What are we hiding? And, why are we hiding it? Why don’t we want people to know who we really are? And, why can’t we let people love our real selves?
Maybe we want people to see us as perfect and a particular way; maybe we have a fear of being vulnerable, susceptible to having feelings of love and trust.
When we build relationships we are always apprehensive and worried about how it will turn out to be.
This situation arises when we feel vulnerable in relationships, explains Geraldine Piorkowski, Ph.D., author of Too Close for Comfort: Exploring the Risks of Intimacy. Often, she says, because we fear to have our deepest desires trampled upon, rejected, or unfulfilled.
We are often scared to open up to the right person in the right way. In a way this is because we are actually scared that the other person might run away from us when they see our real selves, the flaws, the wrongs.
However what lies beyond this mask, that is the real you, is the one yearning for love.
What is the fear of vulnerability?
In simple terms, it is the fear of feeling weak when it comes to creating trust and closeness in relationships.
When you don’t embrace your real self, your true nature and forget loving yourself that is when the fear of vulnerability arises.
When you wear the veil of vulnerability you chunk your heart and wedge your feelings.
That is how you stop feeling yourself.
Being vulnerable can mean being in pain and that is why most of us grow our skin thick. The fear of being judged becomes so strong that we start putting multiple layers of resistance.
We confuse being strong with becoming tough and resistance, that is to have no feelings or not trying to express them and that is when we wear the veil of vulnerability.
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Remember, not being too emotional or even emotional does not mean you are strong.
Being vulnerable also means, on the other hand, to be in a state of trust and courage because being weak means you have the power of being strong, by strong I mean the real strength and not a facade you are wearing on the outside and the falsehood you are casting on the world.
The fake strength that lies on the outside of the veil of vulnerability when shed allows the real courage to build up.
Putting your unrefined truth in front of the world is what needs the most courage.
Is vulnerability a disorder of relationships?
No, it’s just a normal human condition.
We’ve all struggled to open up to others at some point in our lives, says Jeffry Simpson, Ph.D., a social psychologist, and professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota.
That is how we humans first react to relationships.
In fact being vulnerable is the gutsiest thing a person can do.
If being intimate and close in your relationships is a problem then you need to understand yourself and your vulnerabilities more. Don’t be scared of being vulnerable. Don’t let your vulnerability define you.
It is completely normal to hesitate in building a trustworthy relationship and opening up to someone. All you need to do to overcome this is, to be honest.
You can only know whether to trust a person by trusting him.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Greatist, Psychology Today, Covenant Eyes
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