I am seeing Brene Brown speak today!!! Holy moly! I am so excited!
Her work is amazing and she talks a lot about vulnerability and wholeheartedness.
If you’ve been following me for a few months or so you would have seen I have a necklace that reads “It’s not love until it’s vulnerable.”
Vulnerability is crucial to a healthy relationship.
And vulnerability has always been something I have struggled with.
I wasn’t surrounded with the safest of people as a kid and into adulthood. I would not pick great partners or friends and the ones I did pick usually ended up hurting me in a significant way.
So I learned to be guarded. I learned that the only person I could count on was myself.
Fast forward to today and I’m still figuring out how to flex my vulnerability muscle and discern who is safe and who isn’t.
Good and healthy relationships won’t last unless there is some vulnerability.
And being assertive is vulnerable.
Sharing how you feel is vulnerable. Setting a boundary is vulnerable. Stating that someone hurt you and you’d prefer they acted differently around you is vulnerable…
Because you’re opening yourself up. You’re making yourself vulnerable and susceptible to ridicule, anger, disappointment, rejection, abandonment, abuse.
And all that is very scary. We try to avoid the above at all costs most of the time!
But where we go astray is that if someone gets angry or disappointed that we were assertive with them, then maybe they don’t have our best interest at heart and that the problem lies with THEM and not US.
You have the right to be assertive and should have safe relationships with safe people who don’t shame you for being assertive.
And it’s up to you to protect yourself from unsafe people.
Assertiveness is vulnerable and that is how we get to see peoples’ true colors. How they respond to our vulnerability says a lot about them, doesn’t it?
Then you can realize you maybe need to set a stronger boundary, or just file away in the back of your mind that you won’t talk about certain with certain people to protect yourself.
The goal is to find safe relationships where you can say what’s on your mind and how you feel without the risk of them shaming you for it.
That’s a huge part of a healthy relationship.
So do you fully believe that it’s not love until it’s vulnerable?
If you need help identifying toxic relationships, grab my free guidesheet in the side bar. Step #2 is all about toxic relationships.
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