Sharing Our Tenderness and Navigating Vulnerability Hangovers

Sharing vulnerability is the foundation of meaningful relationships and wholehearted living. It’s also really fucking hard – by definition. To be vulnerable means to share our tenderness and open ourselves up to the possibility of getting hurt. But it’s super worth it, and it’s the only way to cultivate the kind of connection that most of us crave.

This episode serves as a reminder that vulnerability is worth it, and also offers support around the almost-always-inevitable vulnerability hangover. Having the language of vulnerability hangover and the capacity to recognize when one is happening opens up the doors to self-compassion and self-care. 

The more we’re able to take good care of ourselves around our vulnerability hangovers, the more resilient and empowered we become. And the more we share our vulnerability in safe (enough) and supportive spaces, the more courageous and connected we feel.

So! As a heads up, I’m practicing what I preach in this one by sharing something that meets my quality standards for content but the audio quality isn’t ideal. Thankfully, you can just read the transcript below if you prefer.

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Resources, References, and Links:

Brene Brown – Power of Vulnerability Ted Talk. If you haven’t seen it, please give yourself the gift of this 20 minute video.

Vulnerability hangover. Here is a useful article that includes coping strategy suggestions.

Trauma dumping. What it is, how to recognize it, and hopefully, therefore, how to avoid doing it!

Jim Henson documentary. Jim Henson Idea Man – so good! Also, much as I appreciate and respect the guy, he was definitely a workaholic. Appreciate that the film does address the toll it took on his family. Just wish they’d talked more about Fraggle Rock!

The Dark Crystal – very strange, cult classic film that came out in 1982 and was a radical departure from The Muppet Movie.

The Labyrinth – also a very strange and (in my book) marvelous movie featuring the late, great David Bowie as the villain.

Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. The title here pretty much says it all. Highly recommend, as with all of her work.

Transcript:

Hello, darling. 

This episode is for anyone struggling with self-doubt or insecurity or the “sweet baby Jesus, what did I just say? I shouldn’t have done that.” Any of that stuff. 

Or with wanting to be more fully yourself, wanting to show up in the world in a way that is more authentically you. 

That’s been a topic that’s been coming up this month a lot and consequently vulnerability has been on my mind a lot.

And this episode is a little vulnerable for me in that I recorded it on a walk. I tend to walk around my neighborhood and sometimes I have to move my body in order to get the brain juices flowing. And I recorded it, and felt pretty good about the content. Then I got home and I was like, okay, I’m going to re-record it now that I’ve gotten my ideas out…

And then I just couldn’t fucking do it. I would sit down in my little cute little recording studio – I say recording studio, but it’s like a big Tupperware tub with like foam and insulation inside it to help with sound. But anyway, like I tried to sit down in my recording studio and recreate what I’d created, and it just fucking wasn’t working. It wasn’t flowing. It was frustrating. I kept getting tripped up. I couldn’t, I couldn’t capture the magic.

And I went on another walk, and I listened to what I had said the first time, and I was like, “you know what? Fuck it.” 

I can share something that isn’t perfect, that doesn’t have perfect audio. I can use the goddamn AI sound improvement technologies that are available to me and share it anyway. To model that like things don’t have to be perfect to be valuable.

Quality IS really important to me. This isn’t something I intend to make a habit of, but I think there’s some juicy lesson here for me that’s like, topically relevant. 

So I wanted to just preface it with like, what you’re about to hear is not the same audio quality as you might be used to on this podcast. And I just want to acknowledge that so that you aren’t totally disturbed or startled by like, why the fuck is this audio quality shitty, comparatively speaking? Or, if this is your first time listening to the podcast – LOL, BTWs, this is not normal. 

But I’m doing it anyway, and I hope you can get on board… [musical transition].

This one goes out to anyone who struggles with feeling seen fully. We’ve been talking a lot about authenticity and welcoming all the parts of ourselves, and so this one goes out to anyone who, like, is working on both welcoming in those parts and then introducing them to the world and the vulnerability that that entails. And how hard vulnerability can be by its very definition. 

