Is being vulnerable the same as being weak? Asking for help is the most vulnerable thing most of us ever do.
I recorded this twice. The first time I talked about everybody else's vulnerability and it was not honest, so I binned it. I need people. When my body goes into dysreflexia I need somebody there, and there is nothing optional about it. But there is a difference between being vulnerable and feeling vulnerable. When you ask, you can ask from fear, or you can ask from courage and wisdom at the same time. Same words. Completely different person saying them.
One thing to try: Next time you ask for help, notice which voice is asking. Then let a braver one ask instead.
In this episode
(1:17) The most vulnerable thing you can do is ask
(3:04) I recorded this once already and it was not honest
(4:13) What my body does, and who I need there
(5:15) Judging is not always unhealthy
(6:23) Get old enough and vulnerability finds you
(8:02) Being vulnerable is not the same as feeling it
(10:13) Asking from courage, not only from fear
(12:30) The mask, and who decided they were strong
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
Is being vulnerable the same as being weak?
I recorded this one twice. The first time I talked about everybody else's vulnerability, and when I listened back it was not honest, so I binned it.
Asking for help is the most vulnerable thing most of us ever do, and I do it every single morning.
The heart of it
Everybody is vulnerable. You were entirely reliant on somebody else to survive your first year, and you did not stop being reliant, you just got better at hiding it.
Being vulnerable and feeling vulnerable are two different things, and the difference is which other voice comes along with it.
I need people to dress me and shower me. I have autonomic dysreflexia, which means anything painful below my level of injury sends my blood pressure to something like 250 over 150 without me feeling the cause. That is stroke territory within ten or fifteen minutes. Last year, before a major operation, it was happening six or seven times a day. Now it is two or three times every couple of months.
There is nothing optional about needing somebody there for that.
Then there is the other sort. Speaking in the council chamber. Putting something on Facebook. My carers will take five hundred selfies to get one, because putting yourself out there is genuinely frightening.
And yes, we all judge. The spiritual line that we do not judge any more is rubbish. You judge whether somebody can babysit your child. That is judgement doing its job. The unhealthy version is only when you place yourself above them.
Here is the part I actually wanted to say. When I announced I was standing for Cornwall Council, I felt vulnerable, and I also felt fear, and I also felt courage and some wisdom. All at once. I had to ask people to deliver leaflets because I cannot, and asking terrified me. What if nobody steps forward.
Same words, completely different person saying them, depending on which voice is doing the asking.
Personal growth is the same. Saying teach me something new puts your beliefs up for scrutiny, and it is not pleasant at first. You are halfway up a mountain insisting there is no lake, and somebody slightly higher can see one.
One small thing to try
Next time you ask for help, notice which voice is asking. Then let a braver one ask instead.
Park the fear voice to one side for a moment. It is allowed to stay in the room. Then ask which other voices are there, because there are always more than the one that spoke first.
Most people can name about five or six emotions if you put them on the spot. There are considerably more than that in you at any moment.
Questions people ask
Will people take advantage if I am open about it?
Some might, and that is a real thing rather than a fear. It is why the courage voice matters as much as the honesty, and why you get to choose who and when.
Is vulnerability a strength then?
On its own it is neither. Brought along with courage and wisdom it becomes one, and that combination is the whole point of this episode.
Does it get easier?
The situations do not get less exposed. What changes is that you stop treating exposure as evidence that something has gone wrong.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
vulnerability · confidence · resilience
Read the transcript
I want to talk about vulnerability and more importantly,
how vulnerability is often seen as something that can be exploited.
But I want to look at it as something that when we mix it with
the other voices that we have different emotions and different
thoughts.
I want to, by the end of this podcast, I want to try to open your
thoughts to that.
We are all vulnerable.
Nobody is not vulnerable.
Even still now, even right now in your position, you are a vulnerable
person.
Instead of just looking at a certain group that are vulnerable.
And I want to try to embrace it as a positive, as something that
we can lean into and enjoy with courage and wisdom.
So I'm Stephen Webb.
This is Stillness in the Storms podcast, a podcast that I
talk about things that I've experienced in life that help, hopefully
helps you to get through the most difficult things in life.
And just before we go, just before we start, this podcast doesn't
have any adverts because of kind people like you that donate
a coffee every now and again.
And I always feel vulnerable whenever I say that, because I don't
like asking.
But I watched a wonderful video earlier today about vulnerability.
And one of the most vulnerable things you can do is ask for help.
And I'm asking for your help.
So if you can donate a coffee, if you can leave a review, that's
brilliant.
You are awesome.
But thank you for just being here.
And because of you guys, there's no adverts and we can get
on with the.
I was going to say meditation.
That's my other podcast, Inner Peace Meditations.
This one, Stillness in the Storms.
Yeah.
Anyway, let's get on with it.
I'm just talking now.
So vulnerability.
Look, we're all vulnerable.
And the first thing I want to convince you of in some small way,
that you're vulnerable to when you were born, just the same as I
was born and everybody else, we're vulnerable.
