The Price of Non-Vulnerability

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about something that you might not have ever, ever really thought about, but it's affecting you in all areas of your life, all relationships, how you show up in interacting with anyone else, and particularly in your confidence. And you might have heard this has gotten a lot of focus or press recently about vulnerability. In fact, Brene Brown, who is a very widespread author at this point, had a TED Talk called the Power of Vulnerability, which was really starting to challenge this idea that we need to hide everything, especially in business, but even in our personal relationships, and actually start to share more, be more open, be more vulnerable. And actually, this can bring good things to our lives. And, of course, we've known this for a long time at the center for Social Confidence. And I'm here actually today with one of my confidence coaches from the center for Social Confidence, a man who I deeply respect and love, his perspective and opinion, Ben Gibson. Ben, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you so much, Dr. Aziz. It was a pleasure to be on here with you. I love being able to talk to you anytime.

Me, too, man. And so this idea actually came from Ben because we were talking about this and, you know, we're encouraging our clients all the time to be more confident and helping them in the science and the practice of doing that. And one of the components is we got to be more authentic. We have to, you know, be more expressive, be more free, be less inhibited. And that involves being more vulnerable and not just sharing, everything's great, I got no issues. Get away from me. It's like to really connect with people, to really experience that love in our relationships, to really make that impact in our work, we need to be real. And part of being real is being vulnerable. Now, here's the thing. A lot of our clients, we talk about that. They're like, yeah, that sounds, I don't know, sounds risky, sounds dangerous. And there's sort of this focus on the price, the cost of being vulnerable. If I'm vulnerable, this will happen. That'll happen. And then Ben said to me, what about the price of non vulnerability? Which is the title of this episode. So, Ben, share more about that. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the price of non vulnerability.

Well, like you said, we focus so much on, okay, what's the price of vulnerability? And I think that we learned that there is a cost to that at some point early in our lives when we express ourselves authentically and then get made fun of by about it or get shamed for it or something along those lines. And then we begin to associate vulnerability with some loss, generally a loss of significance, a loss of esteem in other people's eyes or anything along those lines. But as Brene Brown says, vulnerability is the key to connection, vulnerability, being honest and open about who I am, what I want, what I like, what I need, what I don't like, just that open, authentic honesty, being open about my weaknesses. That openness and honesty is the only thing upon which we can build real, deep, lasting relationships where we experience love and connection.

And there's this fear that I think people have, which is if I open myself in that way, if I'm honest in that way, then people, it's not going to go well. I'm not going to get that connection. I think that's the story, and I think many people have the story. The way that I get connection and love is by being the best, by having all the solutions, by solving all my problems on my own, by being perfect in some shape or form, and then people will love me. And that doesn't. That's. That's like a fundamental error in our thinking and in our beliefs. Because actually what happens is people might admire someone who looks perfect. They might feel, even feel some draw to them. They want to be around them or they're. They want to emulate them in some way. But that's not actually deep love and connection. I don't really feel that, like a deep sense of love and connection and trust comes from being vulnerable. But let's talk a bit about what is. So people have this fear and so they're like, well, I don't want to get pain by being vulnerable, and so I'm going to be not vulnerable. But what they don't realize is how much pain we're accumulating by not being vulnerable.

