Fear and Vulnerability

Have you ever sat next to someone, new or old and realized that you have nothing left to talk about? Everything that you can ask has already been asked and now you’re just sitting there waiting until someone picks up their phone and this wall of pseudo interest in one and other can end? Well, this used to happen to me all the time until I understood the real reason why: because I wasn’t being vulnerable.

In my last year of college, I took a class called “fracturing fictions of fear,” where I examined the relationship that fear has with vulnerability. As humans, we create these gates. Barriers that from the outside reflect an image. This image is our exterior, the characteristics that we want others to see and know us by. It’s our personal image. However, these gates hide our true self which usually is quite different. Very few people have access to the interior self that the gates keep shut. The only way to get in is through a key, which in this scenario is vulnerability. For someone to see past the exterior image they have to take part in an interpersonal exercise of vulnerability, can be a fear for many. I found this interplay of fear and vulnerability fascinating. While we see fear in many ways, a majority of the times we see it as crippling. I wondered if there are ways that fear can be motivating and if being vulnerable help counter those fears.

The questions I asked were:

There were three things that I learnt from this workshop:

I love these ten questions. There is a depth of understanding that you achieve with them that no amount of superficial time in a coffee shop can achieve. I hated being vulnerable but these questions help me challenge my own fears and generate this new dimension with which I see new people. This was a very basic breakdown of a much larger analysis which I’m happy to share with people. If there is anything, I want people to take from this is that: if you ask the right questions, even the most boring people become fascinating.

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