Therapy Session 14: Vulnerability and Change

I am convinced that I will leave every therapy session with a glazed over look as long as we are discussing interpersonal relationships. I am also pretty sure I have the stupidest look imaginable on my face while discussing this topic. Today’s session pretty much validated that for me.

“Are you ok?” was asked. “No, but I will be after I unbox this session.” All sessions are conversational, but with tough subject matter. Due to this, I feel as if we are going to be digging very deep for quite a while. I’m sure it will be extremely uncomfortable during these sessions, and more so at the unraveling of the sessions as I am sitting with what I unbox weekly.

All of these sessions are really about discussing, probing, revealing, and then taking all of that back home to unbox it. Then, I have to get my mind around how I move forward, learn, grow from what I’ve unboxed about myself and create actionable steps to move forward.

Change has been a focus for me this entire year and last. A lot of the changes were not voluntary changes, but more of a result of forced change. I talked a lot about that during my Session 13 post, last week.

I have always done well with change professionally. I’ve always done well in these situations because I can look at the challenge, focus on the outcome, and tackle it. I’ve never been quite as fortunate personally or with interpersonal relationships. I don’t know that you can view interpersonal relationships in the same way as professional relationships.

Today’s session was a bit of a continuation from the previous few sessions, which probed into past inter-personal relationships and dug a bit into how I showed up in those relationships. I have mostly shown up in a pretty one dimensional way with an end in mind for each relationship. Not that I was self-sabotaging. It was more like I was in it for as long as it lasted and had no issue with an inevitable end in mind.

So, the challenge is to discover why I showed up like this. The goal is to address the foundation of it and change the dynamic around that if the desire is to have something different is a thing. The process of doing this involves examining a lot of relationships starting at childhood to determine HOW much they influenced the dynamic of my adult relationships.

Relationships are complex because people are very multi-dimensional. Throw in a bit of childhood trauma, a non-traditional childhood and undesirable male patterns of behavior, well now you have a regular old shit show to unravel. All of this creates hurdles and challenges in being vulnerable to the degree that is needed in most deep and meaningful relationships.

Last week we discussed the importance of vulnerability in forming fullfilling and possibly long-lasting partnerships. Last week’s unboxing involved a bit of homework and self analyzation based on that homework. That was hard.

I had to watch, “Call to Courage” by Brene Brown on Netflix. I also watched “The Anatomy of Trust.” After watching both, I admit to feeling personally attacked on so many levels. One of the take-aways from the shows and the session that I am struggling with is the definition of vulnerability and trust.

🔸Vulnerability is having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome.
🔸Trust is choosing to make something important to you, vulnerable to the actions of someone else.

Both of those concepts are hard. This post is hard because it is me forcing a certain degree of vulnerability in revealing this much of myself. This is not the norm in these posts. I usually only focus on some aspects of the sessions without going too deep.

So, fast forward. How do you even tackle the concept of any of this in-depth? Where do you begin? Can it even be done? Well, this is where we ended, and these are the things that I will be unpacking this week and in weeks to come.

Another tough session. WHEW, but really more like DAMN, DAMN, DAMN, in my Florida Evans voice. [If you don’t know, Google it.]

I would love to know your thoughts on this session and previous sessions. Reach out, let’s chat on FB, IG, and Twitter . Until next time, Happy Healing.

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