Does anybody here have a relationship that they would like to deepen? Has anyone here experienced a time in their Life with somebody where they just were, like, missing, oh, I wish that we could just be a little bit more, like, connected in some way. I can guarantee you that. If you've experienced that, then. And if you experience that in the future, I recommend the use of vulnerability. Just expressing what you like about the person, expressing how you feel, expressing what you want, or expressing asking for help. We talked about that in a previous podcast, Aziz. That asking for help, that is a way to express vulnerability, and it is a way to create that connection with somebody else. And again, are you willing to go through your life and experience this lack of love and connection?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's such a powerful way to phrase it. Because these costs, the price of this is that one, I would say it's disconnection or loneliness, though, there's going to be a sense of heartache or loss or not being really fully in it. Even if you're around someone a lot, even if you really do like them or love them. Like this sense of union and communion and being with other humans. Like, I'm on this human journey with these other humans in my life and feeling like we're in this together, that's missing. And we're not vulnerable. And it's painful because we need that. It's a deep need. And we're think about any need that you have, like for food or for water. It's enough. Time goes by, you're not meeting that need, it's gonna be pretty painful. And this one is an emotional need. But it doesn't just stop with our emotions, right? Because then it becomes physical. And we'll actually experience physical problems as a result of that lack of connection. The other thing, though, that I found as a price for the. For non vulnerability is anxiety. And I've seen this in myself because there's this, you know the story, right, I was talking about earlier. I got to be significant enough. I got to be perfect, I got to be great. I got to have it all figured out. I got to have no problems. And then I'll get love and connection. And so there's this anxiety about ever not being significant, not having it all figured out, not being perfect. And what if people see that? And then I'm going to lose whatever love and connection I think I'm getting by being so perfect. And so there's this perpetual anxiety of I don't want to share things. But then here's the thing, though. Even though we don't want to share stuff and we don't want to be vulnerable, life's happening all around us. We're affected, we're experiencing all kinds of things. And now what we have to do is we have to hide it, you know, And I noticed this come up again for me as I was growing our team here. And I had, you know, so I am very authentic in my relationships, but something about I was in the role now of an employer. You know, it's different than working with people. Contract. It was like, this is my team. We have an office together. And I had this image, this story that's like, the boss has got to have his shit together. You know, he's got to be. It's okay to be vulnerable some things, but not about like anxiety or something like that. Because this is the story. If the boss is anxious, then everyone else is like, what do we do? You know, it's all going to fall apart. And so I noticed that creep up is like, okay, when I get into the office, I got to like hide everything. And it wasn't fully conscious. This was just in my. I felt it because I felt anxious going in when I was going to interact with my team. And I noticed that pretty early on I was like, this is. This is ridiculous. And four, fortunately, I've had enough experiences, hundreds or if not thousands at this point of choosing to be vulnerable. Because I know even though it's uncomfortable, freaking every time it's uncomfortable, it will blossom into something beautiful. Just like a workout might be uncomfortable or a cold shower might be uncomfortable, but beautiful things come from it. So I remember I came in there, I was talking to the core team, and I was just like, all right, I'm so anxious right now. I just have to share, like, this is where I'm at and this is what's happening for me. And all of a sudden that anxiety dissolved because it was about this fear of being imperfect. And now I have a practice with team, with all my relationships, to call myself out to share what's happening with me in that moment, you know, and if there's certain boundaries around that, like with my kids or something, I might not share everything, you know, as age appropriate or what I want to share with them, or there's some consciousness around it, but really sharing. And even with my kids, you know, I grew up in a household that was very non vulnerable. And so we didn't share. And so with my kids, I'll even say, like, I'm sad right now or I'm feeling anxious, right? I'm feeling afraid. I didn't say that to my kids. I'm feeling Afraid right now. And it's funny because grown up fears are always so kind of ridiculous in a lot of ways, right? It's not like I'm afraid of falling. I'm afraid of that, you know, car hitting me. It's like, what do you. So my kids will say, like, I'm like. Because they'll see what's happening. What's happening with, you know, be like, I feel. I feel stressed. Which is, you know, as we know the achiever word for. For fear. So I'll just call it out and say, oh, I'm feeling some fear right now. And then my son Zaim will be like, what are you afraid of? And I'll have to laugh because I'll be like, I guess something not going the way that I want it to in the business, you know, it's like. It's just. I kind of have to laugh at that fear. It's like, oh, wow, sorry, dad.

I don't relate.

Right. It's like, that's weird, you know? Or even sometimes he does say, that's weird. And when I laughed, I was like, yeah, that is kind of weird. I don't know why that's funny. So there's so many places we can train ourselves to do that, but if we don't, it's loneliness or separation. And anxiety was a big one for me.

Aziz, can I ask you a question?

Please.

How does your team react to you when you express your fears or your emotional state vulnerably? Do they look down upon you and you lose all credibility? And it's like, what am I doing with this guy here? He does not run a business at all. What is their reaction to that?

