Vulnerability is the ability to share your authentic self. “We are losing our tolerance for vulnerability…Vulnerability is at the core of fear and anxiety and shame. Vulnerability is also the birthplace of love, joy, belonging creativity and faith.” Brene Brown

We have an interesting stance when it comes to emotion in our society. Some people don’t want to show emotion for several reasons. Emotion is perceived as weakness, and getting excited about something means you could be really disappointed later, so, you wouldn’t want to come off as overly excited for something, and you especially don’t want to be sad when it doesn’t happen. The dilemma with that stance is that a person cannot suppress some emotions without suppressing all emotions. And when numb to life, those concealed emotions come up in different ways, usually in the forms of addictions like shopping, watching television or social media, obsession with sex, porn, alcohol, or eating and the list goes on and on. “The evidence of this epidemic is that, we are the most addicted, obese, in debt and medicated cohort in American history.” Brene Brown. Emotional vulnerability looks like weakness, but it actually strengthens connections and joy. “How do we embrace vulnerability? We practice gratitude.” Brene Brown

You’ll find on my home page the top 5 regrets of people about to die which include:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
3. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

All of the top 5 have to do with relationships and emotional attachment. The listed three are specifically addressing the regret of not being vulnerable and living a life with present emotion. In our modern society we have unwritten rules of what it means to be a man or a woman and those rules are an attempt to box an individual into a specific stereotype or role in society, a robot, a clone. It’s an unconscious attempt to remove human interactive skills and make our relationships streamlined like an efficient manufacturing company. But, the truth is, we thrive on human characteristics and we connect deeply with others who express and share their emotional state of being. It’s vital to your happiness and success that you learn how to identify, express your emotions. As well as to develop a great sense of empathy.

“Extremism is faith without vulnerability” Brene Brown