Understanding How Rationalizing Protects Vulnerability
You've done your work and it shows. You have good friends, good work, and basically enjoy life and yet there is one place you are stuck. There is one particular relationship or situation in which you seem to be going in circles. When you reflect on it, you feel surprised and frustrated to find yourself in a familiar pattern of thinking or behaving that you know doesn’t serve you or those you care about. Rationalizing is one way you might be keeping yourself stuck. Let’s look at how it works.
A rational mind is a valuable asset when used for its true purpose. But, when rationalizing is used to relate to your vulnerability it can become a pernicious form of self-talk that dismisses and denies your experience. It's like a cat waiting at the mouse hole ready to pounce on vulnerability the moment it shows its little nose. You may have trouble seeing how rationalizations keep you stuck because they seem to promote key values for you. They often have the tone of being socially or politically correct. Here are a few examples of rationalizing that could deny experience when your vulnerability asks for more:
Friendship: I should just be grateful for the connection I already have in my life. I just need to focus more on connecting with myself.
Intimacy: I just want intimacy so that I feel more worthy. It would do me good to spend more time alone.
Rest: Working is part of being an adult. It's important for me to do my part to contribute. Everybody is tired.
Play: There is a lot of suffering in the world and I have all the comforts a person could want. I need to think more about what I can offer than playing.
You can see that these rationalizations all offer some aspect of truth which makes them more difficult to see through. Unfortunately this kind of rationalizing sets up a false choice. It's trying to convince you that in order to be in alignment with certain values you have to deny some aspects of your experience; you have to suppress your heart’s longing.
Rationalization creates a false dichotomy in order to keep your vulnerability hidden. Some part of you imagines that if you were to allow the longing that comes with recognizing an unmet need, something bad will happen. Most likely something bad did happen around vulnerability at some point or period of life for you with regard to particular needs.
Rationalizing attempts to protect you from vulnerability that is associated with shame or punishment in two specific ways: pervasiveness and depth.
It prevents you from seeing how often a need goes unmet (pervasiveness). When a need is pervasively unmet, you not only have a sense of depletion, you are also likely expending energy to manage your reaction to the unmet need. That's exhausting.
Rationalization also prevents you from experiencing the depth of grieving that is a part of any situation or relationship that's not working. With acceptance of vulnerability you can grieve; with grief you can arrive at acceptance of things as they are; with acceptance, wisdom can flow and lead you to healing and change.
If this struggle sounds familiar, you can experiment with three practices that can help release you from stuckness. The first is to set your intention to notice rationalizations. You likely have some repetitive ones so writing them down will help you get some space from them and see them for what they are.
Second, once you are catching rationalizations in the moment, make a tiny request of yourself to rest your attention on whatever feeling and need is alive for at least one breath. Each time you do this practice you expand your sense of comfort with vulnerability.
Lastly, find someone or a few someones who can hold your vulnerability - someone who can meet you with compassion again and again. Create opportunities in which you can share something vulnerable and they can offer loving presence and reassurance that your vulnerability is welcome. Reassurance from someone who can meet your vulnerability might sound something like this, "It's okay to feel that, it's okay to need that. It makes sense that those feelings and needs would come up. I get it. Your feelings are welcome here."
As you and others welcome your vulnerability with empathy and compassion again and again, your system gets rewired. Shame dissolves and thriving flows.
Practice
Take a moment now to reflect and name any time recently when you met your own or someone else's vulnerability with a rationalization. Replay that interaction in your heart. Imagine yourself slowing down and resting your attention on the longing arising in your heart.
