Summer of Vulnerability


“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong (wo)man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the (wo)man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. . .”
-Theodore Roosevelt (as quoted often by Brene Brown, edits are my own)

Vulnerability. F-cking vulnerability. I’ve spent 99% of my life thinking it was a weakness, running from it. Never show your hand; always keep your motivations and next move to yourself. Leave your personal life at home securely tucked away. Never let emotions get the best of you — no one wants to see your tears, your anger, or your frustration (especially if you’re a woman). Stoicism is synonymous with professionalism. These are the world’s messages I have so strongly internalized they have become my own custom-designed-to-my-life quagmire.
Shame. I’ve learned to distinguish shame from guilt. Guilt is when we feel badly about something we’ve done or not done; shame is when we feel we ARE bad because of our actions. Guilt can be constructive in healthy measures, while shame is decidedly never healthy in any quantity. The stigmas surrounding mental health in our society are all shame inducing.

I’m a crier. What I mean by this is when I am pushed to significant levels of anger or intense sudden emotions, my body physiologically responds with tears, regardless of whether I want it to or not — AND I NEVER WANT IT TO! It is inconvenient, infuriating, and highly embarrassing, which then makes it self-perpetuating. All of the sudden I’m crying over the fact I started crying. Do you have any idea what it feels like to be the person who is crying and upset because they got into a slight amount of trouble, and now the person on the other end thinks you are being overdramatic, or worse, unstable? Or knowing you have to preface serious conversations with, “sorry if I start crying, I can’t help it.” It feels intensely shameful and weak. As a result of this process you become a master wall builder. I’ve learned to keep a safe distance between me and anything that could make me emotionally unstable. My professional identity is everything to me, and I yearn to be known as that stable person who can take things in stride. I feel like I’ve done a fairly good job at maintaining this outward persona, but it has come at the expense of my own mental health. When you piece together a falsehood for ten hours a day, it disassembles almost immediately upon entering home. Sorry family and friends.

I entered counseling a year ago to tackle my mental health issues. I felt ready to face the events that led me to this place of depression and anxiety once and for all. Which is completely laughable. Life had other plans for me and I was almost instantly sabotaged in my efforts. What started out as a process to move myself forward, quickly became efforts to just keep me from sinking. And then SHIT. JUST. KEPT. HAPPENING. And the more that happened the more I would withdraw, thus fueling the shame cycle. For those who understand this phenomenon, no explanation is needed. For those who don’t, no explanation will ever be sufficient.

Luckily, thankfully, prayerfully, gratefully, appreciatively, my therapist, Amy Ball, was the exact perfect person for me. She is one of those rare individuals who intuitively understands when to push me, when to let me be still, when to challenge my thinking, and when to just let me talk (and talk and talk). Nine months into our therapeutic relationship, and I had not yet begun to touch the issues that originally brought me in (though I was laying the groundwork for that process). At some point a few months ago, I came in armed with another turn of life events, at which point she stopped me. We looked at the craziness that had been the last year together, and then she invited me to go back to the beginning. Her invitation was to give all of the current chaos the compassion it deserved, while setting it to the side for more foundational work. I was at first skeptical and a bit hurt. How in the world could I focus on that stuff when there were these boulders in my path? At this point of the therapeutic relationship though, I trusted her implicitly, and agreed.

“If you think dealing with issues like worthiness and authenticity and vulnerability are not worthwhile because there are more pressing issues, like the bottom line or attendance or standardized test scores, you are sadly, sadly mistaken. It underpins everything.”- Brene Brown

If you’ve made it this far, here comes the good stuff. And by good stuff, I mean gut-wrenching, nausea-inducing, run-for-your-life stuff. Have I mentioned shame yet? This is vulnerability.
I have a problem with touch. (Did you just blush and get embarrassed for me? We’ll explore that later.) Let me clarify. From this point forward, all references to touch and touching are in a 100% non-sexual capacity. I have always had difficulty giving and receiving platonic touch, while simultaneously being keenly aware of my need and desire for it. In the, this-is-an-ongoing-investigation sentiment, I am not going to go into the whys here because I am still actively figuring those out for myself, and they are actually irrelevant to what I want the message of this to be.

