In each of the five different graduate schools I attended, I usually undernumbered women one to three, sometimes one to five. In the doctoral program I completed at ITP, I was one of four men in a class of 22.
The first year there I was pretty much treated as Vanilla Man by most of the women in the class. Near the end of that first year though, the class elected to have a Good at the End closing ritual. I agreed to make benches for people to sit on for the ceremony. The morning I showed up wearing my tool belt, I noticed the eye pupils of several female classmates open wider than they were the day before. Suddenly, I was no longer this milque-toasty, aspiring psychology student. I was now a Man – a Man with Tools and Skills. If this psychology thing didn’t work out, Vanilla Man had suddenly transformed into someone who could still provide food and shelter for a family.
This mostly unconscious evolutionary need for many women (but obviously not all women) to have men be strong, protective and competent lies at the root of much suffering in my experience. With so few suitable outlets already absent in the culture for men, young and old to express vulnerable, embodied feelings, there is an even greater need to be able to do that at home. Having unconscious needs orchestrate against such authentic emotional expression leaves us all in quandary wrapped inside a paradox enveloped in a dilemma. Not to mention leaving very little opportunity to confront, move through and drop the Dirty Dozen Defense Mechanisms.
Leaning into the Discomfort
Nevertheless, qualitative researcher-storyteller, Brené Brown is an advocate for “leaning into the discomfort” of our vulnerability, for vulnerabil-ity is essential for replicating one of the brain’s (and life’s) most fundamental processes: connection. And as Brené indicates the single most adverse experience that works in our lives and in the world to prevent connection … is shame. At its root, shame makes us feel unworthy of connection. The need to feel worthy of love and belonging has to begin at home, ideally in our family of origin. If, for whatever reason, it didn’t originate there, then it has to be designed and created in the homes we make away from home. Home needs to be a sanctuary for the vulnerable heart.
Without that sense of inherent worthiness, love and belonging, many of us will make decisions that do not ultimately serve our best interests, for actions rooted in fear and shame invariably end up breaking our hearts. The research evidence suggests that fear and shame literally disconnect critical neural connections in the brain. When you lose those connections, along with them you lose much of your capacity for being vulnerable. You lose the realization that a lot of what makes us vulnerable is also what makes us beautiful. But unfortunately, we’re mostly only beautiful to those who have suffered and worked through their own shame and fear and can authentically encounter that beauty.
Despising the Ill and Infirm
But intolerance of vulnerability isn’t solely the province of some negatively conditioned women. UCLA neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel makes the astonishing confession that much of his training in pediatric medicine made him learn to hate the people coming in to see him as patients, solely for their vulnerability. As a pediatric intern, faced with his own unbearable painful emotions, and having received zero training in how to skillfully and effectively manage them, the only option left to Dan was to shut them down. But of course, that’s impossible to do for very long, and so they would leak out energetically as disdain and contempt projected onto the weak and the helpless. And in my experience this emotional ignorance is rampant in allopathic medicine. It’s one reason why I religiously do my best to avoid hospitals and doctors.
Men need to be able to confess hard and soft truths to women, to doctors, to each other. And we need to be able to do it in ways that allow such tender feelings to be compassionately received, rather than negatively reacted to. Which is not easy in the least, since we can’t simply wake up in the morning and select the feelings we’re going to have arise during any day. The world doesn’t work that way; nor does our neurophysiology.
It doesn’t really take courage to be vulnerable, either. Rather, I think vulnerability and authenticity (along with forgiveness) are essentially by-products that result from healing, strengthening and reconnecting neural circuits that flow into and out of “the heart in the brain” – the anterior cingulate cortex. I’ve written about this area of the brain before: it’s the seat of compassion where mirror and spindle neurons make their home. As Andrew Newberg points out in How God Changes the Brain, it’s the juncture where thought marries feeling in the brain, and we would all be well served to passionately support that union.
Mark, Your authenticity combined with inhabiting your emotions/awareness fully in writing plumbs a depth rarely touched.
Just the other day I locked my keys in my boyfriend’s car (actually, the car locked its keys in itself), and while I was waiting for him to show up with a spare key, I waited at the gas station. One woman who showed up just got out of the hospital, claimed she had been bit by a dog on the inner thigh, was traumatized by the nurse who accused her of stealing used sponges from the treatment tray (in hospital). The young woman claimed the hospital wanted to release her in nightgown (she came in with); she was truly traumatized by the nurse, the lack of compassion, the rude accusations.
