Ever since Brené Brown disclosed her own vulnerability to the world, and began popularizing her research on vulnerability and shame, I have heard people talk about ‘building’ trust by encouraging vulnerability. There are two things really wrong with that course of action.
First of all, trust is not a building that can be assembled, plank by plank. Trust is a consequence of something else. Trust can enter when there is safety. When physical safety is not an issue, psychological safety is key. How do I know that an environment is psychologically safe? For me it means that I can say things without people rolling their eyes, interrupting me, or pretending I did not say anything worthy of attention. Stated more positively, I feel psychologically safe if people listen intently to what I say, ask follow up questions, acknowledge my contribution as worthy of attention, maybe even worthy of action – a contribution of consequence.
Secondly, being vulnerable is easy when you are the product of a trauma-free childhood. But how many people are? Millions of people have been raised in war zones, ripped from their mother’s arms, born and raised by people unfit to be parents, born drugged, abandoned or orphaned. A small group of those became resilient because of some positive force that appeared early in their life, but most, I suspect, were not. For them being vulnerable triggers behaviors anchored deep in early childhood memories of abuse, neglect, invisibility, lack of food, shelter, belonging and/or love.
Children who survive into childhood have learned to manage their fragility by developing ways of coping – the primordial defense mechanisms of all sentient beings: fight, flight, freeze or fawn (sometimes called appease). I learned these four f-words from Pete Walker who wrote a book about complex PTSD – I think the C of Complex could also be the C of Childhood, as these mechanisms get honed to perfection in childhood, and then carried, unawares, into adulthood.
I don’t insist on vulnerability anymore, and certainly not as a plank in the construction of trust. Vulnerability cannot be summoned. It can only emerge as the adult recognizes his or her childhood coping mechanisms, dares to experiment with new behaviors and can let go of those behaviors that are no longer relevant to physical safety, and may actually get in the way of psychological safety.