Believe it or not, there is some confusion that abounds in our worlds as to those two choices. Vulnerability or Victim. For a great many, it is easy to confuse when you are being vulnerable with feeling the victim. After all, you are exposing your soft side, that’s the nature of vulnerability. I recently had to deal with just such a situation. I struggled to admit something really upset me, got to me, caused me a fair amount of pain.
Someone I trusted did not return that trust, someone I had extended loyalty to at some cost to myself, did not return that loyalty. It hurt. Here’s the dilemma…it’s easy to confuse vulnerability with weakness if you don’t take time to really understand what’s going on emotionally. Depending on your heart and head type, you have different ways of dealing with life that are specific to your programming.
After I stewed about the situation for a while, you know the place, arguing the battle in your head, feeling self-righteously indignant, I was ready for a shift. I’m a Water Heart and that means lessons in one to one empowerment. For that I called a most trusted friend. To her, I revealed the truth about what I was feeling. I chose carefully knowing this person to be a wise and generous soul who could see the big picture. Water Hearts don’t like battle, so I wanted someone who wouldn’t suit up and sling arrows at the person who participated in the crisis.
After all, I wanted to work on ME, not try to rewrite what had already happened. The goal was not to focus on what someone else did to cause me pain. I wanted to know, what was my take away from all this? If it is in my life, I have something to learn from it. This is the way to move out of the victim seat and into the powerful place of vulnerability.
Well I chose the perfect person because very quickly we identified the place where I felt ‘weak’ and looked into the whole story I had going. Whenever someone triggers us, it’s usually 10% about that person and 90% life long history.
Victim means we feel that power has somehow been taken away from us (or you never felt you had it) and we cannot make our own choice. My feeling like I was weak or foolish because I trusted someone who let me down and hurt me was heading down a victim path and I wasn’t interested in the view in this direction.
Here was my catch – when I refuse to open up, to let myself feel because I don’t want someone to have power over me, I give my power away! I slide a whole lot closer to being victim when I let any0ne cause me to surrender my own range of emotions.
Feelings are our strength. Our heart’s have the big electromagnetic generator in our bodies, NOT our minds. So when we allow ourselves to feel – we tap into the power we have on hand, or should I say heart. Most of us have a really hard time trusting that, I know I took a short step or two down the victim path before I got to vulnerability.
Following that insightful author and comic (she doesn’t call herself comic, but I do) Brene, Brown, I went for sharing the feelings with a friend who could hear and see my whole Truth. I chose to show myself, my wounded story and my shame at being hurt and disappointed.
Within a couple hours I started feeling stronger, clearer and better able to handle what comes next. It’s incredible how powerful seeing yourself in your entirety, including the whimpering moments and accepting it all as true and okay can be. Hurting doesn’t make you a victim, shutting the world out, shaming yourself or shutting emotion down does!
I chose to take care of me, including letting myself have a good cry. That’s vulnerable and the choice was always mine. I couldn’t be victimized because I allowed my range of emotion, exposed them and trusted again, a better choice of friends this time… which improved my trust in me. Reminded me I make good choices, too, along with some not so stellar ones. Vulnerability requires strength, backbone even. It’s the farthest thing from victim you can get. But boy does the brain like to dance with fuzzy logic and confuse us when it can.
For those of you who can relate and want some support around this, we have the Love, Relationships and Intimacy sessions at the end of the month with two different options. Find out what your Love Style is, specific to you as your hands reveal and how to deal with conflict resolution according to YOUR STYLE. Saturday June 28th from 1-4pm a small group of people meet in my house to get to the Truth about their relationship patterns and how to work with them.
For example, Earth Hearts require alone time before they can confront an emotional problem and then you have to move slowly through the issue in a particular way. If you also have an Earth head, it goes doubly that you are a Turtle when it comes to conflict!
Participants in either phone or in-person class walk away with a guide so you know how to work your particular combination of heart and head when it comes to relationships. What’s it worth to rework conflict in your life with a solution tailor made for you? There are only a few seats left for my in-person workshop in West Hollywood CA Saturday June 28th from 1-4pm. I can only accommodate a small group of people so… Grab yours HERE. Address and details sent upon registration.
Or if you want to phone in for support, we have two nights June 30th and July 1st from 6:30-7:45pm to dig deeper into your Love Style as shown by your hand and what your strategy is for reducing conflict and kicking in more chemistry of the right kind! You send in pictures of your hands before class to get the formula for you. Dialing Down the conflicts – Get That HERE.
Wherever you are dealing with conflict (Mars having just squared Pluto, hello Iraq) know this, you are stronger when you allow yourself to feel. Then you can decide how best to apply them – You are worth your time! It’s a powerful Truth that can set you free. I know you know it, I’m really here to remind you what it looks like in action.
All the best,
Lisa Greenfield
