And What Else?

Vulnerability is Honesty in Action

• Wendy O'Beirne (The Completion Coach)

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What if avoiding our true desires is just another way of avoiding vulnerability; because we fear vulnerability as weakness?  When in reality if we shift and reframe vulnerabilty to honesty, we can see where we are kidding ourselves, being dishonest out loud and ultimately, sneakily lying to ourselves?

Discover the courage it takes to practice self-honesty and how emotional agility can pave the way for meaningful connections. We delve into the fears of rejection and conflict that drive our avoidance tendencies, leading to self-censorship and disconnection. Learn how honest communication, even when uncomfortable, serves as a catalyst for personal growth and stronger relationships. Reflect on your own challenges with honesty and be inspired to engage in open dialogues, despite uncertainties, for a more authentic and connected life.

If you've enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and subscribe! And if you want to learn more from me, come and say hello on Instagram @thecompletioncoach or via email at wendy@thecompletioncoach.co.uk or find out more about working with me on my website, thecompletioncoach.co.uk.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to, and what Else, the podcast with me, wendy O'Byrne, also known as the Completion Coach, and today we're gonna talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is avoidance, and we're gonna come at it from a different angle, as I would hope we always do, because that is the point of this podcast is to perhaps discuss things differently and to help you think a little bit differently about some of the issues that you continue to come up against in your own life that you want to handle differently. Something so many people struggle with is avoidance and avoiding doing what they really want to do, distracting themselves from what they really want, keeping themselves in loops from what they really want, keeping themselves in loops, keeping some behaviours going and on the surface, externally to other people, they might look like the least avoidant people on the planet for many reasons, but I'm just going to slow us down. When we are deeply in avoidance, when we are avoiding certain situations, avoiding certain rejections, avoiding certain connections, certain intimacy, the reality of what we are truly avoiding is ourselves. We are avoiding who we are underneath the face, the mask, the portrayal, the act that is us, because, by definition, the things that we are avoiding are the things that feel exposing, and so we will stay out of the exposure to stay somewhere that's comfortable, somewhere that's familiar, somewhere where the mask we have, the way that we are, the things that we do, is acceptable, is not questioned, is not in doubt, and that's holding back from your true feelings, your true thoughts, not rocking the boat. Actually, these people might seem direct or outspoken, but in reality they are in a way that's become really familiar to them. They're not in so many ways that they avoid in certain parts of their life or in certain tones of their life. They don't want to make things awkward.

Speaker 1:

There are people that just don't want to get things wrong, and the fear of getting things wrong creates a silence, and the silence is there to avoid causing discomfort for others. But in reality, what that silence creates is an internal discomfort, an internal discomfort of what I should have said, what I wanted to say, what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be, and instead the persona, the mask, the other part of you, took over and led, led the way. In reality, I'm bringing this up because one of the things I really wanted to talk about today was vulnerability, and what I'm going to do for this podcast is I'm going to say, if we scrapped the word vulnerability, which I think can often get saturated into just thinking about a sharing of, like, deep emotions, things that are going, something that I need you to know, that I'm worried about, that's not what vulnerability is in its entirety. So I'm going to rename vulnerability honesty, because if we dig into the topic where there's so much, so much being said about vulnerability, I often think it gets a little bit misunderstood. I think vulnerability can often seem to be the idea of weakness, opening ourselves up to potential hurt, exposing something that you know we think is a deep, dark secret. Vulnerability can often be seen just as what we are struggling with. Yes, all of that is true.

Speaker 1:

What I want to add the layer on is vulnerability. For me is honesty in action. So it's not necessarily about bearing the depths of your soul to anybody and everybody that will listen. It's not about here are my tears. I need to show you my tears. This is my vulnerability, but it's actually how do I hide from my own honesty?

Speaker 1:

Because if I ask any of you to just think about a vulnerable person, what image comes to mind? I know what instantly came into my mind when you think about a vulnerable person, what image comes to mind? What is your internal bias on a vulnerable person? Now, when I ask you to think about somebody, using the term that we see so often now vulnerability post, when that is put up, what are you expecting within that vulnerability? What are you expecting them to tell you after that moment? It's an easy picture to form of what we think a vulnerable person and therefore vulnerability means.