I love it. They shamed me and laughed at me. No, no, they. I've had this experience. That's why I've done it thousands of times, is I can feel people liking me more and being more drawn towards me. And I actually use this as a tool in the live events. I intentionally share very vulnerably at my live events. And I can feel the energy of people. They're like. They move towards me physically or just emotionally. Like, they, like there's this connection that's formed. And that was exactly the same thing that happened with them. Because here's the thing. Deep down, we all have human emotions, and so someone else is sharing. They're scared or they're frustrated or they're sad or something. We inside like, oh, I feel those things too, at different times. So all of a sudden, we're in it together. And, yeah, and then I've just keep a practice of doing that. There's one thing I will say though. I think about vulnerability and I want to credit Candace, my wife, for this because she's a master communicator. And sometimes we think so. I think vulnerability is sharing the truth about what's happening inside of me. And sometimes we can be really distorted in our heads about what's happening. So let me give an example. Let's say sharing something with the team to come in to, especially if you're in a leadership position or with my kids or something, to come in and be like the team. Like, guys, I don't know what the hell's going on. Like the business is falling apart. I'm so scared. Like I guess that's, that's vulnerable. But to me it's like it's not true because it's not accurate. Like it's sort of this, like this is dramatized in a way. And I found that with sharing we want to get really like what's happening right now. It's like, oh, I'm afraid. What am I afraid of? I'm afraid of increased expenses and you know, now I feel a pressure for growth that I imagine I must be the one to make happen as opposed to us as the team. Right. So do you see how sharing that second thing is way more. It's more vulnerable but it's also more likely to bring like the response of connection that we want as opposed to spreading fear or negativity or something like that. Because it's more accurate, it's more clear in our expression of what's truly seeing clearly what's truly happening.

And in one way that the over the top emotional, excited expression, it's almost like I'm still grasping for some significance. I'm trying to convince other people right now.

Now it's the significance that it's so terrible and I'm. Yeah. And handling so much more than everyone else.

And the second one is just like, it's just brutal authenticity. It's like this is, this is how I feel right now. And you don't have to buy into it. You don't have to believe me. You don't have. It's not requiring or demanding anything from anyone else. It's just simple vulnerability and just putting it out there and not even requiring anybody to pay attention to it.

Yeah, yeah, that's such a great point. Because I feel like we have, I have this because of the training of non vulnerability from childhood or just conditioning in society there. I imagine that that at the moment of revelation of this flaw or weakness or whatever, quote, quote, unquote weakness that, you know, the record player is going to get pulled off the needles get pulled off the record player, like, and everyone's going to be like, you know, and. Yeah. And then it turns out that what he said. Yes, right. He's terrible. And then the reality is it's just part of a sentence in whatever I'm saying and people don't really seem to react much at all. I mean, other than that I can feel people are more connected with me and I feel more connected with others, but it's like not that big of a deal. And this is the kind of thing that you have to do. You have to do it to experience it, to really get what I'm saying here. But when you do that, and all of a sudden it's so profoundly liberating because you're like, oh, it's almost like saying it and then like covering my ears and closing my eyes and waiting for like the bomb to explode. And then like, nothing happened. Open my eyes, open my ear, everyone's still there. Oh, okay, all right, all right. I can be me.

And that feeling of, like, there's that feeling of peace and fulfillment in that moment after I go through that, you know, great risk of losing all of my friends and realizing, oh, I didn't lose all my friends, actually got deeper friendships. That switch is so awesome. It's so exhausting to maintain an inauthentic, hard shelled facade. It's exhausting to try to prove to everyone how perfect I am. But it is deeply peaceful and fulfilling to be truthfully, openly vulnerable. That authentic vulnerability, first with myself and then with others.

Yeah. And the. A very important thing to see about this, which is what you were sharing with me before we started this episode. Ben was, I think, for people to understand what they're going for, what they're trying to get, what need they're trying to meet. And you know, we talked about this in a previous episode, but the six human needs for that Tony Robbins talks about. But I don't want to go into all of them. I just want to cover two right now, which is significance and love or love and connection. And the difference between love and connection is just really depth and intensity. So connection is lower risk. You know, acquaintance as more, you know, work colleague, a friend, stranger even. And then love is like, there's more invested in the relationship. Like you really. You know, I think what deepens it from connection to love is actually vulnerability over time and shared Experience over time. And so in the six human needs.

Those are clumped together as one need that.

Like love. Yeah, love slash connection. Exactly. So we have love slash connection and then significance. And I think this whole thing really plays out with vulnerability or non vulnerability in that when we're being non vulnerable, we're prioritizing this image that you talked about, this false, exhausting to uphold image, which is like, I'm going to focus on being significant, being special, being better than being number one, being good enough, really. And that's what I'm going to prioritize. And so when we're being non vulnerable, we're prioritizing significance. And we suffer when we prioritize. I know this, I lived this for so many years. And it's just, you know, suffering on, on many, many levels, no matter how much success we get.

