How To Be Vulnerable Without Being Needy

I oftentimes say that vulnerability is the most bad*ss life hack I've e'er discovered.

And I'm not kidding. Learning to be more vulnerable has totally changed me. Through my practice of vulnerability, I've become more open up, more confident and more than loving than ever.

Only why vulnerability? Vulnerability is divers every bit beingness susceptible to attack or damage. It means letting our defenses downwards in the face of a potentially hostile environs. For most people, this sounds similar something we'd desire to minimize or, if possible, avoid altogether.

Common sense would tell us that opening ourselves upwards to possible attack would exist foolish, right? Why, then, has vulnerability get such a buzzword among those striving for conscious relating and personal growth?

Why are we choosing to exist vulnerable?

I think it's simple: vulnerability is often the only path to deeper connexion, and though we've tried to avoid this truth, connectedness is ultimately more important to many of us than safety. Belongings our defenses might proceed us safe, but it is as well sure to continue u.s. separate. For that reason, many of united states are willing to open ourselves up to possible damage in the hopes that sharing our truth will inspire a feeling of empathy and understanding in the other, which volition foster a deeper connection between usa. We accept the risk because the possible advantage is worth it. And even if we aren't rewarded in exactly the fashion we had hoped, at least nosotros were truthful to ourselves. Taking the adventure, itself, tin exist rewarding enough.

Nonetheless, many people still find information technology very difficult to be vulnerable at all. I know this because I was ane of them and now I piece of work with many of them equally their double-decker.

What I've noticed is that vulnerability isn't difficult simply because of the impairment it may expose us to. It'due south also challenging because to be vulnerable requires us to reveal ourselves. That is where many of us get stuck.

Beingness seen as we truly are inside is hard unless we're in total approval of ourselves.

In this world where our strength is often measured past the pain nosotros are able to withstand, exposing ourselves to harm isn't the scariest thing we can practice. Suffering lonely isn't the scariest affair we tin can do either (nosotros willingly do it all the time!) Actually, the scariest thing for many of us is albeit how much we demand others. It's scary especially when we're not in approval of needing them.

Admitting we're needy is one of the most vulnerable things we can do, since being needy isn't exactly adequate in this social club.

Permit's talk about neediness.

There was a fourth dimension in my life that I was terrified to be discovered as a needy woman. I was and so afraid of my neediness being seen that I could barely trust myself to say or practise anything that felt authentic or truthful to me, lest my neediness exist revealed.

This was the fourth dimension in my life when I was the least vulnerable about my feelings, and consequently, the least fulfilled in terms of the dearest and connexion I needed.

Ironically, in an attempt to conceal my neediness, I created a wall that blocked out what I needed and, as a result, I just grew more and more needy. It emanated from me whenever I let people in on what was happening internally for me, so I had to fortify my walls in order to go along anyone from really knowing me.

I was lonely within my fortress. It didn't matter who I surrounded myself with. I had friends and family. I always had a boyfriend—yet, I never stopped feeling lonely.

This devastating loneliness was the cost of not allowing myself to be vulnerable.

Sadly, I've discovered only how common this is among people.

Vulnerability comes up a lot in my coaching practice. When nosotros get downwardly to the root of what'south holding my clients dorsum in their relationships, they frequently acknowledge that they're not being vulnerable. When they admit this, I always enquire what stops them and the reply is unremarkably e'er the same: They don't desire to prove how they really feel unless they know how information technology'll be received. They are agape that what they desire and need are too much and they don't desire to reveal that.

They are terrified of being in the vulnerable position of revealing themselves as needy.

Treating our innate homo need for beloved this way is much similar locking a domestic dog in a muzzle and putting him in the basement. If we'd been feeding him and letting him run in the thousand, he'd probably be a total honey bug, but as he spends more time in the dark basement, starved of approval, honey and nutrient, he turns into a snarling, whimpering beast. He becomes more and more drastic. And that'south what happens to us, too.

It's no longer that we just need honey; we get needy. We can no longer simply ask for what nosotros need; we learn to guilt trip and make demands. We lose our eye. We become all messed up.

Of course, we withal try to maintain appearances so we wearing apparel upward nice and become on dates, hoping they won't come across the deprived beast below the surface. Heaven prevent we get vulnerable and show them what's really going on inside. Heaven forbid we give someone the chance to beloved our beast back into health.

My clients often conflate vulnerability with neediness. They don't want to be vulnerable because they think that doing so makes them needy, merely vulnerability and neediness are non the aforementioned thing. Yep we all need dearest, simply we don't start out needy. We really only get needy when we've been depriving ourselves. And that really only happens when we aren't vulnerable to begin with.

If anything, vulnerability prevents neediness. It keeps us healthy and well-adjusted considering it keeps our bones man needs from getting backed upwards and remaining unfulfilled inside of us.

It'southward a difficult first step to be vulnerable when we know it might reveal us as needy, only we accept to start somewhere. If we ask for what we want, reveal how we feel, and admit when we're afraid, we are at to the lowest degree being real and giving someone the chance to love the real version of the states. And that's where connexion begins.

And if we stick with it, eventually we won't be needy anymore. Yeah, we will take needs, just we'll be able to confidently become after them and we'll trust ourselves enough to change course if our needs aren't existence met.

We won't be beggars and we won't be dependent, only we won't be emotionally isolated either.

We'll be strong, authentic and open.

That'south truly what vulnerability is about.

Relephant:

I volition Never Apologize for being Vulnerable.

Relephant bonus:

~

Author: Summer Engman

Editor: Renée Picard

Prototype: <<saigerowe>> at Flickr

Source: https://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/10/being-vulnerable-the-cure-for-being-needy/

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