Is Being Vulnerable Crazy?

Living Where Vulnerable Was a Bad Thing

Like many from my generation, I wasn’t raised to be open and honest. Instead, I was taught the world was a cruel place, and sharing your feelings was an invitation for abuse. Unfortunately, the Empath in me writhed in pain having to hold my very essence deep inside. I built walls around my heart, and locked my soul in what would ultimately prove to be a Pandora’s box awaiting the right moment to explode into a veritable flood of unprocessed sewage filled with long-suppressed emotions.

For decades, I had no idea why I felt like a square peg in a round hole, not only with my family, but everywhere I went. All I knew was there didn’t seem to be any place I fit, and the faulty belief system I was raised with forced me to believe the problem was with me. Somehow, I was sharing too much, being too honest. Most of the time, I vacillated between feeling like a crumbling wall held together with spit and sealing wax, and a raw, festering wound where my feelings oozed out unprotected, and stinking with infection.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I asked “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I make friends? Why do I always end up alone, or the butt of someone’s cruel joke?”

Fitting In While Honoring Self

Every so often, I’d find someplace I seemed to fit, but it didn’t last. I had a foot in two different, and incompatible worlds, and didn’t know how to break free of the one that was slowly killing the person inside; the person I was meant to be. I remember attending a party with the meditation group I’d joined. One woman said to me: “You’re so buttoned up. I’d just like to pull you apart and break you free.” I found her comment hurtful at the time, and it was probably the reason I later pulled back from people who might truly have helped me pull my foot out of the world where I was born, but didn’t belong.

In those days, I dressed conservatively, typically in oversized shirts and long pants, and wore my hair pulled tightly back from my face. Though I was slowly learning to be whoever I was and not what I thought others expected, I had a long way to go before I left my ill-fitting shell behind. The woman’s assessment was not far off the mark, if delivered rather tactlessly. It did teach me to look beneath the surface, and refrain from judging people by what they allowed the world to see (I later learned she hid her own pain as her marriage was crumbling).

Nowadays, I believe letting people see my true, honest, vulnerable self is not only a right but a responsibility. I’ve learned it’s the only way to form deep, loving, lasting connections. And it led me to follow Brene Brown whose upbringing wasn’t so different from mine when it came to having a healthy emotional life. It’s made me look back at my own life, and estranged family and realize there was never anything wrong with me at all. It was about going out into the world, shedding a lot of preconceived ideas, and finding my own, true tribe.

Validating Feelings

Unfortunately, I had to marry a man who was more like my family than I realized, and who, like them abused alcohol to unsuccessfully hide from the part of himself that was the most honest and real. To my credit, it only took me 10 years to realize I’d made a poor choice, and to take steps to fix it. Learning to open up came several years later, but getting out of a world where suppressing my emotions was considered normal was the first step.

My parents were both long gone before I truly started figuring it out, though my dad was still alive when I first began to emerge. The more comfortable I became with my feelings, the further apart we grew. I realize now I made him uncomfortable. He, too was raised to keep his feelings stuffed inside, and often used a phrase I’d come to hate when my ex used it on our daughters:

“You shouldn’t feel like that.”

I assured my girls their feelings were their own, and didn’t have an on/off switch, but it took a long time for me to recognize it was true for me as well. I’d heard it so many times, and learned to buy into it in exchange for what I mistakenly believed was love and acceptance, that it was hard to shed. Doing so meant, in my confused mind I was no longer lovable or acceptable to my family. Eventually, I had to come to terms with it, since it’s become my reality, and ultimately my salvation.

Shedding an Unwieldy Burden

At times, I stop and think about how much of a burden I dropped when I no longer felt compelled to live by the standards I was raised with, or seek the approval of people who would always find me lacking. Yet since I stopped trying to maintain bonds that were never tight or enduring in the first place, I honestly haven’t noticed a gap in my life where those bonds should have been. Their lives and mine have taken completely different trajectories, and I’m OK with that. They were a part of my life as long as they were supposed to be, and that’s enough.

Today, I’m comfortable being my overly emotional, over-sharing, physically demonstrative self. The burden of trying to fit into skin that would never fit has been lifted, and I’m drawn to people, and they to me who understand how beautiful vulnerability is, and how important it is for bringing hearts together. My birth family might think I’m crazy or odd. Perhaps the ugly duckling of fables.

I’m still evolving, and learning to show more of my heart; more of my essence, but I’ve gone through the worst part of the evolution, the part where the caterpillar turns into a puddle of goo before reforming into a butterfly. Maybe that’s why I’m so attracted to the bright, happy creatures, and see them everywhere these days. They truly are the embodiment of transformation, and I believe I had to turn myself completely inside out in order to become myself.

Feeling Gloriously Grateful

My gratitudes today are:

1. I’m grateful I had the strength to break away from beliefs that never fit.
2. I’m grateful for the people I’ve grown close to since allowing myself to be who I am, and not who they expect.
3. I’m grateful for the freedom I now enjoy, and for opportunities to be vulnerable and stay out of judgement myself.
4. I’m grateful for a life without clear structure where how I spend each day is an adventure, and often brings lovely surprises.
5. I’m grateful for abundance; freedom, joy, love, vulnerability, inspiration, motivation, acceptance, peace, health, balance, Being, harmony, philanthropy, and prosperity.

Love and Light

 

About the Author

Sheri Conaway is a Holistic Ghostwriter, and an advocate for cats and mental health. Sheri believes in the Laws of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. Her mission is to Make Vulnerable Beautiful and help entrepreneurs touch the souls of their readers and clients so they can increase their impact and their income.

If you’d like to have her write for you, please visit her Hire Me page for more information. You can also find her on Facebook Sheri Levenstein-Conaway Author or in her new group, Putting Your Whole Heart Forward