The Vulnerability Trap

And the vulnerable people vulnerable to it.

I get annoyed when people talk about the importance of being “vulnerable”. If you feel this is ignorant, I understand, but then you should be the type that can appreciate me making myself vulnerable to you by confessing my problem with vulnerability. Anyway, there are TED talks , with millions of views, suggesting basically that in order to connect with other people, you need to have the courage to be vulnerable around them. “Being willing to be seen” is a similar meme that captures this wisdom. Maybe it sounds nice on a certain level, to think everyone cares about your problems, you just need the courage to admit to them. To me the problem is that usually when people overtly try to be vulnerable because they think it is how to connect with people, it is weird and has the opposite effect.

If you are not in my camp, hopefully, you can at least admit there are vulnerabilities that even the most ardent vulnerability enthusiasts do not want to have. #vulnerabilty on Twitter is split between the TED talk type of sentiments discussed above, and tweets warning about software that could be potentially hacked. No one wants their phones to be vulnerable. That type of human connection we can all do without.

This is not particularly interesting in itself, there are a lot of things that are good in some circumstances and bad in others. What’s interesting to me is that when you try to pin down what vulnerability is good and what is bad, good vulnerability seems illusory to me.

You can see this with artists and entertainers. Take for example Billie Eilish.

One reviewer wrote of this particular performance:

“Dressed in a white, bejewelled trouser suit several sizes too big (as tends to be her wont), with long green nails and hair that fades from toxic-waste green to jet black, Eilish sung with a vulnerability that belied all that armour. “

I think it is easy to think that it really is vulnerability that allows a singer to connect with an audience, and an analagous thing runs through all interpersonal relationships. To me, there is a subtle trick going on that misleads people.

You can see it if you ask this question:

Isn’t a lot of what captivates people in this case just that she can pull it off at all? A teenager can walk on stage in, by her own admission, questionable hair and clothes, sit on a stool and whine softly under her breath for a few minutes, and it is somehow not tedious and terrible? Imagine plucking a random teen off the street, dressing them like that and having them sing the same song in a similar style. It would not work.

I suspect it’s not the vulnerability that people connect with, its the miraculous ability to sell it and make it appealing. Actually, what you are watching is ninja level confidence. This is what hordes of people will go to great lengths to hear, while pretty much everyone else who tries something like what Billie does can fuck off as far as they are concerned.

Billie Eilish can sing that song confidently because she has a very unique and subtle singing voice, and because she has had many hit songs and performed in front of large audiences and in front of cameras many times, despite her young age. Because of this and whatever other character traits, she shows no hint of wanting to run away, she seems fearless. It’s a thing she can do. Probably not a thing you can do.

What I’m saying is there is a difference between thinking “I just need the confidence to be vulnerable.” And “vulnerability takes a lot of confidence to pull off”.

The vulnerability that people connect with is really a high wire act where you show off your confidence, power, security, by having it shine through even while displaying vulnerability. This is why if a random person behind you in the grocery store starts telling you, unprompted, about all their personal problems, feelings, sorrows, you want to back away slowly, not buy their album.

So I’m not convinced it’s a useful concept for most situations. If you are very attached to the idea, I think there is a better way to frame vulnerability that doesn’t necessarily have much to do with other people. It has to do with the way you face your own experience. If there is a scary creature in your dream, face it, don’t run away. When encountering things in your waking life that are analagous to scary dream creatures, face them. If you must, tell your self that you are being “vulnerable” to them. “Letting yourself be seen” by them.

Some scary things involve relationships with other humans, some do not. There are of course many ways to face things, there are many ways to run from things. Pick whatever works for you. The more things you can face, the more confident and secure you are by definition.

Then, should you find yourself in a relationship, and someone treats you badly, instead of running desperately to get away from the feelings, drinking, eating, adopting another cat, etc., you can face it calmly and let it be your experience.

Should you have the experience of having a song that goes viral and you end up in a situation in which you have to go perform a single song on TV with many celebrities, music industry types, and critics in attendance, and its just you sitting on a stool with minimal accompaniment, you can face that experience as fearlessly as the supposedly “vulnerable” Billie Eilish.