THE BIGGER PICTURE: Everyone feels vulnerable at some point. You can't be human, hopeful, and not. Although it's a feeling we'd much rather avoid, becoming vulnerable from time to time is an important step in reaching beyond our limits, developing a good quality of life, and ensuring our positive mental health.
Developing strength through vulnerability will probably be the single greatest thing we do to ensure our self-esteem.
I am struck by how many of us continuously feel like we are bad people somewhere deep down. When we feel vulnerable, we feel weak, 'less', and like we've been ripped open. Completely unrelated to anything that could be going on for us, we feel like no one could love us from this place. In fact, I'm sure that is how some define the experience of vulnerability: showing what we feel nobody would want to see, what we wouldn't want to see, what we are afraid of.
I wonder was it always like this, or was there a time when the general level of self-esteem was stronger such that we didn't feel fractured and laid bare whenever we showed each other our innermost feelings and thoughts? Perhaps there was a time when we didn't define vulnerability as a sense of showing our frailties, faults, and wrongdoings, but instead as an act of love for those around us and ourselves. It is certainly possible to see it that way.
In fact, to be vulnerable is the most honest, most human, most loveable place we could ever stand from. Its impact is much different to how it feels on the inside.
While we may feel weak and annihilated inside ourselves, the message is extremely hopeful on the outside. For one person to bring their guard down and share the struggle they feel within them opens up real possibilities for all those around.
It makes it safer for others to express themselves more genuinely. Most importantly, it gives hope that we may face a struggle - one that sits deeply within us and is difficult to gain access to - and that we may face it together.
I am not suggesting that we should make ourselves vulnerable at every turn, or that there is no intelligent need for caution. Our defences came into place to allow us to survive and no matter how much we may wish it, we do not currently live in a world where everyone is thinking and behaving fully connected to their humanity. However, we continue to be intelligent beings, and in those moments when our insight allows us to be freely ourselves, I am reminding us that profound things can happen.
We can open up our own doors to learning, growing and developing confidence.
We certainly learn from deeply moving moments, and from this learning comes growth.
However, it is interesting how self-assurance emerges when you feel you have none. Amid the trauma of all your exposed insecurities - noticing that you are surviving, realising that you are still loved - it is these experiences that build our strength and wisdom profoundly.
It is possible that the experience of vulnerability is simply that feeling of being unsure of one's self, of not knowing what answers are needed or where one is heading.
Perhaps vulnerability is about living in a moment - simply knowing that honesty and truth are integral to this point in time and that only by digging deeper will something worthwhile eventually emerge.
It is in this light that I can see vulnerability as a slightly less self-conscious form of bravery. While we may not have been aware of choosing to stand in this moment, the fact of standing here - of opening ourselves up wide to see deeply inside for some time without flinching - takes genuine courage. Thus, regardless of how awful it feels on the inside, vulnerability is a profoundly moving example of what it really means to be human. It is strength personified.
It might be a feeling that most of us run from, but to allow ourselves to hang in there when we have become vulnerable makes a big difference to the fullness of our lives and the quality of our mental health.
When we confront those places where we feel deeply inadequate, at fault, and unlovable, particularly when we are in the presence of someone whom we know loves us deeply, we gain the opportunity to grow some level of belief in ourselves. From this, our self-esteem truly strengthens a solid foundation of our experience of being loved.
We bare our souls, show our most difficult struggles, and emerge with a greater sense of our goodness.
More than that, we gain the new experience that we remain lovable and can survive even without a few of our defences.
Next time, we will have the strength to go deeper.
Shalini Sinha works as a life coach and counsellor and presents the intercultural programme Mono on RTÉ Television. She has a BA in comparative religion and anthropology and an MA in women's studies.