Dove's Inner B.E.A.U.T.Y. Podcast

Embracing Exposure: How Vulnerability Builds Authentic Connections

• Demetria Nickens • Episode 24

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What Role Does Vulnerability Play In Building Authentic Connections? 

What happens when we tear down our walls and let others see the real us? Certified Mental Health First Aid Instructor Demetria Nickens tackles vulnerability's paradox: it terrifies us, yet it's essential for our wellbeing. Through honest conversation, she unpacks why we resist being seen and the steep price we pay for emotional isolation.

The conversation shifts to practical application in professional settings, where vulnerability takes different forms. Demetria shares her own powerful journey, revealing how carefully chosen vulnerability freed her from carrying childhood trauma alone. Her insights illuminate how we can strategically share parts of ourselves without surrendering our boundaries or tying our self-worth to others' judgments. The episode delivers a nuanced framework for connection: one where we can be seen without being consumed, where strategic openness creates healing rather than harm. Ready to transform your relationships through authentic connection? This conversation offers both the why and the how.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Dove's Inner Beauty Podcast, where we foster emotional awareness, one individual at a time. Leading the way is Demetria Nickens, a certified mental health first aid instructor and trauma recovery coach with over two decades of experience in fostering emotional awareness in others by engaging their mental health awareness in others by engaging their mental health.

Speaker 2:

Vulnerability is often seen as a weakness, but in reality, it's a powerful tool for building general relationships. How can embracing vulnerability help us connect more authentically with others, and what steps can we take to feel more comfortable showing our true selves? Welcome back everyone. This is Garfield Bone, co-host, slash producer. Back in the studio with the one and only Demetria Nickens. Demetria, how's it going?

Speaker 3:

Hey, it's going good, Going good. How are you?

Speaker 2:

I'm doing well, doing well, I'm blessed. It's going good, going good. How are you? I'm doing well, doing well, I'm blessed. So what role does vulnerability play in building authentic connections?

Speaker 3:

And how can we become more comfortable with it? Oh, always the good questions, I love it. So, when we think about vulnerability, it's important to really understand the definition of that word. Right, we think about this idea of being exposed, right? This idea that this exposure could possibly cause you harm.

Speaker 3:

When we consider exposing ourselves to others, we think about what is this person going to say? What are they going to think about me? What are they going to tell others? We have all these thoughts about what someone else is going to do, and so, at the end of the day, we worry whether or not can I be vulnerable with someone else? Can I trust them enough to say X, y, Z, right? And so when we think about vulnerability and connections with others, we have to really think about is this somebody that I want to be vulnerable with first? Right, if I expose myself to this individual, do I still feel a sense of safety after I've said what I need to say and that's really a biggest consideration there right, is that oftentimes we don't have this sense of safety with people, so we don't get too close, we don't let them get too close, right? I don't know what you're going to say to somebody else. So I'm not telling you nothing about my life, right? And so this idea that we have to decide if we want this person in our life, we have to decide how close we want this person to be in our life, right? And then we have to say, well, what am I willing to share, what am I not willing to share? Right, there are going to be things in your life that carry guilt, there are going to be things in your life that carry shame, and those things are going to stop you from being vulnerable with someone else because you don't want to be exposed, and so it's important that you consider who you're talking to. How does this connection and this person make you feel? Do you want this person to be in your life for a long period of time, or is it a short period of time? There's a lot of questions that you really need to ask yourself. If you're deciding to be vulnerable with someone Because you are essentially exposing yourself to that person, right, they could say or do anything. How grounded are you in you to be able to be okay with whatever they have to say, once you've said what you need to say? And so all of those things are things to really consider.

Speaker 3:

When you think about being vulnerable with somebody and because of all those things, people just choose not to do it. Right, they're like, no, I'm good, I want to do this, I'm going to keep it to myself, I'm not going to do it. But the problem with that is is that, as human connection is so important, right, being social with one another is an important life skill, right, right? And when we decide to just block everybody out, we're isolating ourselves. Right, we are not made for isolation. Right, we are made for connection, and so it is important that we think about that. When we decide to just isolate, that I'm going to block myself off from someone and I'm just going to not do this and I'm not not do that, who are you ever going to be vulnerable with? And when we decide that we're not going to be vulnerable with and when we decide that we're not going to be vulnerable with people, we're messing up this idea of connection with people. We're messing with our mental health. Right, there's going to be a decline when you lack interaction with other people.

Speaker 3:

Finding your mental health when you lack interaction with other people, right, and I'm not saying you have to tell everybody everything. I'm not saying that at all. I'm not saying you can't be guarded. I'm not saying you can't have boundaries. I'm saying you need all of those things. Right, you do have to think about all those things, but you don't want to be a silo, you don't want to just be you. You don't want to look around one day and realize that there's no one around you that you trust, that there's no one around you that you feel like you can talk to about your problems, that there's no one around you, that you feel a sense of safety with right, because that's a very dangerous space to be in. Right when you think about it with your mental health, because then you start to question your self-worth, you start to question who you are.

Speaker 3:

It leads to very dangerous roads, and so it's important that vulnerability in terms of embracing it right this idea of embracing vulnerability is really just more of what is it that you're so afraid of? Being able to understand what the fear is? Where's the fear in the exposure? There are things about my life that I just don't want people to know, but, at the end of the day, if I want people to understand why they should come see me as a coach, I've got to be somewhat vulnerable, vulnerability with someone that has trauma in their life can be difficult, because you don't feel a lack of safety with people automatically, right, because that safety was taken from you a long time ago and so you have to build these levels of safety back up in your life. And that starts with you, it starts with your comfortability, it starts with you knowing you enough to say I feel safe with this person, but not with this person. I feel safe giving this part of the story but not this part of the story, and being able to be okay, being able to say, well, whatever comes from that, I'm going to be okay with right, and that is part of it.