Brene Brown talks about the power of vulnerability. It’s an amazing TED Talk. But I think what gets overlooked maybe, or just that warrants more unpacking, is why it’s so hard to be vulnerable, why it’s so important to like bring intentionality to it, and how to take care of ourselves around it. 

Because what I think is true for me, what has been true for me lately, especially in the last few months as I’ve been doing like big, courageous, risky vulnerable things in my life, is that there’s always some level of vulnerability hangover. 

And what a vulnerability hangover is, is the like sense of self-doubt, or the fear, or the overwhelm that creeps in after we’ve done something vulnerable, after we’ve shared something vulnerable. And that happens because by definition, to be vulnerable is to open oneself up to risks. The actual definition is to open oneself up to the possibility of attack. That like, that is what vulnerability is. 

And I was having a conversation with a friend about this and what I realized is that, for me anyway, it’s been helpful to think about the difference between vulnerability… like sharing my vulnerability, is a step out into the unknown. That’s what it is. It’s like, I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I’m gonna try. That is vulnerability. 

Whereas tenderness, like sharing my tender underbelly with someone, isn’t the same thing. That when we have a sense of trust and safety, and like knowingness with a person. That’s a different thing than being vulnerable. 

And making that distinction is really interesting and helpful to me because like there are a lot, well not a lot, but there are a fair number of spaces where like I feel comfortable being vulnerable. I feel like with what I have historically thought of as vulnerability. There are people in my life that I trust and so like, like I’m not plagued by self-doubt, or that intent sense of, “should I have said that?” with a handful of people in my life. Or, in a lot of the recovery rooms that I’m in, I feel like I can share openly and not have that kind of immediate sense of, “oh God, what did I just say?” Because those places feel safe. 

And so the reframe that I’ve been offering myself that I want to offer to you that I think is sort of interesting to tinker around with is that there’s a difference between being vulnerable and sharing our tenderness. Because when I’m sharing my tenderness, when I’m being honest about my feelings, about what I’m thinking, who I am, all of that stuff, in places where I have already cultivated a sense of safety, that doesn’t feel the same as the like risk that is required to take that first step in that direction. Right, to build that sense of trust, that sense of safety, that sense that like I can be fully myself here does require vulnerability at first, but over time, and with the right people and in the right places, it doesn’t have that same pain or fear and doubt and exposure to harm. 

And like that is the where yumminess is. Like, Brene Brown talks about the importance of vulnerability and wholehearted living, of like being open, of having places where we can share and be our tender little selves. And for me, at least, this little thought experiment that I’ve been on is really helpful because I’ve been doing a lot of vulnerable shit lately and navigating a lot of vulnerability hangovers as a consequence. 

Launching this podcast was hugely vulnerable for me. And I feel like I talked about that in the early episodes, and I’m probably going to keep talking about it, is that part of what I’m trying to do here is like model vulnerability – is show what it looks like to be open and honest with my tender parts. And to do it in spite of it being scary, because I need more models for that in my life. 

You know, like the Instagram, there’s a lot of Instagram accounts I follow that do this, that model the like, “here is my soft underbelly, and I’m showing it to you so that you don’t feel alone, and hopefully to inspire you to be able to do the same on a different scale.”

My desire is not for all of us to talk about parts of ourselves and parts of our lives that are really tender in public spaces. But when I have the opportunity to see people doing that and to see people walking through the fear around that, like feeling the fear and doing it anyway, that inspires me. 

And the truth is that like any vulnerability requires courage and that being vulnerable is an act of courage. Because you are. Like, by definition, you’re exposing yourself to risk. Risk of rejection, risk of injury, and that I’ve been doing that on purpose lately, and it hasn’t made me immune to the vulnerability hangover. 

Like, the day I launched this podcast, my nervous system tweaked the fuck out. Like, I hit send on the first batch of emails and posts, and then I was like coming out of my skin with nervous energy, and vulnerability hangover, and self-doubt, and like, “my god, what did I just do?” My god, I don’t feel okay. How do, I don’t even know how to take care of myself right now. 

