Being vulnerable, even with loved ones, is difficult because we fear the unknown of their reaction to the vulnerability. We fear being so nakedly open to hurt. And yet, within that mutual exchange of vulnerability, connectedness, and empathy are created from which a true sense of belonging follows. That is what we all want as humans, no matter the armor we use to deflect off of being vulnerable: to belong and to be loved. Brené Brown’s 2012 book, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, written off the heels of her famous TedxHouston talk about the power of vulnerability two years prior, is all about leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability within our families, as parents or leaders, if applicable, and within our organizations. The title of her book is inspired by President Theodore Smith’s “man in the arena” speech, where Roosevelt talks about how being in the arena is what counts, not the critic outside the arena. At the end, regarding the man in the arena, Roosevelt states, “… and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” My emphasis. The slight twist on how Brown extrapolates and applies how to “dare greatly” is that it’s not even about winning or losing; it’s about the benefit of the courage to do it in the first place.
The flipside, if you will, to vulnerability, is shame, a deep abiding sense of shame that scares us off of being vulnerable. Brown attributes that to how much scarcity thinking permeates our culture. For example, we start the day already thinking we didn’t get enough of [fill in the blank], whether that’s sleep or time to get ready for work or preparing the children for school. Then, when we return to bed, we think about how we didn’t get enough of [fill in the blank] done. We constantly run on this bookended deficit. This scarcity mindset manifests shame and shame holds us back from being vulnerable. In fact, this shame we envelope ourselves in has its roots in the fear of being ordinary. While a lot of people think we have a narcissistic personality disorder epidemic, Brown instead sees scarcity culture, where people are so obviously fearful of not being enough by way of comparison, comparison with nostalgia (very insidious, especially in our wider body politic), seeking perfectionism, tying our self-worth to productivity, and so on. Brown elaborates that the three components of scarcity are shame, of course, but also comparison and disengagement. The first two have been addressed and create a sense of “not being enough,” but as for disengagement, that is what happens when someone, well, steps out of the arena, unwilling to even bother trying anymore.
Naturally, we would think the opposite of a scarcity culture is an abundance culture, but Brown instead argues that “being enough” would be the flipside of the scarcity culture, or what she calls “wholeheartedness.” She has 10 guideposts for what to cultivate for wholeheartedness and conversely, what to let go of. I mentioned letting go of comparison, perfectionism, and self-worth being tied to productivity, but additionally, we need to let go of what people think (which is to say, letting people we shouldn’t care what they think go), numbing and powerlessness, fear of the dark, the need for certainty, anxiety as a lifestyle, self-doubt, and the desire to “be cool.” So, then, as for what to cultivate: authenticity, self-compassion, a resilient spirit, gratitude and joy, intuition and trusting faith, creativity, play and rest, calm and stillness, meaningful work, and laughter, song, and dance. For myself, as a turtles-all-the-way-down people pleaser to a fault, I struggle with letting go of what people think, and inevitability, when I do set a boundary and say no or renege on something, I’m flooded with the shame of having not pleased someone. I would say the next strongest one on the list is “supposed to” and just that general sense of scarcity. Not feeling like enough by way of one’s relationships, professional life, or personal potential and/or aspirations has been a difficult albatross to shake off.
The difficult part about books like Brown’s is that it is easy to grasp on an intellectual level that it is far more important to be authentic than people-pleasing, or cultivate self-compassion instead of perfectionism, or the overriding theme that humans desire belonging and the way to get there is vulnerability. But it is far more difficult to apply it practically in day-to-day living and in our experiences. Or as she put it in one helluva “oof” moment: “I want to experience your vulnerability, but I don’t want to be vulnerable.” In other words, we want the closeness that could result from you being vulnerable while still protecting ourselves. Vulnerability introduces uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure, Brown says, which is why we need to “dare greatly” and lean into it.
There may be myths about vulnerability, though, that prevent someone from “leaning in,” including:
- Vulnerability is a weakness, which men tend to especially hold to (there is an interesting caveat to this I’ll mention below). Vulnerability is the ultimate strength and is often quite liberating.
- We can’t “do” vulnerability because we need to win, succeed, get to the top, etc. But as Brown tells us, vulnerability will choose us regardless because all humans want to belong and that requires vulnerability!
- Vulnerability is letting it all hang out. No, vulnerability is not oversharing, as it requires mutuality, boundaries, and trust.