Speaker 3:

Being able to know yourself enough to know how you're going to feel if something comes out or something is known about you that you don't want others to know. Is there going to be shame? Are you going to isolate? Is your mental health going to decline? What does that look like when you are quote unquote exposed right, and only you can say that, because only you feel the things on the inside, only you hear the things that your inner critic is saying to you, right? Do you counter those things? Are you even working on countering those things that are being said, and so it's a sensitive topic.

Speaker 3:

But, at the end of the day, you have to make those choices for you, you know. Is it going to be isolation and withdrawal, which isn't going to help your mental health, or is it going to be okay? I'm going to make those choices for you, you know. Is it going to be isolation and withdrawal, which isn't going to help your mental health, or is it going to be OK? I'm going to make these decisions, to set these boundaries, to say this is what I'm OK with, this is what I'm not, this is who I'm OK with, this is who I'm not, and move forward and those decisions you have to make.

Speaker 2:

I feel like I'm being coached here. But To come at this from another angle, what does this look like in a professional setting?

Speaker 3:

So work, for instance. I love that you said that when you're in a work environment, you don't necessarily get to choose your coworkers. You have to work with them. Maybe you're in a team. There are things that you have to do. Maybe you want your team to go well and maybe they'll do workshops and team-building activities where they want you to tell something about you. We've all probably been through it. If you've ever worked in a professional environment, these things happen.

Speaker 3:

You have to decide what stories you're okay with telling. You have to say, okay, I could tell this quick, funny story about me in college getting drunk right, because everybody else can relate to that, right. But maybe I don't talk about something that's way more serious in my life, like the trauma that I had when I was in college. Maybe I don't talk about that, I'm gonna leave that alone. But I'm gonna talk about something more surface that everybody can relate to. And you're still being vulnerable because you're sharing a part of you that people could still judge you for. At the end of the day, it comes down to this idea of judgment and how much judgment you are okay with in someone else, but your personal self-worth, your personal self-esteem, has to remain solid whenever you get attacked from a judgment standpoint from other people. And so this is why people aren't vulnerable because of those judgment attacks. Right, nobody wants judgment attacks on them, but at the end of the day, people are going to be people, people are going to judge you right there, going to point figures, they're going to laugh, they're going to say the things they want to say. Or you create a connection with someone and they're like oh man, I had the same issue in college. Man, I drank way too much. And then the story gets shared back and forth and now you have something you can relate to with someone. Now you have someone that, oh man, we should go to lunch, we should talk more I didn't even realize that about you, right, and you can get these beautiful friendships out of it. Versus I'm scared, I'm not gonna say anything. So it's being able to know your story and say I'm willing to share this, but not at this, I'm not ready to talk about this shit.

Speaker 3:

Right, there was a time in life there was no way I was ever going to say that I was sexually abused as a child. Oh, my gosh, like I was never going to say that ever to anybody. It was going to stay with me forever inside Right, but I couldn't heal like that. I couldn't get the healing. I needed to keep that in. I needed to be free from that Right and so being vulnerable helped me to be free from that. Being able to say that out loud freed me from this pain that I was feeling about it Like it was my fault, it wasn't right. But those are things I had to learn. I didn't know that up front. Those are things I had to learn and so when you learn and you heal and you feel right, you can be more vulnerable with people because you know who you are, you are firm in your self-worth, you are firm in your self-esteem. So you can be vulnerable because no one else and their judgment is going to stop you from that.

Speaker 3:

So in professional environments, you just have to know what you're willing to share and what you're not. Don't go doing two truths and a lie and then it'd be something that you didn't want to share. If you're going to play those games right and work with people, you got to make sure it's things that you're willing to share and that if judgment comes at you, you're not going to start reacting to people Emotionally. You got to handle you. No one else is going to handle you. You have to handle you and you can't keep writing people off just because they quote unquote mishandled you.

Speaker 3:

Are you firm enough in yourself? Right, have you looked at yourself? Where is your self-worth? Where is your self-esteem? Where do those sit? Where do those lie? Right, and it cannot be in the thoughts of other people. Right, it cannot be in what other people think about you. It has to be what you think about, because when you're so more than yourself, it's the same lies in other people. You will continue to react negatively to all the judgment. You will continue to react in ways that don't help you. Right, know what you're willing to say and what you're not willing to say. Get healed. Say things that matter and help and connect right that help Get healed. Say things that matter and help and connect right that help you be more connective to folks instead of disconnected to folks.

Speaker 3:

Isolation is not a beautiful thing, right? Unless you're isolating to take care of you, you're isolating to say, no, I'm going to be mindful, I'm going to be present in this moment, right now. I need to handle me and my body. You're isolating for those reasons, not because everybody else in the world is mean to me. You're going to have to encounter people in this life and in this world and say how do you do that? How do you do that and step forward? How do you do that and stay you? How do you do that and be okay?

Speaker 2:

Set boundaries right, think through it and decide what you're going to do, what you're willing and what you're not Great stuff, and I guess these are things that you, as a coach, could provide tools to help people to be more vulnerable, to create meaningful relationships.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Love it. We'll catch you on the next episode. You have a fantastic rest of the day.

Speaker 3:

Thank you next episode.

Speaker 1:

You have a fantastic rest of the day, thank you. Thank you for tuning into the Dove's Inner Beauty podcast, where we foster emotional awareness, one individual at a time. For a complimentary consultation, visit dovesinnerbeautycom or call 336-298-6599. That's 336-298-6599. That's 336-298-6599.