Vulnerability

One of America's most beloved authors just told us her 'number one life hack' for lasting relationships

Dr. Brené Brown

Anybody who's been in — or out of — a relationship can tell you that they're full of miscommunications, misreadings, and other misunderstandings. 

You say one thing, they hear something else. Better yet, you project motivations onto them, drawing out conclusions about their behavior that they can't even understand.

Thankfully, "Daring Greatly" author Brené Brown — whose Ted Talk on vulnerability has over 21 million views— has been through it.

As she talks about in her new book about resilience, "Rising Strong, "a simple life hack can help anybody in relationship be better understood.

"If I could give men and women in relationship and leaders and parents one hack, I would give them, 'the story I'm making up,'" Brown told Tech Insider. "Basically, you're telling the other person your reading of the situation — and simultaneously admitting that you know it can't be 100% accurate."

It's a life-saver for a few reasons, she says: It's honest, it's transparent, and it's vulnerable.

According to Brown and the scores of interviews she did for "Daring Greatly" and "Rising Strong," vulnerability essentially provides the bandwidth for two people to relate and trust one another.

When you say "the story I'm making up," Brown says that it conveys "I want you to see me and understand me and hear me, and knowing what you really mean is more important to me than being right or self-protecting."

With those five words, you check the narrative in your head.

In "Rising Strong," Brown supplies a very vivid example of "the story I'm making up right now" in action.

One summer, she and her husband Steve took a long-awaited vacation with the kids in a lake in the Hill Country of Texas. The two of them go for a swim in the lake, and feeling taken with the deep joy of the moment, Brown says something very sweet — and very vulnerable — to her spouse.

"I'm so glad we decided to do this together," she says. "It's beautiful out here."

Her husband, she shares, is way better than her at putting himself out there, so she expected him to reply to her romantic bid with an equal force of affection.

But instead:

"Yeah, water's good," he replied.

She felt embarrassed, ashamed. And going against her conflict-oriented upbringing, she decided to make another bid for connection.

"This is so great," she said. "I love that we're doing this. I feel so close to you."

Again, deaf ears.

"Yep, good swim," he replied before swimming away.

Brown was nonplussed. This is "total horseshit," she remembers thinking. What's going on? I don't know if I'm supposed to feel humiliated or hostile.

Before they got out, she asked him to stop — saying that she kept trying to connect with him and he kept blowing her off.

Then, instead of being aggressive and self-protective, she opted for being kind. And she relied on a certain life hack she learned in her research.

"I feel like you're blowing me off," she said, "and the story I'm making up is either you looked at me while I was swimming and thought, Man, she's getting old. She can't even swim freestyle anymore. Or you saw me and thought, She sure as hell doesn't rock a Speedo like she did twenty-five years ago."

After a little time, Steve replied. He wasn't being distant to spite her; he said that he had been trying to fight off a panic attack the whole swim.

He explained that the night before, he had a dream where he was with their kids on a raft when a speedboat came screaming toward them, and he had to pull all the children into the water so they wouldn't get killed by the raging vessel. He didn't even know what his wife was saying to him while they swam; he was just trying to concentrate on his swimming and make it back to the dock.

Suddenly, it made sense to her: People on the lake do tend to get drunk on boats, and everybody who grows up around water hears about tragic boating accidents. And he felt like she would think less of him for not being able to prevent one.

After a little more conversation, it became clear to both of them: Brené was stuck in a "shame story" that she wasn't fit or pretty enough for Steve, and Steve was stuck in a "shame story" that he wasn't strong or capable enough for Brené.

But with making the leap of vulnerability symbolized in the story I'm making up, they were able to let go of the narrative they were telling themselves about the situation and actually see one another's perspective.

Five little words. Big difference.

Written by: Drake Baer of Tech Insider 

Dr. Brené Brown (born November 18, 1965) is a research Professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington Foundation – Brené Brown Endowed Chair at The Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past sixteen years studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy and is the author of four #1 New York Times bestsellers – The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, and Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and The Courage to Stand Alone. Brown's TED talk – The Power of Vulnerability – is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world with over 30 million views. Brené lives in Houston, Texas with her husband, Steve, and their children, Ellen and Charlie.

