Approaching Vulnerability After Healing and Recovery

I think vulnerability is one of the most accurate measures of courage we possess. To be vulnerable is to be seen fully, in your true form, and without control of the audience's response.

When you're recovering from trauma or hyper-vigilance, that can be scary. Sometimes, even triggering. So you spend a long time waiting for permission to express.

Unless every connection was a therapist, how do relationships thrive in emotional silence?

Now generally, this can be a good thing, it's not all bad to bridle one's tongue or take the temperature of others before opening up. But the difference is the why: because you want to, or because you're unable to?

In insulating ourselves from potential pain, we end up blocking the very things we once enjoyed most in relationships like the certainty of true connections, and the emotional freedom to be our authentic selves.

After certain experiences, the mind learns to mute its capacity for vulnerability to avoid further harm to you which keeps you safe, for however long it takes you to realise that the price of this uber protection is your capacity to experience joy and truly connect with others. Consequentially, your ability to experience gratitude is even lower than even you are aware.

However, after you've spent a considerable amount of time doing the deep work of recovery, allowing yourself to get seated within yourself and gradually testing out your limits in relationships, vulnerability changes. It becomes a deliberate choice to align what's going on inside of you with what's expressed on the outside... Alignment.

Vulnerability As Alignment

Post-recovery vulnerability is basically alignment practice for your inner state to match your outer expression because concealment now costs more than exposure. At a certain point in healing, hiding takes more fuel than you're willing to burn.

At this point, it becomes imperative to remind yourself that you've done the necessary work, and you now have better judgement to know what parts of you are safe to open, and to whom.

In attunement work, this is called recalibration, where you attune your threat-detection to ensure vulnerability is no longer confused with danger.

Forced Openness

Although, it goes without saying that you can't force it. Forced vulnerability is just sacrifice for connection, you risk trapping yourself in unhealthy dynamics and expectations. This will lead you right back to woe is me.

In any case, testing your limits will teach you something either way, so I say go ahead if you must, but brace for impact.

Real post-recovery vulnerability is presence within yourself and in your connections without the constant mental calculation of how much to give or withhold.

You don't need to throw every gate wide open to prove you're healed. True freedom after healing is simply knowing your guardian is awake, your latches work, and you have the discernment to decide what comes through.

This in no way means that life suddenly becomes a bed of roses or that all your connections will endure indefinitely. But, you are safely in a place where you finally trust yourself to navigate vulnerability from a healthy stance.

An Inside-Out Approach

Essentially, the profound maturation of how you understand vulnerability is changing your perspective of it, from an act of exposure to an act of internal integrity.

Wherein your words, silence and actions match your internal monologue because your body, mind, and soul are perfectly aligned.

An inside-out approach.

Go out there, and give yourself a chance to truly connect. You've earned it.

Happy healing 🎈