There is no shame in being vulnerable.
There is no shame in being vulnerable.
If you have ever been taken advantage of, manipulated, duped, coerced, treated badly, or abused you will most likely start to look at the ways and reasons you “allowed” that to happen. You will hear a lot of noise about “taking responsibility”, dropping your “victim mentality”, looking at how you “colluded” with your abuser (s), and so on and so forth.
I think we do this often from a place of shame, a sense that something wrong or broken with us led us to find ourselves in this situation.
Here is the thing: there is no shame in being vulnerable. There is no shame in having emotional wounds, trauma-coping behaviors, and blind spots. There is no shame in having had past experiences that shaped us and primed us for abuse.
This is all part of the human condition.
Just like your body is not invincible to blunt force or infection, your psyche is not invincible to injury.
And just like our bodies are exposed to a world full of potential harm, so are our minds and hearts.
This is just how it is to be a beautiful human on this glorious planet.
While there is a lot of bullshit and confusion to sift through, we are living in a moment where there is so much awareness and so many resources to help us heal our psyche.
Just like your body has an inbuilt immune system that kicks in when your body is threatened with injury and disease, our psyche has an immune system. Neither is perfect, and neither always works as it should. But they both exist.
We are vulnerable in so many ways, and yet we also hold the capacity for healing and renewal in every cell of our body.
And yes, part of healing might be taking responsibility for our part in things by bringing awareness to our behaviors and motivations. We can empower ourselves by acknowledging where and how we can do things differently. You may want to make amends. But there is no healing in shaming ourselves for being vulnerable to someone’s bad behavior. Being vulnerable does not equate to doing anything wrong.
Finding ourselves in a wrong situation does not mean there is anything wrong with us.
There is no shame in being vulnerable. We all are.