Self-esteem and confidence are two essential drivers to face the challenges of daily life. However, there are times when we feel very uncertain about threatening phenomena, since we do not know the best way to respond to them. This is known as vulnerability and, although in today’s society being vulnerable is synonymous with weakness, sometimes it is necessary to value ourselves and accept our own emotions.
If you want to know more about this interesting topic, in this Psychology-Online article, we will tell you What is vulnerability and how to overcome it with very simple strategies that will help you regain your inner balance, as well as manage your uncertainties to improve your well-being.
What is emotional vulnerability in psychology
Emotional vulnerability in psychology is a state in which we feel exposed to annoying situations, painful or uncomfortable, so we think we can’t get over that moment. The most common thing is that we hide vulnerability for fear of being labeled as weak.
Etymologically, the word vulnerability comes from the Latin “vulneratio”, which means the quality of being hurt. Therefore, it is a term associated with susceptibility or fear of receiving emotional or physical injuries. Likewise, this state depends on different factors such as the social environment, age and even individual beliefs and values.
It is common for emotional vulnerability to cause a feeling of danger, alertness, inability and even shame, especially because society usually educates people to never show themselves vulnerable to others. However, this process can be essential to awaken resilience and cause favorable adaptations in people. It all depends on what is handled with it.
Consequences of emotional vulnerability
From a psychological point of view, emotional vulnerability provokes strong emotions and sensations like the following:
- .
- Sadness.
- Gonna.
- Frustration.
- Dejection.
- Feeling of defeat.
- .
- Inability to believe in one’s own abilities.
- Negative thoughts that prevent you from moving forward.
The detail is that denying those feelings will not make the problem go away. On the contrary, one of the consequences of emotional vulnerability is that if fear is not faced, one will never be able to have true emotional independence.
As hard as it may seem, facing inconveniences and fears will help you connect with positive thoughts and overcome emotional vulnerability.
How to overcome emotional vulnerability
If you ask yourself how to work on vulnerability, the main thing is to reduce risk or threatening factors as much as possible. Additionally, to overcome it you can apply the following strategies:
- Start knowing yourself better: will allow you to identify your insecurities and your best ones.
- Control your thinking: An effective way to do this is by practicing mindfulness or some other relaxation method that helps keep you focused on empowering and positive thoughts.
- Calmly analyze situations: Start by identifying what is the worst that can happen and imagine a feasible panorama of the situation and not one loaded with negativity and pessimism.
- Stop doing things to please others and without feeling guilty.
- Show yourself as you are: Sometimes the fear of authenticity makes us vulnerable due to the fear or prejudice of other people. Start being truly authentic no matter the consequences.
- Make your own decisions: use the great advantage of free will to decide what is best for your well-being.
- Don’t be so harsh when judging yourself: Instead, try to look for the cause why you are feeling the emotion and evaluate where you went wrong. Only then can you correct the errors so that they do not happen again.
- Learn to be more tolerant with your actions, fears and weaknesses and prevent rigidity in your decisions and thoughts from ruling your life. In this article, we show you.
When it comes to overcoming emotional vulnerability, you should not feel ashamed, quite the opposite. To the show your true personality You will be certain that those around you value you for who you are and not for what you appear. Also, remember that situations do not affect you because of what they are in themselves, but because of the attitudes you have towards them and because, perhaps, they do not apply in a crisis or conflict.
Also, keep in mind that the criticism you receive does not define your essence and that you can’t like everyone either. That doesn’t mean you’re worth less or that you don’t have the ability to achieve your goals. Therefore, when you learn to manage your vulnerabilities, you will realize that you are not guilty of feeling, but that you are a human being with emotions who deserves the best in this life.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
- Feito, L. (2007). Vulnerability. In Annals of the Navarra health system (Vol. 30, pp. 07-22). Government of Navarra. Health Department. https://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?pid=S1137-66272007000600002&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en
- Kottow, M. (2011). Notes on vulnerability. Redbioética/UNESCO Magazine, 2(4), 91-95. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=3989587