Speaker 1:

And there's a big reason why people who have avoidance tendencies hate the idea of vulnerability because they have a picture of a vulnerable person in their mind and they know what could happen to that vulnerable person. So I'm going to ask you to really sit with in the areas where I am avoidant, where do I struggle with honesty? In the areas that I have avoided, where have I struggled with my honesty? Dishonesty is with yourself and with others, and dishonesty is not just the kind that has to lead to the raw, deep, big conversations. It's also about that daily, real-time choices, honesty, thinking about those moments where you've hesitated to say the truth in meetings, in relationships with yourself, the part of you that's protected or shielded yourself from the fear of what you think might happen if you were honest In the areas that you are avoidant. What is your greatest fear if you were honest and the reality of almost everything is the idea of being rejected or accepted Will I be right or will I be wrong?

Speaker 1:

What I find super interesting is that the people who struggle with vulnerability the most think of themselves as strong. We'll use words like resilient a lot, which is why I have a pet hate around the word resilient. Resilient isn't withstanding storms and shit shows thrown at you. Resilient isn't gritting your teeth and getting through anything. Resilience shouldn't be about survival. So I always ask people to change the word resilient to agile, and when I ask them to change the word to agile, I'm like how agile are you? And these people are the most stuck, firm, least agile people that you can imagine emotionally. Because they can't go through their emotional agility. They are stuck. They are stuck in this idea of strong, withstanding the storm, shit being thrown at them, and so they will even have been told by people you're so strong, you're so strong they might even have real physical strength. They might come across as a person that has huge strength.

Speaker 1:

But I'm just going to say again the the opposite of vulnerability is not strength, it's often avoidance, it's often dishonesty. Ouch, there will be times when we refuse. Vulnerability, which we have replaced in this podcast with honesty, becomes avoidance and dishonesty. So what happens when we avoid honesty is we become quieter in certain areas about our true feelings and thoughts, mainly because we don't want to seem too much or difficult. We need to be easygoing, we need to be easy, and maybe we hold back in conversations because we doubt our opinions or we doubt that they will be accepted. We fear conflict and rejection.

Speaker 1:

So self-censorship becomes a habit, and the only thing that self-censorship truly does is start to create a distance between who you are and who people think you are, what you think and what you say. You know. It stops you asking questions, it stops you being curious. It keeps you really rigid. There's going to be a podcast about rigidity next, so I'm not going to keep digging into that. But what I am going to say is the more we do it, the more disconnected we feel. The more we do it, the more disconnected we feel, not just from yourself, your body. I'm going to talk about that in this podcast.

Speaker 1:

But these people are the logical. These people are the people that are intellectualizing their feelings, that are working through their feelings. Intellectually, they just don't want to feel them Disconnected from the body, which keeps you disconnected from yourself but also keeps a gap between you and other people. Because when you're that guarded of your emotions, when you are that guarded of the way that you portray yourself, the way that you are viewed, you portray yourself the way that you are viewed, the way that people see you then there's always going to be a gap, and that gap is your connection gap, self-connection, connection to others, and so the very thing that you're avoiding the rejection and the lack of acceptance is the very thing that you create, because people cannot deeply connect to you, no matter how hard they try. Those walls are up and in one way or another, no matter how vocal you are, how prominent you are, how visually seen you are, no matter how much you climb a ladder, no matter how well you do, there will be a huge part of you that is unseen, unheard and therefore undervalued. Unseen, unheard, therefore undervalued. So just take a moment with that, because there is where the main conflict tension comes from. What we crave is a connection and acceptance.

Speaker 1:

And in the way that we are censoring, the way that we are being dishonest, because honesty in certain situations, in certain places, especially with ourselves. In this, disconnect is creating avoidance patterns and that avoidance is actually creating internal mess, but it's also creating an external avoidance that feels messy and you don't want to go into the messy, so you will continue to avoid it. You would rather take the whole journey around avoidance island than go through it. So I'm also going to ask you what is your relationship with things being messy, unresolved, still in a pickle, but being talked about? How comfortable are you with conversations where you do not have the answer?