We're relying on others for every aspect of our life, from warmth
to feed to comfort, everything.
We would not be here today if it wasn't for somebody else.
Now, in that we may think, well, wait a minute, you know, I
didn't have such a great childhood.
My mom or dad weren't great to me and all that.
Well, whichever way we look at it, someone fed you, someone clothed
you, someone helped you in the first few months.
Later on, they might not have treated you so well, and it may not
have been perfect, but whichever way, someone must have
done it, we were vulnerable.
We were reliant on others.
And I think it doesn't.
The what we're vulnerable for Changes, we grow older.
So take me and I.
This is the second time I've recorded this podcast, and the first
time, when I was editing it through, I thought I just wasn't
being honest.
I was talking about everybody else's vulnerability, and I just
wasn't tapping into where I'm vulnerable.
And I want to share.
I'm paralyzed.
Paralyzed just below my chest.
My hands are paralyzed.
I'm vulnerable in so many aspects.
Like, I need to be dressed in the morning.
I need to be showered.
You know, so much of my life, I am vulnerable.
I suffer from autonomic dysreflexia, which is the condition
that anything happens below my level of injury and my blood pressure
can go sky high, like 250 over 150.
And yes, it can really go that high.
And you're only sometimes 10, 15 minutes away from, like, a stroke
or even worse.
And it can happen, and it does happen quite regularly.
You know, I was going through about last year before I had a major
operation where I was going dysreflexic several times a month,
sometimes six or seven times in a day.
It was really bad.
Now we've limited it down to only, you know, two or three times
every couple of months.
So it's a lot better now.
But I'm vulnerable.
I need people to help me in those situations.
And anybody responding injuries above a certain level suffers
from the same condition.
You can look it up online.
Autonomic dysreflexia.
But don't do it till we finish this podcast.
But that's one of the ways I'm vulnerable.
How else am I vulnerable?
You know, in the council, when I'm talking publicly, you know, I'm
putting it out there.
And if anything goes wrong, I'm open to judgment.
You know, we all judge each other.
We all do it.
You know, I know it's a nice spiritual thinking that we don't
judge.
I don't judge anymore.
Bollocks.
Bullshit.
We have to judge to some degree.
We're going down the street.
We have to judge whether that person's going to do something bad
to us or not.
We have to judge whether or not to allow someone to babysit our
child.
We have to judge someone to whether or not they're going to be
listen to us.
If we go to the doctors, we have to judge.
Judging is not necessarily unhealthy.
Unhealthy judging is when we put ourselves better than them and
we're not looking at it as to what we can get out of it.
And when I say get out of it.
You know, if I'm going to the doctor, I'm judging the doctor based
on, is he a real doctor, Do I know him?
Has he got a good reputation, is he part of a surgery, all of those
things.
So, yeah, I'm going there to get something out.
I want his skills, I need to be diagnosed.
So that's what I'm talking about when it comes down to judgment.
So we all judge.
We're all putting ourselves out.
When it comes to when we put ourselves out in public, when we
put ourselves on Facebook, when we put a picture up or anything
like that, we're vulnerable.
That's why we take, and I got friends and one of my carers, they'll
take like 500 selfies at different angles, just trying to
get it right because we're vulnerable and we put ourselves out
there and it's terrifying sometimes.
And there's so many things that we're vulnerable for.
And if you get the joy of getting old, you'll become more vulnerable
then when you need people to look after you and things like that.
So vulnerability is inevitable.
It's not something you can avoid.
It's not something that you can just suddenly go, oh, I'm strong,
I'm not vulnerable, I'm not.
There's no way I'm gonna.
Well, you know, something might happen to you in your life,
you might end up with an illness and all that that makes you
vulnerable.
Just because, you know, you might feel a bit masculine and strong
and strength wise and all that, it doesn't mean to say you're
not vulnerable in other ways.
When we lean into a relationship and when we say I love
you to somebody, that's a massive vulnerability.
You know, when you ask for help, that's a massive vulnerability.
And there's many things that we can't do.
Everything when we get in the car and drive down the road, we're
vulnerable.
Everybody else driving those cars and things.
I've just spent the best part of a month in September going around
Cornwall in my electric wheelchair raising money for the
Cornwall Ambulance.
Boy, did I feel vulnerable on those roads.
So if you think about in your life, when do you feel vulnerable?
Blots and all the times you have been and all the times you will
be in the future, but we can lean in with a bit of courage.
And vulnerability is just one voice when we're feeling vulnerable.
So moving from the actual being vulnerable to the feeling of
vulnerability.
And there is a difference.
It may sound nuanced at first, but it's not quite a massive Difference.
You know, I might be vulnerable when it comes to people
getting me out of bed or when it comes to my care, but do I always
feel vulnerable?
No.
Depends on the situation, depends on who it is, depends on
how comfortable I feel.
But also it depends on what voices along with.
And this is the point I want to get onto in this podcast.
What voices are you bringing along with your vulnerability?
Now, that's the good question.
So when I'm feeling vulnerable, I've also.
