Vulnerability: threatening or healing?

Abstract

Vulnerability can be viewed from two perspectives – the negative (vulnerability as a wound) and the positive (vulnerability as an openness to relationships or conscious woundedness). Being vulnerable means becoming aware of certain truths about your­self and the other, accepting your human side. Vulnerability is relational, that means we are vulnerable in relation to someone or something. Vulnerability, and why and when it is threatening, and when it hurts us or reminds us of feeling hurt, is something we consider in the context of feeling connected to our self and with others in our personal lives, as well as in the therapeutic and supervisional space. From the phenomenological research of vulnerability processes and vulnerability during young parenthood, and the transformation from woundedness to vulnerability, we will also extract what vulner­ability requires for its positive connotation, and where and how it facilitates the devel­opment of a secure connection in (inter)personal relationships and thus increases the depth and security of relationships. We will also clarify the connection between what we know about vulnerability and experiencing shame, as researched by those studying connectedness in relationships, and we will outline the differences between the male and female experiencing of vulnerability, as seen by the best known vulnerability re­searcher, Brene Brown.