you think that there is a place in your life where honoring your vulnerability can improve how you work and who you are?