As Maria Rilke put it, “The difference between a Picasso and a Hitler is the presence of a benevolent witness.” I merely witnessed this young woman’s pain–she was able to cry (detox; tears contain more toxins than any other body fluid), she felt better and limped home in her donated free clothes and her dog bite.
When we are injured we AUTOmatically feel more vulnerable; it is at this time we need a benevolent witness most, and it is when we are injured or sick we are most likely to be exposed to the projections of and abused by the attitudes from those in the health services fields, whom Yung, understanding this dynamic, called, “ostensibly healthy people.”
Hi Sid. Thanks for this response. I can’t tell you how many times a day I find myself checking and discovering a less than compassionate response to other people lurking in my psyche. But I realize that compassion is a practice and that if I don’t buy into the illusion of separation – even if I have to pretend that another person is really some aspect of me projected outward – I am sometimes able to response with the kind of compassion and awareness I would like to have be shown to me. Congratulations on you being able to show it to that young dog-bite victim. At least she wasn’t victimized three times!
I realized long ago that revealing vulnerability was what made me fall in love with someone… not everyone is wired to respond to “big strong protector man”. There is an appeal in someone who is competent in what they do, but that can be in many “vanilla” fields!
Especially as a parent of a boy, I value the succinctness of your phrase “a sense of inherent worthiness, love and belonging,” – that is indeed, what I strive to create for my kid every day, and encourage in his friends. Especially in kids with physiological anxiety issues, that sense of worthiness is tough to nurture… you can’t just hand it to them, you have to create situations where they can earn it or win it.
I’ve read about neuropsychology for years, trying to find ways to apply it in real life, especially parenting a kiddo that has special needs with many friends who have social issues – it makes their encounters fraught with anxiety and supervising challenges (as well as shrieks of joy and quiet moments of satisfaction)… it’s reassuring to know that someone else thinks that even neurotypical teens shouldn’t be without supervision often, but I wish there were resources out there on how to incorporate neuropsych thoughts into daily situations, most of what I’ve read is at a higher macro level.
I will put a link to this on my post about having hard conversations with your parents as a caregiver, it’s good food for thought for parents of any age. http://www.silverintogold.niflindsay.com Thank you, Mark. Returning to lurking now!
Wonderful as always, Mark. I recall reading of Dan Seigal’s training in med school too…sort of shocking, but not at all shocking. I think you’re right, we long to see someone who can be strong, look to others for protection. I was raised around carpenters and builders, believe me, I know the power of a man who can build a house.
We can trap our Princes in towers comprised of their own observed strengths, but in the end those towers can and often do separate those royal men from themselves.
This is why I love old country songs. There’s nothing more appealing than seeing a strong may sing from the heart. My dad was the strongest man I have ever known, physically and emotionally…he was just a giant. He worked in construction. But he also used to sing the loudest at our rather quiet Catholic church, as a young girl this used to embarrass me. He did not seem to care that others around him were essentially not singing at all. I would see the other parish members looking at him out of the corner of their eyes and I thought, oh, man, he’s kinda out there. He also used to take my mother dancing every friday night, they loved to polka. He used to hold her around the waste and sing right to her face, in front of me. To me he was the perfect blend of emotion/strength. Then again, these were back in the days before hyperconsciousness and cynicism had blocked our ability as a culture to express our feelings. Now such behavior would be deemed sentimental and low-class.
Sometimes I think education, the acquisition of it, can inhibit the expression of a natural vulnerability. It’s funny to me how just now the innovators are coming to realize the “power of vulnerability”…uneducated people have known it’s power forever. Maybe now that our world feels out of control we are coming to see that separateness isn’t as useful as we thought. We are coming to see that we need each other to fix the mess. We need to adjust our internal stance to do this fixing. Thankfully we have scientists and researchers explaining to us how natural it is to feel our feelings, and how healthy it is for us to express them. Maybe with science say it’s good and OK to feel, the men will be able to relax and express who they really are once again. That would be so nice. It’s beautiful when men can sing.