And it took like several days to come down from that. And part of what I want to be doing in this episode is like normalizing the vulnerability hangover. It’s both like normalizing vulnerability and championing it. I’m saying like, yay, this is the thing we should be doing because I do fundamentally believe that. And also acknowledging that even with as seasoned as I have become with these things, there’s still a come down. 

There’s still a like vulnerability hangover. There’s still a part that I have to like tend to any time I open myself up to risk. And being aware of that has been really helpful lately in recognizing what’s going on in my internal weather system with seeing like, I just did something really vulnerable. No wonder my system is reacting the way it is. Like, what kind of reassurance or comfort or gentleness do I need right now around this? 

Because I think historically, like, my MO would be to do something vulnerable, feel whatever initial sensations were coming up around that, and then like feel like I needed to distract or stay busy or run from it.

Instead of really like tending to what is going on, instead of reaching out to someone who I know is safe, and talking to them about it, and getting some comfort and reassurance, instead of taking an epsom salt bath and like really being intentional about soothing my nervous system, instead of sitting down and doing the journaling and offering myself the reassurance that I need… 

There are a lot of different resources, and I’ll share things in the show notes, about like what to do about a vulnerability hangover. 

But I think what I’m coming to realize and what I believe to be true for me and what I think is true for a lot of folks is that just like, you know, having a drink of alcohol, that like there are consequences for that. 

So like being a tiny itty bitty bit vulnerable, right? Just like sharing like a little bit of something with someone new might not lead to a great big vulnerability hangover. But if we like, you know, trauma dump on a first date, or just tell someone about all of our gunk the first time we meet, the consequences for that are going to be like a vulnerability hangover.

And for me, even when I’m being intentional about it, there will be a kind of emotional, nervous system level consequence. But that what’s been really empowering is to be aware of that, and to like make the decision that it’s worth it.

In next week’s episode (teaser!), I’m going to be talking about some really vulnerable topics. And I went into that very intentionally ready to talk about it, but that didn’t make me immune to the kind of heavy sense of overwhelm and exposure that came after the recording. 

But I’ve been digging into this stuff lately and therefore been able to take better care of myself, been able to recognize immediately like, “yep, I just did some really vulnerable shit today.” 

But knowing that and recognizing it for what it was and being able to name it was incredibly helpful. And then just being really gentle with myself and not trying to push it away or reject it or run away from it. To just say like, okay, I see you. I’m going to be really sweet and tender with myself tonight so that then I have the like capacity and flexibility to bounce back a little bit, to not have it like wreck me for days in the way that, yeah, the first week after the podcast launch, it was kind of a mess, guys. 

Now, even, it was a lot like sharing creativity, sharing the things that we love and the things that we value and work on and believe in is vulnerable. I think every, the more I talk to creative folks, the more I realize this, that it like doesn’t super matter how. successful or surface level confident we are. 

Anytime we share something new, do something new, do something different, we’re exposing ourselves to the risk of rejection. So it’s really easy to keep showing up in the same way once we’ve established that like, what I am doing is safe. 

I just watched the documentary about Jim Henson, it’s just fabulous. I highly recommend it. And Jim Henson, didn’t want to keep doing the same thing over and over. He was just this like man who had this thirst for creative novelty and he would just do it. And there’s something just like so admirable about that. And like sometimes things would work and The Dark Crystal, like The Labyrinth didn’t. Like The Dark Crystal and The Labyrinth were not movies that were well liked at the time. And it was because it was so different from what he had been doing with the Muppets. 

And I think that’s like really hard for a lot of us. Like when we discover something new about ourselves and when we want to like share a part of ourselves that we haven’t shared before, that can be risky and vulnerable and hard because we don’t know how people are going to react. Like people don’t like change and all change is inherently vulnerable. It’s inherently risky. 

When we make changes in our life, when we want to expand or evolve or just allow ourselves to be seen more than we have historically, that’s vulnerable and it’s taking a risk. It’s opening yourself up, opening ourselves up, opening myself up to potential disapproval, to potential rejection, to potential confusion. People, myself included, like we find change dysregulating and confusing and we don’t know how to react at first. 