Three-quarters into my first year of therapy, when I finally found the courage to voice this to Amy, I expected to be reproached. Given how foundational and pervasive this issue is for me, it would have been reasonable for her to be frustrated I held it back for so long. Again, thankfully, this is not who she is or what I needed. Several sessions into grappling with this topic, I jokingly mentioned making an appointment with that crazy lady on the news who gets paid to “cuddle” with people so I could work through my touch issues. We both laughed and moved on. A few sessions later, I began EMDR therapy (look it up, that could be a whole other post and I’m sure it will be someday) with Amy. Through EMDR, we targeted memories and negative cognitions to process. EMDR allows you to make progress quickly and I found myself beginning to open up more.

Fast forward to June 18, 2017 at about 5 a.m. About two weeks into my summer break and I was experiencing MAJOR insomnia. My routine was thrown off and every night I was waking up around 1 a.m. and falling back asleep around 6 a.m. My freaking 5 a.m. brain apparently thought it would be a swell idea to navigate on my phone to that crazy touch lady’s website and book a TWO HOUR session for the NEXT day! What was worse, was that I didn’t even remember doing it until I got a text from her later that morning saying she received my request and would be calling me soon. Shit. Shit. Shit. What did I just do? Surely I was not in the process of inviting a stranger into my home to touch me?! This is the stuff of horror movies. Clearly there was only one reasonable path forward to keep from getting murdered. When she called I would explain it was all a giant mistake, someone had set me up as a joke, and thanks, but no thanks crazy lady.

The phone rings. She gives her initial spiel, “Hi, my name is Janet and . . .” I listened for awhile to be polite. She didn’t sound crazy, so I let her go on and ask me questions. Before I knew it, I had actually agreed to this craziness and given over my address. And then I spent the next few hours before she arrived trying not to have the world’s largest anxiety attack.
She had given me homework that consisted of videos explaining the process, the policies, what I should wear (and not wear), the code of ethics and such. Before I had a chance to find my passport and fly to Mexico, she was knocking on my door. Don’t be awkward, Amanda. Don’t be awkward.

“Hello, I’m Janet. May I give you a hug?” Crap. Crap. Crap. Internal panic. I mustered an agreement, hugged the crazy lady, and then sat on the love seat in such a way that clearly screamed
“DO NOT SIT NEXT TO ME!”. So she sat on the corner of the other couch, and immediately leaned in to talk to me. If I had to chart my anxiety level at this point, it would be somewhere between the Texas freak out during the Blue Bell crisis, and the last five minutes of the final game the night the Spurs fell out of the playoffs.
And then. Then comes the question she even told me ahead of time she would ask.

“How would you like to receive touch?”

Let’s pause for a moment here and deconstruct this. Gentle reminder, nothing about this is sexual in any way. You may find yourself needing to repeat this aloud a few times. The rules are set from the beginning and they are what you would imagine: Clothes stay on, private parts remain private, etc. If this whole thing feels bizarre and uncomfortable at this point, good-imagine living it.

But then she continued.

“You can ask for anything and I’ll either be a yes or a no. I also will immediately let you know if I become uncomfortable at any time, and I need you to agree to do the same.”
This is a good point to stop and explain Janet a bit. She, much like Amy, has that presence to her that dissolves anxiety and awkwardness. Maybe it’s her calming smile, maybe it’s the fact you can immediately tell you have her full attention, or that you can feel the heart she puts into her work. I’m sure it’s all of that and more. I cannot describe how this works, but at this point, I was truthfully much less ready to vomit on myself, and really more curious as to what this process would look like. And, I had planned ahead of time to have Parks and Recreation going in the background so that if I needed to, I would simply completely dissociate from the experience and go to my mental safe place (which in hindsight is against her rule of putting an end to the session if I felt uncomfortable...but thankfully this was not a thing).

So what did it look like? Here comes vulnerability again. I’m hesitant to describe this, which probably means I really need to. Janet will not recommend ways of touch during the session. She gives you the homework and then it’s up to you ask. If like me, you have lived your life in such a way that you cringe at asking anyone for anything, you can imagine how terrifying this part was (and still is to some degree). I initially chose a position in which I simply laid my head on her lap on top of a pillow. And Parks and Rec was going. Pretty safe at this point. A few minutes in we were both laughing over the show, and laughter has the ability to crush anxiety in way nothing else can. I felt more comfortable and relaxed (relatively, I was still a wreck, just not actively crashing at that point). I invited us both to lay out on the couch with her back against the couch and me in front of her (spooning if you will, but that word doesn’t carry the connotation I want). She wrapped her arms around me (after asking if she could) and from there, I was hooked.

