Quotes About Vulnerability

If you pay attention, you may find that it is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable, so you avoid doing the thing that will evoke fear and other disquieting emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.

Truth is, nothing you say can ensure that the other person will get it, or respond the way you want. You may never exceed his threshold of deafness. She may never love you, not now or ever. And if you are courageous in initiating, extending, or deepening a difficult conversation, you may feel even more anxious and uncomfortable, at least in the short run.

Countless self-help books, blogs and seminars promise relief from suffering, when pain and suffering are as much part of life as happiness and joy.The only way to avoid being mistreated in this world is to fold up in a dark corner and stay mute. If you go outside, or let others in, you'll get hurt many times. Ditto if you've grown up in a family rather than begin raised by wolves. Some people will behave badly and will not apologize, repair the harm, or care about your feelings.

Why must they share their uncensored reactions?" She was referring to the corrosive criticism that wears couples down as they selectively attend to what bothers them in a partner rather than speaking to what they appreciate and admire. And she was referring to the raw, unbridled emotional exchanges that, when unchecked, erode intimacy and connection in family relationships.

Moving in this direction requires us to clarify—to ourselves and others—what's important to us. Having an authentic voice means that: We can openly share competence as well as problems and vulnerability. We can warm things up and calm them down. We can listen and ask questions that allow us to truly know the other person and to gather information about anything that may affect us. We can say what we think and feel, state differences, and allow the

Yet all of us are vulnerable to intense, nonproductive angry reactions in our current relationships if we do not deal openly and directly with emotional issues from our first family—in particular, losses and cutoffs.

Control is an illusion—a fact you will learn very fast if you become ill, or have things fall apart in some other way. When we understand vulnerability and suffering as an essential part of being human, our individual fate can be easier to manage.

When a woman loses her resolve to speak up and stand firmly behind her position, she may be vulnerable to depression, anxiety, headaches, chronic anger, and bitterness.

Getting older brings the comforting knowledge that the things we consider most shameful and weird about ourselves are actually pretty universal—or if not, that other folks have their own shameful and weird stuff. This growing realization that we're not so unique makes it easier to share who we really are and how we got there.

All of us are vulnerable to intense, non-productive angry reactions in our current relationships if we do not deal openly and directly with emotional issues from our first family—in particular, losses and cutoffs. If we do not observe and understand how our triangles operate, our anger can keep us stuck in the past, rather than serving as an incentive and guide to form more productive relationship patterns for the future.

At bedrock is the fear of being seen as essentially flawed, inadequate, and unworthy of being loved.

working on key emotional issues at their source, lays the groundwork for more solid intimate relationships in the present or future.

what we believe is most shameful and unique about ourselves is often what is most human and universal

When we speak from the heart, we long for an ear to hear us, and we all have experienced that down feeling when we perceive ourselves as written off or misunderstood.

But what is courage? In a world saturated with images of action-figure bravado, we may mistakenly believe that courage is the absence of fear. Instead, it is the capacity to think, speak, and act despite our fear and shame.

Whatever we seek to hide makes shame grow.

To guard against the intolerable feeling of shame, we may fold ourselves up and hide in the darkest corner. We may apologize for taking up too much space or for using up too much of the valuable oxygen in the room. Or we may do the opposite and flip shame into contempt, arrogance, a need to control, and displays of one-upmanship, dominance, and superiority. In the latter case the person may be hell-bent on not apologizing to anybody.

Birth is as safe as life gets.

There was something frantic in their blooming, as if they knew that frost was near and then the bitter cold. They'd lived through all the heat and noise and stench of summertime, and now each widely opened flower was like a triumphant cry, "We will, we will make seed before we die.

Mildred ließ sich auf einen Stuhl fallen. "Du weißt ja: Wer im Glashaus sitzt... Vielleicht hab ich 'n Sprung in der Schüssel. Und wennschon. Ich werd' euch mal ein Geheimnis verraten: Wenn die Schüssel 'nen Sprung hat, dann kommt mehr Licht rein. Also bin ich doch schlauer als ihr.

The writers job is to get naked, To hide nothing. To look away from nothing. To look at it. To not blink. To be not embarrassed or shamed of it. Strip it down and lets get down to where the blood is, the bone is. Instead of hiding it with clothes and all kinds of other stuff, luxury!

In the beginning, the lovemaking was frequent and wild, but with little genuine feeling, like good pornography. Our true intimacy was the unspoken belief that we were living honest lives without the artifice and deceit so necessary in most relationships.

Poor men have more to fear when the laws go down than the rich, for they are less able to protect themselves without law. You had all better shiver when you see a policeman rioting rather than putting down a riot, for he may well come after you next, or stand aside when someone else does.

how could you go on thinking somebody was better than you by nature when he ran away for fear that you would blow him a new asshole with your Springfield? Wasn't he a man, just like you? Wasn't he a frightened man, just like you?