Love is Within Reach

By Dr. Sue Johnson

Marriage may be on the rise but that doesn’t mean we’re getting any better at relationships. Now research shows that love may be less of a mystery, a frenzy of sex and emotion and instead the result of behavior that we can apply logic to.

As a clinical psychologist and researcher for over 25 years, it’s become clear that two things make or break relationships: the ability to respond emotionally and offer support when it’s needed.

           

Numerous studies, including my own research on how couples successfully repair their love relationships, confirm that the ability to respond to a lover’s emotional signals builds secure and lasting bonds. These studies are part of the revolutionary new science that has, in the last 15 years, outlined the laws and logic of love. This science has progressed to the point where we cannot only help a couple move into satisfaction, but build the kind of secure connection where simply holding a partner’s hand calms your brain and lessens pain, even in the face of the threat of electric shock.

When logic and science show us the way, we can shape and heal romantic bonds. Using an intervention called emotionally focused therapy (EFT), we’ve found that 70 to 73% of couples can completely repair their relationship and 86% can make significant and lasting improvements to their bond. During EFT, we show couples how the habitual way they send out signals to their partner triggers wired-in threat responses, so that neither partner feels safe enough to reach for the other. We then help them identify their emotional needs for belonging and support, and communicate them in a way that pulls their partner close.

A typical couple I see are like Paul and Amy. Paul is a smart, focused man in his mid-forties who has made a fortune with his cutting edge computer company. He walks into my office with his wife, Amy, who has announced that, after 10 years and two kids, she is about to leave him. He tells me, “I can figure anything out, but I just don’t get why she is so angry with me. I do all the tasks and solve the problems around the house. But I never get it right. She is never happy with me. It’s like I have no tools—my head can’t figure this one out.”

I tell him. “You know how to focus and pay attention; you know how to put things together in a way that makes sense. It is just a question of changing the program a little.”  He smiles. Amy looks at me, doubt all over her face. But four months later, she too is smiling. What has Paul learned?

He learned that love is an exquisitely logical survival code designed to keep special others we can depend on close to us and that his intellectual explanations and emotional distancing were danger cues for his lonely wife. He learned to let his wife know when her criticism hurt rather than exiting into logic and distance. Reading the research of Nancy Eisenberger from UCLA helped him grasp how his brain coded rejection from his wife as a threat to survival, responding in the exact same way as to physical pain, cueing his freeze and flee response.

He discovered how to tune into the emotional channel, share his fears of rejection and explicitly ask for the reassurance he needed, and encourage his wife to do that same. We call this a Hold Me Tight conversation and across nine studies it consistently predicted successful relationship repair.

Paul had the usual reservations about asking for caring. He, like the rest of us had been taught that needing loving connection was somehow a weakness or a sign of immaturity. Research shows that those of us who can effectively turn to others for support are the most confident, resistant to stress, most able to risk, explore and reach career goals, and also the ones who have the most positive sense of self.  The new research on mirror neurons fascinated him and persuaded him that it was important to turn towards and look directly into Amy’s face to trigger these neurons in his brain and allow him to directly feel in his body the emotions he saw in her face. This way he could grasp her emotional reality, read her intentions, and move in harmony with her.

He told Amy that he shut down to deal with his sense of bewilderment about how to respond to her and that he needed her support. “And I get that I have to stay in the emotional channel and let you know I am there for you,” he began. “That is what matters in love. I don’t always have to have the answer or solve the problem. Just really being there and helping each other with our emotions is the solution.”

 Dr. Johnson’s new book is Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships

The Power of Authenticity to Create Intimacy

  Written by:

 John Amodeo, PhD  Author of Dancing with Fire: A Mindful Way to Loving Relationships

We long for acceptance, love, and connection. But oftentimes we don't know how to create it. We may push away the love we long for.

Love and intimacy don't blossom by trying to pull it toward us or manipulating people. Connections thrive as we create a climate that's conducive for them. Love and intimacy have a greater opportunity to grow as we cultivate a climate of authenticity.

Being authentic in relationships is easier said than done. It requires that we tend closely to our actual felt experience. Rather than defend and protect ourselves, it means finding the courage to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and then show that to a person we want to be close to.

