If you are reading this, you likely participate in communities in which vulnerability is highly valued and encouraged. Indeed, vulnerability is an important component of authenticity, and can enable higher levels of self-connection and connection with others. Hopefully, your experience in such communities is that it is a safe environment to share vulnerability. You recognize that you feel safe when those receiving your vulnerability offer warm acceptance, reflective listening, empathy, and attunement.

If, however, your vulnerability is not received with care and respect, it can be quite painful. You might feel angry, disoriented, hurt, embarrassed, ashamed, sad or disappointed. You might also begin to doubt the validity of your own experience, which can then trigger self-judgment leading to insecurity, collapse, or shut down. These painful feelings and reactions might have a long-term impact of inhibiting your ability to discern when it is safe to share and how to set boundaries when it is not. Let’s look more closely at these two points. 

To discern when it is safe to share, it helps to recognize the most common responses from others that are not examples of receiving your experience with care and respect. Here are a few: 

• Advice-Giving: What you share is met with advice about what you should or shouldn’t do.

• Analyzing: Your sharing is met with ideas about how your mind works or why you are feeling or reacting a certain way.

• Minimizing:  You hear comments like the following: “You are overreacting.” “It was a little thing.” or “At least you have…”

• Dismissing:  You hear comments like the following: “It’s no big deal, just let it go.” “It doesn’t matter.” “You will feel better tomorrow, just move on.” “That´s just how life is.”

• Defending: The other perceives your experience as an attack and begins explaining why things happened the way they did or why they are not responsible for the impact on you.

• Attacking:  You receive criticism about how you are doing something wrong or about your sharing itself, such as “You should be grateful for everything you have instead of complaining.”

• Non-empathetic body reactions:  The other person responds nonverbally by looking away, walking away, remaining silent, tightening jaw muscles, heavy sighs, or  folds arms across the chest.

When one or more of these things happen, you can immediately identify for yourself that the other person is not receiving your experience. Instead they have immediately made an interpretation of what you shared, and are expressing their reaction to their own interpretation.

A couple of things are helpful to remember about this. First, once someone is triggered into reactivity, it may be a while before they can hear you, if at all. When someone is in a reactive state, their brain temporarily loses access to receiving with empathy. Second, reactions like the ones mentioned in the list above tell you that there is probably a lack of emotional security and attunement in your relationship with that person, at least in a given interaction. There could also be a confusion about what you are wanting when you share vulnerably, and a lack of tools or skills in the other person to respond with empathy. 

Understanding this, you can make a decision. Do you want to invest time and effort into creating conditions necessary for your vulnerability to be heard and received in this relationship? 

Or, do you want to set boundaries to create a more distant relationship with this person? Perhaps you have already invested time and effort in building conditions and offering clarity around your desire to be heard and the other person has not expressed willingness to hear you in the way you'd enjoy? Or perhaps this relationship is not one you have actively chosen in your life and you notice that you no longer have desire or energy to invest in it? 

In this case, you could establish boundaries through simple statements like: “I’m not wanting to share about that, thanks for asking.” "No thank you, I don't want to do that." "No, I don't want to talk about it." "I’m willing to share… (name the kinds of things you are willing to share)." You can also establish a boundary with nonverbal cues such as a lack of eye contact and maintaining more physical distance. The key around setting life-serving boundaries is to take the time to connect with yourself and the needs you are trying to meet through setting these boundaries before expressing them. In this way you will ensure that your actions are coherent with your deeper longings and hopes.

What's important about setting boundaries is remembering that you are at choice about what and when you share vulnerably. No one has a right to demand you share vulnerably. Receiving your vulnerability is an honor that is earned through consistent attunement, acceptance, and empathy.

You might also discern that you want to invest time and effort in building emotional security in a particular relationship but, for now, there is too much disconnection or hurt to do so. In this case, you might begin by receiving empathy from those outside of the situation. Receiving empathy from others regarding a very challenging relationship usually means many sessions of empathy over time. Each session typically reveals a new layer of pain that needs healing. When you feel ready you can also offer empathy for the other person just in your own heart. In this way you will heal, build resources, and will eventually find the energy to try again.

Practice

Take a moment now to reflect on a relationship in which your vulnerability is not typically received with the care and respect you need. As you think about interacting with this person and attempting to connect, what do you notice in your body and heart? Is there a sense of contraction indicative of fear or obligation? Or do you find warmth and desire to connect? What's really authentic for you in continuing in this relationship?