Great article Mark! Thank you for sharing it with us!
hey mark, i really like your topic…it touches very close to home especially being in a new relationship and chosing to open my heart to love…..thank you…hope
Hi Mark,
The Romanian Cristi Puiu’s great film from 2005 “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”
shows the disdain and ignorance of doctors. You may cry watching it but is is worth it. Thank you for your strength and vulnerability in these posts.
Helene
Thank you so much Mark, you made my Sunday with doing chores so much more enjoyable visiting with Brene Brown and Dan Siegel!
Your newsletter is always inspiring me!
Given the evidence that correlates liberalism with more neural real-estate in Anterior Cingulate Cortex and conservatism with more volume in the Amygdala it suggests that the compassionate thing for compassionate people to do is realize that seemingly “selfish” people are actually physically/neurologically more scared than they are uncaring.
We could, as a society, if we bothered, certainly help develop the ACC in children by supporting parents to be attuned, resolve their own traumas, and be more widely socially supported—and then we would all reap the societal and personal benefits of living in kinder, safer and more fun times.
My take-away from your post: keep in mind that even, or perhaps especially, those who might seem, or hold themselves up as, “superior” in our current social structures (in terms of power, money, political influence) still might be better understood as terrified (and who then subsequently act in cruel and selfish ways, but can’t quite help it).
The last thing we want to do is make terrified selfishness our model of “success,” but neither do we want to criticize and attack the scared as if they are a-holes and could help it.
Thus it’s good to take another look at the billionaire as the paragon of “social loser” and the woman with the tool-belt and a truly kind smile or the guy in his cooking apron taking care of the kids with a compassionate heart and see these as our best friends who can help us heal and develop in all the right places, individually and as a group.
Our ultimate question then becomes, “Is someone kind/secure (or at least conscious and kindly insecure), or are they scared/insecure—needing help but ill-equipped to offer any real help, friendship or compassion to others?”
New metrics for a better world?
Mark: The older I get, the more vulnerable I am … perhaps that is because I am also leaning into authenticity, more and more these days. Thank you for a wonderful post.
Linda Gillman
It has also been my experience that people often mistake vulnerability with weakness. I think it takes great strength to be vulnerable, not only in a personal relationship but to be able to remain vulnerable in the world.
I think what Mark is saying about what women want is true and presents a conundrum for men, because we also want them to be ‘in touch with their feelings’ and ours. The etymology of ‘vulnerability’ is, indeed, woundability. ‘vul’ means wound in Latin. Hence, the word ‘vulva’ which apparently looked like a wound, or in wound care, an ‘avulsion’ is where the layers of the skin have torn off. So, I think that vulnerability and hurtability are the same thing. But perhaps, by the time we are feeling ‘vulnerable’ we are already hurting. And then our choice is whether or not to take the next step to risk communicating that to another. If we choose a trustworthy other, we are more likely to get the reception we hope for. But sometimes, outing our vulnerability to a group or a person is a way of practicing deep self-acceptance, in effect, saying “yes, this is true about me, I am human”. This can give permission for others to step into their vulnerability.
Thanks, Carolyn, for expanding on this notion of vulnerability. From a brain perspective, what causes profound disorganization is when vulnerability is met with invulnerability, or even worse: cruelty. This is one reason I am not a fan of kids being allowed to hang out with other kids unsupervised. They don’t have the life experience or the neural organization to be able to meet vulnerability with vulnerability, especially during The Testosterone Years.
Carolyn, I never knew the etymology of the word vulnerable. Fascinating! In addition to what you’re saying, at times I’ve also been able to be in touch w/ a part of me – my core, my essence, perhaps my soul? – that is not woundable. It seems sometimes that it’s my defenses that are being punctured/hurt instead of something more essential.
That is so true, about defenses being punctured. I like that. I, too, find a place where simply saying my vulnerable truth is not at all frightening because I am so much more able to tend to myself now (I’m 53).
Carolyn, I agree (I’m 56)
Lovely post.
A corollary: Relative shame, relative being the operative word here, and the attempted eradication of the mirror of that shame and vulnerability (societal injustice is a component of this) sometimes manifests in violence. James Gilligan wrote a wonderful book about it. I learned so much about shame and vulnerability from that book when I read it long ago.
One of my teachers once told me that people confuse vulnerability with hurt-ability.
~ Marla
Hi Marla,
Did that teacher suggest how to distinguish between the two and how to
lean into the one while remaining safe and secure in the face of the other?