Daring to be vulnerable – why vulnerability is courage, not weakness

What vulnerability is — and isn't

By vulnerability I mean here the moments when you show something genuine and have no control over the response. A few examples:

• Asking for help with something you think you ought to manage yourself.
• Admitting a mistake before anyone else has noticed it.
• Saying that you can't cope, or that you don't understand.
• Showing something you have made before it is finished.
• Telling someone they mean a lot to you, without knowing what you will get back.

What they have in common is that there is a risk: of being rejected, of seeming less competent, of getting nothing back. That is why it takes courage. Someone who risks nothing isn't vulnerable, just open.

Vulnerability is not, however, the same as sharing everything with everyone, or unloading your feelings on someone who hasn't asked for them. Choosing whom you open up to, and when, is part of it.

One way of avoiding showing vulnerability is to joke away what is hard. When humour helps and when it hides is covered in the article on humour as shield and strategy.

Why it feels like weakness

In 2018 the social psychologists Anna Bruk, Sabine Scholl and Herbert Bless at the University of Mannheim looked at how people judge vulnerability — their own and other people's. Participants imagined situations such as confessing love, asking for help or taking responsibility for a mistake. Some imagined doing it themselves, others imagined someone else doing it.

The pattern was clear across several studies: the same act was judged more negatively when it was one's own. In others it was more often seen as something positive. The researchers called it the beautiful mess effect — what feels like a mess from the inside looks more like something fine from the outside.

The explanation they suggest is that we think about our own situations concretely and up close: we see the blushing, the exact words, every way it could go wrong. We see other people's situations at a distance and more in the round, and then it is the courage that shows, not the details.

In 2022 the same research group showed that the gap was smaller in people with high self-compassion — the ability to meet yourself with the same kindness you would show a friend. That is a useful clue: the question "how would I see a friend who did this?" is not just comfort. It shifts your perspective to what other people in the studies did.

It should be said that the studies are mostly based on how people judge imagined situations. They don't say that every vulnerable moment is well received. But they suggest that our own assessment of the risk is often harsher than other people's assessment of the same thing.

Vulnerability and closeness

Opening up to someone is also one of the most studied ways that relationships deepen. In 1994 Nancy Collins and Lynn Miller brought together the research on self-disclosure and liking. People who share more personal things about themselves tend to be liked more, we disclose more to people we already like, and we tend to come to like those we have opened up to. The links were not unconditional, but depended among other things on the context and on what was disclosed.

In 1997 the psychologist Arthur Aron and his colleagues showed that closeness can be created between two strangers in 45 minutes, with a series of questions that gradually become more personal. Those who got those questions felt closer to each other afterwards than those who made small talk. What mattered was the gradual build-up: you don't start with the most private things.

That says something about how vulnerability works in practice. It builds trust when it is mutual and comes at a reasonable pace — not as one big confession, but as small steps where both people dare a little more.

About Brené Brown

You can't write about vulnerability without mentioning Brené Brown. She is a researcher at the University of Houston and has studied shame and vulnerability using qualitative methods, mainly interviews that she analysed to build theory out of people's own stories. Her book Daring Greatly from 2012 is based on that research, and in the chapter Dare to be yourself in my book I refer to it.

It is worth keeping two things apart. Brown's books are popular science: well written, grounded in a large body of interviews, but with her own interpretations and conclusions. That vulnerability is at the heart of courage is one such interpretation, not an experimental result. The studies I have described above test parts of that idea in a different way, and they point in the same direction — but they are not the same kind of evidence. I have written about the fear that holds us back, and what happens when you stop running from it, in fear and courage.

When your body says stop

Vulnerability is not only about what we say to others. In the chapter Accepting vulnerability in my book I write about the vulnerability that comes when the body sets the limits: illness, tiredness, periods when you can't be the version of yourself the world expects. It is often not the pain that is hardest, but the feeling of not being enough.

There I discuss what research calls sickness behaviour. When the immune system is activated, inflammatory signalling substances affect the brain, so that we withdraw, think more slowly and feel low. It is the body's way of saving energy, and it is easy to mistake for a personal failure. Knowing that makes it easier to rest without shame.

Accepting that kind of vulnerability is not giving up. It is stopping spending energy fighting something that can't be negotiated with, so that the energy can go to what can be influenced — the same idea that lies behind ACT. And saying to someone "I can't cope right now" is often the first vulnerable step of all.

How to practise being vulnerable

You can't decide to become vulnerable all at once, and you don't need to. It can be practised, and it starts small.

1. Ask for help with something small. Directions, a read-through, a hand with something heavy. Notice how it is actually received, not how you were afraid it would be.

2. Admit a mistake early. Say it before anyone else notices. It is usually less unpleasant than waiting to be found out, and it is exactly the kind of situation the researchers found others judge more kindly than you do yourself.

3. Say what you need. Instead of waiting for someone to guess. "I need you to listen, not to fix it" is a sentence that changes a lot of conversations.

4. Start with a person you trust. Vulnerability builds trust when it is mutual. Choose someone who has shown that they receive what you say with respect, and let it grow from there.

5. Switch perspective before you judge yourself. Ask: how would I see a friend who did this? The answer is usually closer to the truth than your first reaction, and it trains the self-compassion that the psychologist Kristin Neff describes.

6. Let it be uncomfortable. The feeling of having exposed yourself can come afterwards, sometimes as a wave of embarrassment. It doesn't mean it was wrong. It means you did something you don't usually do.

When it is more than that

Finding it hard to show vulnerability is human. But sometimes something else lies underneath. When the fear of other people's eyes makes you avoid situations altogether, it may be social anxiety, which can be treated. When you have stopped telling anyone how you feel, because it seems pointless, it may be depression. Then healthcare is the right first step, not an article.

How I work with it

In coaching we don't just talk about vulnerability, we practise it — in steps small enough to actually get done. We find where you are holding back something that matters, try out what happens when you don't, and look at how it was received. I have lived with panic disorder and social phobia myself, and I know that the first step rarely feels small to the person taking it.

The most important thing

If you take away just one thing: what you see as a weakness in yourself, others more often see as something positive. Your assessment of the risk is not neutral — the studies suggest it is often harsher than other people's assessment of the same thing.

That doesn't make vulnerability risk-free. But it means it is worth trying — in small steps, with people you trust — and listening to how it was actually received.

Sources

• Bruk, A., Scholl, S. G. & Bless, H. (2018). Beautiful mess effect: Self–other differences in evaluation of showing vulnerability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(2), 192–205.
• Bruk, A., Scholl, S. G. & Bless, H. (2022). You and I both: Self-compassion reduces self–other differences in evaluation of showing vulnerability. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 48(7), 1054–1067.
• Collins, N. L. & Miller, L. C. (1994). Self-disclosure and liking: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 116(3), 457–475.
• Aron, A., Melinat, E., Aron, E. N., Vallone, R. D. & Bator, R. J. (1997). The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: A procedure and some preliminary findings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363–377.
• Dantzer, R., O'Connor, J. C., Freund, G. G., Johnson, R. W. & Kelley, K. W. (2008). From inflammation to sickness and depression: When the immune system subjugates the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9(1), 46–56.
• Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85–101.
• Brown, B. (2012). Daring greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent, and lead. Gotham Books.
• Glännström, M. Välmåendecoach — För en ljusare framtid ("The Wellbeing Coach"), chapter 27: Dare to be yourself and chapter 28: Accepting vulnerability.

Best wishes, Mikael GlännströmWellbeing coach, author and father of two