And that significance is, is so shallow. I never get that deep, like a significant relationship with somebody. I, if I never feel like I really matter or am deeply connected with another person, if I try to uphold that facade of I don't need anybody, I'm, you know, I don't have any problems because then you look like you're not a human. Everyone experiences these, these fears, these anxieties. And when I vulnerably express them, then I, I feel human to other people. They're like, oh, he's like me. She's like, I am. But when I withhold that and never express that, and it's like, who is this weird alien that I can't relate to? And you, it becomes this. I mean, even if you're capable of maintaining some, like, upper hand, people look up to you for some reason because you're impressive. Even if you're able to accomplish that, it is this distant type of significance.

Yeah.

And it's never real, it's never satisfying, it's never grounded, it never has a foundation. You're always in fear of losing it. And that's exhausting. When you're like, hey, this is who I am right now, Take it or leave it. Then you experience a different kind of significance which really can't be taken away from you. Some people might not like it, but the people who like it, that they are people who you want to spend time with, they will love you for who you really are rather than for who you aren't.

Yeah. I just had a insight as you were sharing that when you said, you know, if you aren't, if you don't open up, you're not vulnerable, then you'll never have a Significant relationship. And as an interesting. Made me think about the word right. Because signif, it's like we're going for significance in these ways of trying to earn the most or be the best or be impressive. And we want to feel like we matter.

Yes.

But the great kind of irony of the human game is that pursuing that as a primary thing in life, no matter what you get, it feels like it doesn't matter. It feels empty. Empty and hollow. And then, and yet if you're vulnerable and you really connect deeply with others and you experience that love that matters, that is significant more than anything else. And everyone that you know, as people approach their death and you know, almost universally across near death experiences, when people come back, they come back and they say the most important thing in life, love and connection, that's what matters. That's what's meaningful, that's what's significant. You know, it's just kind of funny to see that misguided pursuit that we can get sucked into. Yeah man, this is fun.

So never make your significance based on something that could be taken away from you. Because then you're always live in fear that it will be taken from you. But make your significance based on what can never be taken from you, who you are. And then you will be stable and be able to manage the storms of life in a grounded, peaceful way.

Yeah, I love that. I love. That's a very powerful suggestion to really investigate where are we getting that from? And how do we make that internal, stable and permanent, beautiful. In fact, let's talk about how to do that now with your action step. Time for action. Action, action. So your action step for today is going to be to put this into practice and to find an opportunity to reveal, to share. And it could be, look, there's no more is not better. You don't want to ignore, just smash through your own body signals or your own intuition or yourself. Like really tune in. More isn't better, it's the act of doing it. So even if it's small, even if you're sharing a little bit more with a colleague, a little bit more with a friend, a little bit more with a lover or a date or something like that, just being a little more, you just think 5% because then it's going to bypass some of those fears and filters and just, you're just going to be able to do it. And then once you get a taste though, and what I really want you to do with this action step though is not just do it, but pay attention, pay attention before if there's any story about what's going to happen, a prediction, and think of this as a hypothesis. And you're just a scientist and you're just studying, you know, human sociology and relationships and vulnerability. So then you express or be a little more vulnerable in some way, and then pay attention to what actually happens. And notice your goal here is to see clearly, not to go into some. You know, they look to the left and you're like, aha, I knew it. They hate me. You know, where you're just kind of projecting this old story. Become open to really seeing the truth and seeing what really happens. And notice, do people move towards me? Do they ask me more questions? Do they say, oh, I appreciate you sharing that with me, and then come back and talk to me later that day about something else. But that's a new behavior. Like, they're moving towards me now. So just really study what happens and keep doing this. Of course, your action steps to do this once. But if you really want to transform your life, make this a practice and do this regularly. So that brings us to the end of our episode today, Ben. Man, I learned something even in this recording. Every time I talk with you, and I know our listeners do as well. So thank you so much for being here. And by the way, Ben is a confidence coach on our team here at the center for Social Confidence. He works with clients one on one and is extraordinary. And his depth and capacity, we are just scratching the surface here of Ben's wisdom and heart. So, Ben, as always, thank you so much.

It is always such a joy and an honor. Dr. Aziz, thank you.

Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free vlogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.

Peak state.

Peak state. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

So happy to be here with you, Dr. Z.

Janelle is editing our podcast these days. She might keep that in, I don't know. Or put it at the end of the episode. All right, go.