Normally I've got a fear voice, but I haven't very often got
the voice of courage and the voice of wisdom, and it's which voice
we allow to win.
I've done a podcast on this about two years ago, the 10,000 yous
in Buddhism or something like that is called.
And you know, we have literally all these voices within
us.
If someone asks us how we feel, we normally answer from one
voice.
But if we park that voice aside, what other voice is there?
So if you think back to the last time you were feeling really
vulnerable, when was the last time I felt really, really vulnerable,
but first morning, getting out of bed and things like that, as far
from the everyday things.
I think the last time I was feeling vulnerable, I'd done a video
on my Trust City Councillor page, not the Trur City Councillor
page, on my counselor page, and I was announcing that I'm standing
for Cornwall Council.
I felt really vulnerable, but also I felt the wisdom, the courage
voices there as well, and I felt the fear.
What if people judge me on it?
What if people put comments, they don't want me to do it, And
I was asking for help because I'm asking people to deliver leaflets
because I can't deliver leaflets, that terrifies me.
Asking for help because I'm putting myself there for people to
go, no, what if nobody steps forward?
What if nobody helps me?
How am I going to feel?
So, but when we bring it forward and go, do you know what
I'm asking from a place of vulnerability, that's okay.
I'm asking from a place of courage and braveness, I'm asking
from a place of wisdom, then we can start to see vulnerability
as a real strength.
It's just a single voice and all those other things that go with
it, you know, personal growth, that's really vulnerable.
You know, moving forward on the spiritual path, that's painful,
that hurts.
You know you're vulnerable when you look up and go, do you know
what?
Teach me something new.
Tell me something I don't know.
When you put a question out there and go, help Me, you know,
help me learn.
It's vulnerable because you're putting up your beliefs and your
opinions up for scrutiny and up for to be challenged.
It's not nice.
It doesn't feel nice.
Starts to feel nice over time because you learn more and you open
your vision, you open your horizon, you see more.
Say you're halfway up a mountain and you're having an argument
with someone and you're saying, no, look, all I can see is
those trees and the hut over there.
And someone slightly up the mountain is going, yeah, but beyond
that hut, there's like a nice lake.
And you go, no, there isn't no lake.
I'm telling you now, I'm right.
And the other person is going, well, I can see a lake.
And it's that vulnerability and that courage to go, okay, let
me go to where you are and let me have a look.
And then you look at it and go, wow, you're right.
And then you get to see a lake.
Like I'm using that as a metaphor.
But this is what vulnerability is really about.
Leaning in and being vulnerable.
And I think the word itself has so many connotations.
You know, if I said vulnerability to one person, they
go, you don't want to be vulnerable.
Someone will take advantage of that.
Someone likes the vulnerability in people and they
will literally take advantage and they will beat that person down
and they will do all these things to that person because they
see them as a vulnerable individual.
And in COVID 19, you know, very much the vulnerable people got
the jabs first.
And the vulnerable people had to wear masks and things like that.
And you had the strong, non vulnerable people.
You know, I don't need to wear a mask.
I don't need to this.
I'm the cutter self.
I'm strong.
And it's so complex.
It's so complex.
And I'm not doing that on a judgment point of view.
It's where we come from, you know.
And I think there's my thoughts this week on leaning into
vulnerability with wisdom and courage and what other voices can
you bring to it?
And I think that's what's really, really important.
It's which voices can you bring along to the vulnerability?
Which voices can you bring along with the fear?
It's no good just bringing along the fear voice and going, hey,
I'm frightened.
Whatever voice is there, okay, let me park the voice of fear aside.
Well, there's an opportunity to be courageous.
There's an opportunity to be brave.
There's an opportunity.
Why am I fearful?
And you can go through that dialogue and you'll find out that
fear is just one of the complex myriad of different emotions
we have at any given time.
You know, the average person can only name five or six emotions.
And if you asked me several years ago Name 30 emotions, I wouldn't
have a clue.
I'd stop about 6.
Happy, sad, angry, vulnerable, courageous, wise, brave.
You know, I'm struggling beyond seven or eight now, but there's
so many more.
Myriad of different subtle voices all within those, you know,
grief and, you know, joy.
Feeling, enlightened desires.
That's a feeling calm, feeling at peace, feeling at an equilibrium
where you're just equal with the world around you.
I think that's the right word.
Let me know in the comments or reviews or even if it's not.
But yeah, there's a myriad of all these different voices and complexities
that I think when we look at a single entity of an emotion or a
state of vulnerability, we don't do it justice.
So embrace your vulnerability and bring it along with the courage
and wisdom voice at the same time.
I don't know if this helps, but that's my podcast this week.
This is Stillness in the Storms.
I'm Stephen Werland.
You can also tune over to my other podcast, Inner Peace Meditations,
where I share all my meditations for free on the podcast.
And I'm going to be very vulnerable now and say, look, I don't
have adverts and that's why you have the opportunity to donate
a coffee, which helps keep these online, and it stops you having
to listen to 4 minutes every 10 minutes breaking out of the podcast.
So thank you, thank you for the reviews and, yeah, I love you.