Dr. Eugene Gendlin, whose research led to the innovative approach known as "Focusing," ( see http://www.holisticcounsel.com/focusing/ for more information) found that clients who made the most progress in psychotherapy (despite the orientation of the therapist) were those who were contacting and speaking from their actual felt experience. They paused, stammered, and groped for words or images to describe their deeper experience rather than just talking from their heads. Things shifted and opened up as they stayed with their authentic experience from moment to moment.

Apply this principle to relationships: When we share what we're experiencing with each other, intimacy is more likely to arise. Dr. Sue Johnson, the primary developer of Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples (EFT), invites couples to contact and share what they're really feeling and wanting -- and she helps clients find the words to convey this. Through the power of such authenticity, conflict often yields to deeper connections.

Couples may enter my office complaining that they're having a communication problem. Although there is often truth in this, more fundamentally, they are usually having a self-awareness problem. They are in touch with their anger, their blame, and their perceptions about their partner (they're selfish, insensitive, or bad), but they're not connected to the tender feelings and longings beneath their criticisms and accusations. And they're not skilled at communicating their authentic experience in a sensitive, respectful way.

Blaming and analyzing others pushes them away. It doesn’t create the safety necessary for deep communication. It covers up what they're actually experiencing, which is usually something more vulnerable, such as sadness, fear, or shame -- or a longing to connect in a deeper way. Finding the courage to contact and convey this deeper experience, perhaps with the help of a couples therapist when necessary, is a key to resolving conflicts and creating a climate for a richer, more vibrant intimacy.

There are layers to our authentic experience. Being authentic means taking the elevator down inside ourselves and noticing whatever we happen to be experiencing right now. It may change from moment to moment.

For example, we might be authentically feeling anger. As we stay gently present with that rather than act it out, it might shift into something else. We might notice sadness beneath the anger, or an unmet need for kindness and closeness. If we can be patient with ourselves -- allowing the time necessary to uncover what most authentically lives within us -- we can then share that, which might invite our partner toward us and create a richer, more fulfilling intimacy.

Feel free to forward this to anyone you think might be interested

Where does Love Go Wrong?

The Demon Dialogues That Can Wreck Your Relationship
By Dr. Sue Johnson,
Author of Hold Me Tight

Unhappy couples always tell me that they fight over money, the kids, or sex. They tell me that they cannot communicate and the solution is that their partner has to change.  “If Mary would just not get so emotional and listen to my arguments about our fiancés and the kids, we would get somewhere,” Brian tells me. “Well, if Brian would talk more and not just walk away, we wouldn’t fight. I think we are just growing apart here,” says Mary.

After 25 years of doing couple therapy and couple research studies, I know that both Mary and Tim are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Submerged below is the massive real issue: both partners feel emotionally disconnected.

They are watching their backs, feeling criticized, shut-out and alone. Underneath all the loud arguments and long silences, partners are asking each other the key questions in the drama of love: “Are you there for me? Do I and my feelings matter to you? Will you respond to me when I need you?”  The answers to these questions, questions that are so hard to ask and so hard to hear in the heat of a fight, make the difference between emotional safety and emotional peril and starvation.

We know from all the hundreds of studies on love that have emerged during the past decade that emotional responsiveness is what makes or breaks love relationships. Happy stable couples can quarrel and fight, but they also know how to tune into each other and restore emotional connection after a clash. In our studies we find that seven out of ten couples who receive Emotionally Focused Therapy or EFT can repair their relationship. They do this by finding a way out of emotional disconnection and back into the safe loving contact that builds trust. But why can’t we all do this, even without a therapist? What gets in our way?  The new science of love tells us.

Our loved one is our shelter in life. When this person is unavailable and unresponsive we are assailed by a tsunami of emotions — sadness, anger, hurt and above all, fear. This fear is wired in. Being able to rely on a loved one, to know that he or she will answer our call is our innate survival code. Research is clear, when we sense that a primary love relationship is threatened, we go into a primal panic.

There are only three ways to deal with our sense of impending loss and isolation. If we are in a happy basically secure union, we accept the need for emotional connection and speak those needs directly in a way that helps their partner respond lovingly. If however we are in a wobbly relationship and are not sure how to voice our need, we either angrily demand or try to push our partner into responding, or we shut down and move away to protect ourselves. No matter the exact words we use, what we are really saying is, “Notice me. Be with me. I need you.” Or, “I won’t let you hurt me. I will chill out, try to stay in control.”