Speaker 1:

Now, the fear of that honesty, directly or indirectly, has been taught or shown to us in some way that showing emotion or being honest is either a sign of weakness or was an experience or situation where we felt judged, rejected, hurt. So there's been layers of that which have created the idea of protecting ourselves is by holding back parts of us. Add the layer of appearing like you have it all together the idea that you are strong, independent hashtag hyper independent and therefore self-reliant. I can do it. So I want you to reframe vulnerability. This isn't about having an emotional dump anywhere and everywhere. This isn't about just tears. It's not about just feeling like we can't or sharing something publicly. It can be far simpler than that, like how can I practice honesty and sometimes that's acknowledging that I'm overwhelmed, sometimes it's acknowledging I'm sad or can't do this, don't know and giving yourself the permission to feel what you're feeling and creating a bit of a habit there, as opposed to just gritting your teeth, getting on pushing, pushing, pushing.

Speaker 1:

What happens if you're messy and how can you get into a relationship with yourself, being okay with being a bit messier and, in this, even asking yourself am I being honest, does this feel honest? We hear all of these words vulnerability, being honest, does this feel honest? We hear all of these words vulnerability, imposter syndrome, authenticity. In reality, I want you to just take those words and think how much of this feels honest? Where am I being dishonest with myself? About situations, people, places, conversations, things? Where am I being dishonest with myself? And just keep practicing, not only finding the answers to that which we all tend to do, and go oh my god, it's this, this that I want you to then trust yourself, to do something with it.

Speaker 1:

Dishonesty and trust there's a big relationship, right? Take it to another level. Who do we not trust? When someone's dishonest and you find out the truth, how much trust do you have in them? How deeply connected do you feel when there is no trust? How deeply connected do you feel when there is no trust? Think about even the brands you buy from, where trust comes into it. Think about the people that you follow where trust comes into it. Think about the investment, of anything that you make that requires trust. Think about your friends, who you would trust with your valuables, with your secrets, with carrying out something they said they would do. Who do you trust? And then think about your relationship with self-trust.

Speaker 1:

And when you think about your relationship with self-trust, think about how honest am I with myself and how much do I trust myself to do things honestly for me? I'm going to bring you back into. This is not an all or nothing. This is not about all or nothing. This isn't I have to share everything at every moment, with everyone, at every level. It's not. There's always going to be different people with different levels of trust and different levels of honesty in different ways. What matters is they are true, they are true to you, and so vulnerability or honesty, it isn't once and done. It's a practice and it's a reinforcement of a habit and it's something that's prioritizing connection, something you're building, you know, and that will continue to build as you continue to grow, you continue to change and you continue to stay in a relationship of self-honesty.

Speaker 1:

The more self-honest you are, the more that you will be able to be more honest in conversations. The more you do things, the easier it is. So if you've been avoiding doing something that you've really wanted to do, if you've been avoiding doing something you think will make things awkward, if you haven't put your hand up for something that you really want, if you haven't put your hand up for something that you really want, if you're refusing to look at an area of your life that feels awkward and uncomfortable and like it's going to cause upset for other people, ask yourself there how can I be more honest, knowing that that honest communication, even when it causes upset, disruption, uncomfortableness or anything else how can it be done with the intention of things getting better, of change, rather than suppressing things to avoid conflict, and so the conflict stays inside of you. I want you to think about the gap. Where lies the gap to my deepest connections and where am I my most honest self An area no doubt you get things done really quite easily and where do I really struggle with honesty?

Speaker 1:

Where there is a gap between what I want and what I say I want, and where is that gap widening? Where am I avoiding honesty? And in that avoidance of that honesty, what am I creating? Any questions or anything you want to talk about after this? Please give me a shout on instagram, you can dm me or you can drop me an email, wendy, at the completion coachcouk, as always. If you want to forward this to someone you think it would help, I would love that, and if you want me to talk more on any subject, please just shout at me, sending you all my love and thank you for listening.