Our Problem With Vulnerability

Vulnerability is not something we’re programmed to do with great ease and comfort. If we were meant to effortlessly lean into vulnerability, and come out the other side gracefully, an entire self-help world which teaches people what vulnerability is, how to lean into it, and how to be more vulnerable, would cease to exist. We need these instruction manuals on vulnerability because most of us don’t know how to be vulnerable. Vulnerability isn’t something that’s taught in school because emotional intelligence of any kind isn’t a skillset as seemingly important as basic algebra. In our personal relationships, like our family or origin system, the lessons we learn about emotional vulnerability will vary. For some of us, we grow up in an emotionally open, safe, and communicative household. For most of the rest of us, however, we grow up in an environment of mixed messages or very stern messages which clearly teach us being emotionally vulnerable in anyway is entering dangerous territory. Dangerous emotional territory in our foundational years typically means negative consequences result from showing our feelings. As a result of our emotional trauma, parts of our brain get shut off to the idea of being authentically vulnerable with our emotions. We fear rejection, abuse, and abandonment for feeling our feelings and expressing them. Consequently, we begin to fear intimacy, closeness, and connection to other people in a deep way.

Ironically, as human beings on planet earth, we’re vulnerable almost every second of every day. There are forces of gravity, physics, and astronomy which are way beyond our control. Life runs on incomprehensible calculations with billions of possibilities and probabilities floating around us at any time- some with negative consequences far more severe than getting our feelings hurt or our emotions rejected. Yet, the idea of being emotionally rejected, abandoned, or abused feels like an even greater threat than anything that could threaten us in the outside world. Our internal world suffers some of our worst anxiety until we learn how to make peace with emotional vulnerability.

Through time in nature and the wilderness in a women’s only therapeutic environment, women have the chance to connect with their authentic feelings, discover their ability to be vulnerable, and heal the emotional wounds of the past while building an empowering foundation for the future. RedCliff Recovery offers the only women’s wilderness therapy program made for women by women, and run by women. We’ve found freedom. We live in joy. Let us show you how to have hope for a better future. Call 801.370.2274 for more information.