If these strategies become front and center in a relationship, then we are liable to get stuck in what I call the Demon Dialogues. These dialogues can take over your relationship. They create more and more resentment, caution and distance until we reach a point where we feel the only solution is to give up and bail out. 

When folks caught in Demon Dialogues come in and ask, “Is there any hope for us?”  I tell them, “Sure there is. When we understand what the drama of love is all about, what our needs and fears are, we can help each other step out of these negative dialogues into positive loving conversations that bring us in to each other’s arms and safely home.

 

What is all this about love and romance anyway… and how does love work?

Dr. Sue Johnson says:

Love is not some kind of weird morass of sex and sentiment that comes and goes mysteriously.  It’s an ancient, wired-in survival code designed to keep those you can depend on close.   It’s the human survival strategy par excellence.  The bonds between parent and child and between adults are our safe haven in a potentially dangerous and random universe.  There are now hundreds of studies that show this and also tell us what the key elements in these bonds are what defines them, makes or breaks them.

This map shows us how to actually shape and create love to the point where trained guides, can now take a relationship that is going down in flames and show couples how to turn it around into - No, not just a comfy relationship - but a vibrant, close, loving bond. Moving out of despair and disconnection into the kinds of bonds we all dream about and long for.

For years we had studies showing that our way of working with couples shifted relationships into less conflict and more satisfaction.  But this is not the same as showing that it is possible to deliberately sculpt attachment - the special, deep emotional bond that our brain codes as crucial to survival.  This kind of bond predicts:

•         Strong sense of self
•         Good mental health
•         Resilience under stress
• 
  

It is now possible to deliberately isolate the key elements in love, such as emotional responsiveness, and in a short time to systematically guide two disconnected people to shape these elements so as to change the security of their attachment bond.

Terry and Tim (fictitious) came into our office talking about divorce. “He never talks” says Terry.  We have zero connection.  I don’t know why I stay.  I am lonely and mad all the time. “Yep, that is about right” replies Tim.  “All you do is complain and demand stuff from me and tell me how damned disappointing I am.  So I just shut down and turn you off. Just 8 weeks later, Tim and Terry see each other differently.  Their dance and the emotional music directing that dance has changed.  They can now see how they trigger fight and flight responses in each other, and how each of them gets stuck in defensives and distance.  After another few weeks or so, they start doing something incredible-they begin to build a loving, responsible bond. In just 20 weeks we didn't just change our problems. And we didn't just fall back in love, she says.  We went to a whole new level.  We never knew love could be like this.

Our study showed that, whether your secret insecurity is that you are anxious and always worried about being abandoned or dismissed, or that you are usually numbed out and defensively denying your need for closeness, this process that we call Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) works and moves you into new levels of emotional connection. The big shift is that people open up emotionally and become more attuned and emotionally responsive to each other's vulnerabilities and needs.  And we all know that this is what love is all about in the end.  It`s all about emotional presence, being there for each other, no matter what.

How Couples Counselling (EFT) can help You

Longing to have the close connection that you had in the early days of your relationship?

Couples start out loving, but when things go wrong, they very often end up angry, insecure, distant or numb.  All couples fight about money, sex, the kids, etc….all the little things that feel so stupid to argue about.  But there is more to it than these issues, something underlying that is hard to figure out or know how to fix.  What are these things “deep down” that are so hard to define?

We believe there is a common theme that lies beneath all relationships, struggles-the need to feel connected, safe and secure in the arms of your lover.

IN spite of loving one another, you and your partner can get caught up in unhealthy communication or behaviour or patterns to the point of feeling completely stuck in the same arguments time and time again.  Or perhaps you avoid difficult conversations because you are afraid of starting a fight.  Both patterns increase tension and conflict in your relationship.  As therapists, we find that most couples are trying to solve their problems without a safe, secure connection.  But it most often leads to more of that “dance” of negativity which has engulfed the two of them.

My training in Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples makes having an emotional safe environment a priority in my office.  Once you feel safe to open up to your partner, the cycle is broken and a new emotional connection emerges.  You will begin to feel the intimacy and trust grow as you speak about your deepest needs.

Regardless of the state of your relationship, EFT can help you break out of the old negative patterns for good.  It allows couples to move from painful disconnect to a new way of understanding themselves and each other- viewing your partner as a safe haven and a secure base from which to face the world!