- We can go it alone. Given what we’ve already talked about (what humans need and mutuality), it’s obvious vulnerability cannot exist on an island. Indeed, vulnerability and courage are contagious. And it’s okay to ask for support!
Let me address the caveat I mentioned for the first myth. Brown shares a story about a man who came up to her after one of her talks and put it bluntly to her: the women in his life profess a desire to see him vulnerable, but when it actually happens, they wince at the sight of it, which then further adds to the shame he felt at being vulnerable. It was a turning point for Brown because prior to then, all of her research subjects and thoughts on shame revolved around women, not men. She obviously realized that men and women experience shame. Women’s shame, per her data, tends to be triggered by beauty standards and motherhood (even if they’re not mothers, they get interrogated or judged about not being mothers), whereas for men, shame triggers tend to be a fear of failure in whatever way that manifests. Brown argues that empathy is the way out of shame, which comes through building up shame resilience. Empathy also would enable someone to be more accepting of someone’s vulnerability rather than wincing at the sight of it (as long as it’s not undo oversharing).
When we’re not practicing vulnerability or being good at it, it means we are practicing or being good at shame. Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. Guilt is I did something bad, so, it’s not a reflection necessarily of you as a person in totality, or that you’re suddenly unlovable and don’t belong now, but that you made a mistake. In this sense, Brown emphasizes the importance of being a guilt culture rather than a shame culture. More to the point, Brown believes guilt is a positive force for change, whereas shame is destructive. I found this fascinating because I’ve long thought, and I don’t think I’m alone in this, that what is missing from our body politic is a sense of shame again. That politicians and voters no longer feel shame, and therefore, the soft guardrails of civility have been trampled over. But perhaps what’s missing from our culture is not a sense of shame, but of guilt? Perhaps another way of thinking about our body politic is that there too much shame, which is causing the bad outcomes, as people react to that sense of shame — the lack of belonging, and feeling loved. Brown has a Post-It in office with the quote, “Cruelty is cheap, easy, and chickenshit.” I love that, but I also think it speaks to the last 10 years of what I thought was a shameless society that, in retrospective, is swimming in shame and using cruelty as a cheap and chickenshit way to avoid vulnerability.
One of the more intriguing ways we arm ourselves against experiencing vulnerability, and one in which I relate to, is foreboding joy. That even when something is going well, we think of how it could go wrong as a way to gird ourselves in advance. That’s vulnerability avoidance, though. It’s not healthy. There are myriad ways in which we try to dodge vulnerability, whether it’s foreboding joy, attempting to control a situation, disengaging entirely, pretending it’s not happening, or feigning apathy about it happening. As Brown points out, it’s rather extraordinary when you think about the emotional lengths we’ll go to to avoid experiencing vulnerability. What an exhausting way to live instead of daring greatly and embracing vulnerability!
Finally, while I’m not a parent, I enjoyed the section on parenting. Whether from the teacher perspective or the parent perspective, I’ve always been interested in pedagogy. Brown isn’t professing to be a parenting expert by any means, but I think she hones in on exactly the right approach to attempt parenting, or rather, the right way to frame parenting. She says, “Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting.” Again, it’s one of those things when you read it, it seems obvious. Children model the behavior they grew up seeing and knowing! Yet, when you think about the plethora of parenting techniques and advice out there, it often misses this obvious point for the quick-fix life hack to successful parenting. Parenting is both modeling and embracing the imperfection of that modeling because you’re never going to get it right every time. Children, like adults, want to feel worthy of love and know they belong, and especially with children, that it’s unconditional. Love and belonging cannot be conditioned on good grades or being perfect or whatever other metric or way of comparison can occur with parenting. Children, like adults, want to be seen and listened to for who they are, not who we wish they were.
Admittedly, I tend to keep my distance from the cottage industry of self-help books. That is one of the few indulgences of cynicism I allow myself, which is to say, I’m either skeptical of the authors of such books, primarily that aforementioned promotion of a life hack to lifing, or I’m frustrated by how successful those books are because people think there is going to be a life hack to lifing. However, Brown’s book echoes my feeling when I was in therapy: again, stating what may seem obvious on paper, but is actually challenging — courageous! — to embrace and practice in our day-to-day lives. And of course, a lot of it is backed up by her own research and data talking to men and women about shame and vulnerability. I also like that she uses examples from her own life, which is walking the vulnerability talk instead of merely talking about it. All of which to say, in my estimation, Brown is the real deal, with real, informative insights and takeaways for anyone at any point in their life. You’ll find something valuable here.
Milam's Musings 