But there was still a lot of cognitive dissonance. I mean, who does this? I realized at that point my new goal was to allow myself to become relaxed and receive the touch I knew I needed. Guys, there were tears, resistance, more tears, and even now, quite a few sessions later, still tears and resistance. I liken it to someone who's averse to touch getting a massage. I love massages, but this is a much more intimate, emotional, experience. It’s not an easy process.

“Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It's tough to do that when we're terrified about what people might see or think.” - Brene Brown

After our second session I noticed a shift in my mental clarity. Some of my fuzziness has disappeared and I felt happy. Happiness is one of those things you don’t realize you had been lacking until a portion of it returns to you. The whole process was still scary, but I could see it was working. I wrote down what I was thinking and sent it to Janet. She asked if she could make an anonymous video about my comments. I agreed and will provide the link at the bottom. I sent the link to Amy, and we spent my next session going over this whole amazing craziness. Amy said she could see a difference in me, my friends noted the same thing, and I felt different.
So I kept going. At this point I have done around ten sessions and I wish I could give you a direct line to my head and my heart so you could see what this has meant to me. For now, just imagine what it must feel like to take your biggest fear, face it head on, and find beauty and growth in the process. I hope this is a feeling you will all come to know (or have come to know) in whatever way is most meaningful to you.

Janet understands this. She has been willing to take on the negative criticism and unfair attacks because her belief in the process is bigger than her fear of being wrongly judged. And judged she has been. The news loves to highlight her work because it draws in traffic from people who are quick to make scandalous assumptions. She has been called a whore, prostitute, accused of running a sex ring, had the city of San Antonio show up to her house and was drug into court. And she has triumphed over it all. Meanwhile, she carries on her mission which has involved working with veterans, trauma victims, the elderly, and the hosts of other people who have had their lives enhanced by her work.
Without her permission, MYSA (My San Antonio) posted an article recently about Janet and her hosting a “Cuddle Party.” Cuddle Parties are the essence of everything I have discussed, but done in a group setting - think almost group therapy stuff. It is an actual organization, there are protocols, lessons on consent, lessons on how to be a yes or a no, and it is a completely NON-SEXUAL event from beginning to end. Considering how much this work has meant to me, you can imagine how I felt reading the comment section to this article (I know, I know, never a good idea).

See for yourself: https://www.facebook.com/SanAntonioExpressNews/posts/10155497831265762

Janet is used to this crap, and did not have the same visceral reaction I did. Although it was out of my comfort zone, I felt compelled to go because I wanted to be able to to speak to the experience personally. And, I’m glad I did. The event was safe, comfortable, and empowering. Out of my desire to negate the stigma, I made a video with Janet in which we deconstruct some of the comments. Originally, my face was going to be blurred, so I put no thought into how I looked or moved in the video. Afterwards though, I realized I am not embarrassed by this work and in fact would like to consider the role of touch in my future work as a therapist. I am okay being “in the arena” with Janet (see quote at the very beginning).
I decided to not be blurred in the video, even though it makes me more vulnerable (especially because I would have never worn my hair up and might have had on a bit more makeup!).

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of connection and the path to the feeling of worthiness. If it doesn't feel vulnerable, the sharing is probably not constructive.”- Brene Brown

Here it is: www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1IlluoTOPc&t=762s

And here is the video she made based on my comments after our second session:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uziu21E4c90&t=14s

Coming to an end here, I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about norms, social constructs, family systems, counseling theories and how it all relates to my experiences and I’m sure the experiences of so many others. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been on a Brene Brown binge.
Check out her TEDx talk on vulnerability at : https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability
To be clear, this stuff still scares the crap out of me. But, I’ve seen the other side, I know what beauty, creativity, and joy there is to be had. So I’m willing to take on scary and uncomfortable at this point. And, universe willing, when I get to the point where I am the therapist in the room, I want to be able to look at my client and let them know I have indeed been there and can go there with them.

I often wish we did wear our hearts on our sleeves
Or could connect our minds for a moment
Too many misunderstandings born out of misperceptions and missed connections

And the heaviness finds you - even when you try to run in the opposite direction
It circles the globe and greets you at your destination
Unfurling a red carpet for your bloodied and battered dreams
But they’re still beautiful.

Beauty awaits on the other side of fear
My just reward for being fully present
What gave me hope at the most critical moment?
It was my inner child whispering, “I’m still here and I’m still worth it”

Reminding me I’m allowed to not absorb other’s projections
I am not what their emotions say I am
It doesn’t make it hurt any less
But I don’t have to let it hurt any more