What is Vulnerable?

An Introduction to What Vulnerable is

The term “vulnerable” can refer to a person, animal, system, or thing that is open to attack, harm, or exploitation. In a physical or technological context, it can refer to a weakness in security or a lack of protection from potential dangers. In a personal or emotional context, it can refer to a person’s openness to reveal their true self, thoughts, and feelings, making them susceptible to being hurt or rejected. “Vulnerable” can also refer to a state of being weak, fragile, or in need of protection or care.

Types of Vulnerability

Emotional

Emotional vulnerability refers to the willingness to reveal one’s emotions, thoughts, and feelings to others. It involves taking the risk of exposing one’s true self and being open to the possibility of rejection or criticism. Emotional vulnerability can lead to deeper connections and intimacy in relationships, but it also requires a significant amount of trust and courage. When a person is emotionally vulnerable, they are more open to receiving love, support, and understanding from others, but they also run the risk of being hurt or disappointed. Being emotionally vulnerable is an important aspect of self-expression and personal growth, but it can also be challenging and requires careful consideration of the situation and one’s own emotional needs.

Opening one’s self to connect to another is like a dance between courage and risk, becoming the delicate act of revealing your intimate self to another soul. Peeling back the layers, unearthing your thoughts, feelings, and the rawest emotions, laying them bare before another.

We each hold the key to our secret vault filled with emotions of fear, anxiety, hope, dreams, love, and desires. When we open the door to invite another to share space, it is always with the hope they will honor and share space with you.

Through sharing our secret space with others, we are able to connect to that person’s secret space. This is a process of time and mutuality, an opportunity for personal growth and healing wounds.

A Physical Vulnerable

Vulnerability extends to the physical self as much as the emotional and spiritual self. Your personal physical vulnerability is your perception and the potential reality of susceptibility of bodily harm or illness. It represents a the potential of a diminished capacity to prevent, withstand, or recover from physical threats.

This vulnerability is not a sign of personal weakness, but rather a set of conditions that can increase risk. These conditions can be temporary or long-term and vary significantly from person to person. How you perceive your vulnerability is a major factor in keeping yourself safe.

To summarize, physical vulnerability is at the intersection of your physical state, your environment, and your actions and awareness at any given moment. Reducing this vulnerability often involves increasing situational awareness, avoiding high-risk situations, and building personal safety skills.

Vulnerable in Recovery

Addicts (alcoholics are addicts) vary in lifestyles. Many survived life on the streets, others professionals who have slipped into the spiral of addiction. Recovery is a choice that strips all that was away, laying open to a sense of nakedness, feeling vulnerable. Note I said “feeling vulnerable,” because it is a feeling in the sense of no longer using the drug of choice as a shield.

The drug of choice offers an escape, self-medication, a shield from what was. During the activity of addiction there rarely was a sense of vulnerability. The drug of choice took that sense away. Self-medicating was the way to feel capable, strong, and invincible. However, there comes a time when it can no longer offer those feelings. Rather the addict reaches a point where despair is a companion. The drug of choice fails, no matter how much is used, it fails.

Recovery is more than simply being sober. However, sobriety is not an easy task. The body wants what it wants, the mind is not quiet, it haunts and reminds, both are relentless in their pursuit to achieve that blissful state beyond those nightmares.

There are several avenues to seeking sobriety and entering recovery. A few of your choices include but are not limited to the following:

12-Step Recovery Options

Alcoholics Anonymous tokens, given for sobriety milestones.
Some years feel more vulnerable than others.

Narcotics Anonymous tokens provided for various milestones. These tokens are for the first timer. "Keep coming back" Early recovery is a very vulnerable time.

Facilities

Medical detox
County funded detox and facilities long and short term
Private organizations
Salvation Army: residential recovery centers

Alternative Recovery Options

SMART Recovery
Secular Organization for Sobriety
Churches: majority of these have special groups for those struggling in the congregation with drugs, alcohol, other addictions.

To find help immediately try 211, this number is linked to resources within your location area. It is national.

Summary

Vulnerable is both a feeling and a reality. What you do with that emotion and physical state impacts your path in recovery, creating change in your life or staying sober. The actuality of being vulnerable is to be assessed, solutions examined and a plan put into place that will remove you from threat. The same can be said for the emotional vulnerability.

The decision is up to you. Changing your belief about being emotionally vulnerable is a huge step. We truly are vulnerable when we belief we are. When we shift that belief and realize no one can bring us harm unless we provide them permission, it is easier to feel secure in sharing your feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and state of recovery with another human being.

Having said that, I always suggest to my clients to incorporate the “Share, Check, Share” method of assessing a friendly presence. We cannot take on recovery alone, it does take a village. By using the “Share, Check, Share” method we can determine who to trust with our inner most journey.

Here is how “Share, Check, Share” works:

Pick something that you could careless if others know. Make it sound like it matters, you do not want to be nonchalant about it.
Share this with someone you feel you might like to bring into your inner circle. Wait.
If you hear it through the grapevine, that person is not someone to bring into your inner circle. He/she is not to be trusted. This may be a person who is in need of support. Not for you at this moment. Let go of disappointment, anger, etc, it has no place. Remember you are checking on who to trust.
If you never hear about it, try sharing something else. Wait.

The point of this is to remind yourself, it takes time to establish a trusting relationship. You always have the option of confronting the person you shared with and let them know that you cannot trust them, they shared something with others that you shared in confidence. In that way you are taking care of yourself and releasing the emotions that arose from this betrayal. However, it truly was not a betrayal, that happens when you have placed absolute trust in another and they break that. More on this later.