And there’s just a lot of courage and bravery and self-regulation required to step into those things for ourselves. But what I fundamentally believe for you and for me, for the world in general, is that taking those risks, however small we need to take them, is worth it. 

If we want to live authentically and joyfully, and fulfilled-ly, then there’s gonna be more, there’s gonna be change, we’re gonna continue to evolve. We’re gonna absorb new information and spit it back out in the ways that we show up in the world and who we’re trying to be and how we’re trying to behave.

I think it’s important to just note that vulnerability looks different for everyone. That what is vulnerable to one person might not feel like vulnerability to somebody else. 

And I wish I could tell y ‘all that like, I have reached a point where I don’t feel vulnerable because I’ve done it so many times. I mean, I can say that like, for the most part, first dates don’t phase me anymore because I’ve done it so many times that it doesn’t feel risky because it’s just a first date. But I will say that like second dates feel very vulnerable to me. You know? 

But I have to remember that the things that aren’t hard for me are hard for other people. I have to give people grace on first dates or, you know, talking on the stupid dating app that just because this isn’t a big deal to me doesn’t mean it isn’t a big deal to someone else. 

And being attuned to people and the world around me means being cognizant of that. It means slowing down and being a safe space for people to share their vulnerability. It means kind of listening and honoring when people tell me that what they’re doing is vulnerable – either with their words or just with their demeanor. 

That if I want to like honor and encourage value vulnerability, not only do I have to show up in that way, but I also have to create the space or the receptivity so that people can share that with me and feel good. 

That’s really what I want is, I want to be a place of safety. I want to be a place of welcome. I want the people in my life and the people who have not yet come into my life to feel that I will honor what they bring. 

And that starts with honoring it in myself, right? That if I want people to be able to feel like they can share things with me without judgment or shame, then I have to offer myself the freedom of not being super judgy or shameful or harsh on myself. 

Then when I can cultivate that skill set of not being a dick to myself, it’s a lot easier to show up and trust that I can trust my knowing, that I can build the skills to recognize when my nervous system is telling me it feels safe with a person or in an environment so that then I can share what I need to share in order to feel connected. 

And my invitation is, well, first of all, if you’re still not fully sold on all this vulnerability stuff, pick up Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly, because she does a great job of talking about all of this shit in sophisticated and detailed and research-backed ways. And it’s just an exceptional deep dive on the power of vulnerability and why it matters and how to do it. 

But if you don’t want to go read a book, then my invitation at the end of this episode is to be with your own vulnerability today or this week. To really pay attention to it, to be cognizant of what your body does when you do something that feels vulnerable and to notice the thoughts that come in.

Like the mean voice that shows up, the self-criticism, the self-doubt, the judgment and the shame and the should-ofs – to kind of notice that and say, I’m having a vulnerability hangover. What do I need right now? How can I take care of myself around this? Who can I call to talk to about it? Who’s a safe plate? How can I soothe my nervous system? How can I be gentle with myself? 

Really being present with what feels vulnerable and maybe pushing yourself in your relationships, in the places where you want to cultivate a bit more connection, a bit more sense of trust and safety and opportunity to be more fully yourself. Maybe push yourself to just be like 5 % more vulnerable this week. To be intentional around it. 

To look at kind of what’s going on in your life and where are the areas that feel really challenging, or that you don’t feel like you can show up fully yourself, and give yourself the permission to poke around, to see what’s possible, either by recognizing that some people and places just aren’t safe and haven’t earned and don’t deserve our vulnerability, or like just taking a little step towards, can I trust this person? Can I trust this space? How can I show up a little bit more myself today and see what happens?

Joy and fulfillment and delight require us to be brave, to take a stand for what matters to us, take a stand for ourselves. And so know that I am here doing it with you, buddy, and I’m rooting for you. And hopefully, if we all just like try a little bit, we can have really amazing impacts in both our lives and the lives of those around us.