Vulnerability hangovers

Vulnerability Hangovers: think The Fear but without the alcohol. (Well, sometimes the alcohol). The term was coined by Brené Brown and most are familiar with the red-hot shame it evokes: that screeching-to-a-standstill horror of walking away from a happy experience – where we were completely ourselves – only to suddenly question whether we should have been a little more guarded. And just in case we did misread the situation, we berate ourselves to make sure we’re not so careless next time, with the seemingly innocuous:

“I shouldn’t have said that” or maybe “I was just a bit too me’’

The homogenised self – that streamlined ‘us’ that reads a room and acts accordingly – is how we manage to live relatively shame-free day to day. But sometimes we find ourselves unexpectedly in a situation where we feel safe, connected – liberated – and a normally compartmentalised aspect of us flows freely… only realising afterwards that our sentry was off-duty and we must review the story with a critical playback. With indiscriminate Homeland-Security level suspicion we may replay every surprised eyebrow twerk and err on the side of assumed disapproval. While rationally we know the resulting discomfort is completely out of proportion (those we imagine judging us were probably wondering what to have for lunch, or maybe whether we judged them, etc), we can still let seductive doubt convince us to police our behaviour going forward.

Because vulnerability strips away our assembled social self, it is us – our essential nature – that has been judged, one way or the other. And that’s a big risk. It’s much easier to read from a generic script.

Everyone feels this in some way. By just being alive and negotiating a world full of variable others, we’re accidentally and incidentally taught that openness can be a fatal flaw that leaves us wide open to misinterpretation – and to guard against that we can end up overemphasising more strident traits, placing them front and centre as armour. While we try to exist somewhere in the middle of ‘Inside Me’ and ‘Outside Me’, in reality we’re often abruptly jumping from one to the other or withdrawing into some limbo where we’ve disconnected from others. All because we’ve vilified vulnerability: whether we have learned to fear it, or simply don’t know how to do it.

I’ve personally had my own nature pointed out as ‘a little naive’, which I unwittingly tried to counter by enforcing wariness to give me perspective distance from those things I would *inevitably* misjudge. But because detached and sceptical were essentially untrue, the ‘unguarded’ me would leak out when I was at ease, and I’d be thrown into skittish back-pedalling. (Sometimes while still in the situation, which was frankly confusing for everyone involved). Becoming noncommittal and impenetrably unreadable was my go-to as I secretly squirmed through vulnerability hangovers – but instead of simply neutralising the ‘flaw’, I was experienced as aloof or indifferent, even dismissive or bolshy. I hadn’t integrated a gentle caution to balance my nature, I’d thrown a cloak over it and told it to bark. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t always recognise myself when people jokingly described me.

(Sidebar: I also happen to be host to the twerkiest self-driving eyebrows in all the land – sadly lending weight to frequent misinterpretation).

Hindsight is credited as twenty-twenty, but it’s actually hazy with a fearful doubt coloured by past pain. How we review and weave a story from it depends on how we feel about ourselves. But what if we viewed others not as witnesses or judges, but fellow self-contained internalised universes?

We all subconsciously defer to past wounds to danger-check situations, but although it’s intended as a failsafe, it’s often inaccurate and can damage more than just ourselves. Consider how easily a sharp 180 on your part could give another their own vulnerability hangover: blinded by re-concealing ourselves, we inadvertently make others question their experience and judgement of a situation. Maybe we’re dismissive and laugh it off, making them believe they’d imagined it or misread it. In other words, we’ve treated others the way we fear being treated: we’ve made them doubt themselves. Maybe even hurt them the way we fear being hurt.

In this ripple effect, our internal gatekeeping causes external damage by alienating others – preventing them from feeling safe to be themselves around us – which is why it’s so important to consider that you’re not the protagonist in every story you replay.

Vulnerability is not solely a monologue confessional or a dramatic unveiling; it’s a created space *between* people that we open up by deciding to live by the truth of “I know how this feels, and I don’t want to make you feel that way’’ . It’s not some assertive action where we overshare defiantly (the ‘Gospel according to me’ approach), because it’s not a state of doing at all. It’s a way of being that melds our public self and our interiority more comfortably, so stifled aspects don’t fight their way out at inopportune times and send us reeling back inwards.

(PS: Repressed things will always find a way to make noise. Like a prisoner banging on a hidden cell door. No matter how good a watchdog you are, there are manifested ‘tells’. Some blatant; like antsy jumpiness, addictions or even manic cheeriness, and some less obvious – maybe disappearing acts, social avoidance, snarky humour, aloofness, disengagement.)

The stakes of vulnerability aren’t as high as fear whispers they are.

Vulnerability takes practice, but it allows the possibility for you to move beyond a tightly-controlled external self to more expansive connections. For if we stay solely around the people who buy our homogenised self, we’ve not only built our own generic prison, we’ve picked the wrong cell mates. This can cause us to view our true self as surplus to requirements or even distasteful, and if we stay swimming around in that vulnerability hangover, we may never connect with the right ones – because we have removed ourself from possibility into penitence.

There will be times our willingness to be ourselves feels thrown back in our face or ridiculed. You may even be abhorrent to some people, because you embody their deepest fear: deviation from the script. But maybe, in the longview, that’s a good thing. There’s no personal slight, just self-liberation from being surrounded by strangers who know your name, but not your nature. Think of it as a Darwinian natural selection: those who connect well together will fall into step and become more open… and those who don’t will walk elsewhere.

By extending empathy to ourselves – and by consequence, others – we allow the smokescreen that obscures our true-view of each other to dissipate.

Stand by your moments of openness, whether they be choice or hapless accident. And if you did misjudge it, resist misjudging yourself in response – the equivalent of poking roughly at a wound to punish yourself for having the wound. (Are you going to tend to it and give it time to heal, or infect it and make it worse? Are you going to cut off your arm because your finger hurts and you ‘should have been more careful’ in the first place?)

Being open gives another the opportunity to meet us there if they are ready (or able) to. So give people the chance to be themselves by affording the same generosity to yourself. Releasing ourselves from the corruption of doubt-fuelled ‘Me-centic’ mistruths, we can better tune into and trust our own instinct, which only becomes stronger when we resist running incriminating post-analysis.

Reframe the blame. The world/people aren’t rejecting you when you fall down the well of a vulnerability hangover – you are rejecting yourself on their behalf, without even giving them a say in it. Take a moment to consider that your ‘protective-defensive’ survivalism may actually feel judgemental, dismissive or aggressive to others – but that is something you can actually remedy: by kindly, gently (and with a solid effort towards compassion, perspective and humour) learning to wear yourself a little more comfortably, so others can too.