The Five Most Common Ways We Avoid Being Vulnerable in a Relationship and How We Can Open Up to Our Partners

In this episode of The Aware Mind, Sarah explores what real vulnerability looks like in relationships—like admitting we’re scared, in pain, or unsure of ourselves. Most of us didn’t grow up in environments that encouraged emotional openness, so we developed protective behaviors to keep ourselves safe. But as adults, those same behaviors can block the deep connection we truly crave. Sarah unpacks why being vulnerable can feel so risky—especially when we fear rejection, invalidation, or triggering someone’s anger. She also dives into how attachment styles shape our relationship with vulnerability, and offers insight into how both anxious and avoidant types tend to protect themselves by avoiding emotional exposure.

How Vulnerable are you? Take the Quiz: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/tests/relationships/vulnerability-test 

Download the tool to identify non-vulnerability behaviors: https://www.tsdmind.org/_files/ugd/8bdf26_1911ee87b5c140d6b298369fa09f1694.pdf

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The Aware Mind's host, Sarah Vallely has been teaching meditation for over 20 years and is a private coach, helping clients heal from a narcissistic parent, abusive partner, trauma from growing up with ADHD, intrusive thoughts and overwhelming anxiety. 

Important links:
Sarah's Mindfulness Coaching website: https://www.sarahvallely.com
TSD Mindfulness Coach Certification https://www.tsdmind.org

This episode is a meditation for beginner mindfulness meditators and anyone interested in learning supports for a variety of mental health challenges, including overthinking, trauma, intrusive thoughts and self-worth.  The Aware Mind produces content that supports stress reduction, anxiety relief, better concentration and focus, and trauma healing.

The Aware Mind's host, Sarah Vallely has been teaching meditation for over 20 years and is a private coach, helping clients heal from a narcissistic parent, abusive partner, trauma from growing up with ADHD, intrusive thoughts and overwhelming anxiety. 

Transcript

This episode is about vulnerability, vulnerability with other people, as well as vulnerability with yourself. Uh, I'm gonna talk about five reasons why we don't become vulnerable.

I'll also go over examples of what vulnerability looks like in dating and in long-term relationships. And I'm going to discuss vulnerability in relation to anxious and avoidant attachment styles. Vulnerability in a relationship or vulnerability with yourself is admitting you are scared or admitting you are in emotional pain or admitting you don't have it all figured out.

And as you probably already know, vulnerability creates this closeness in relationships with people in your family, with your friends, with romantic partners. Vulnerability with yourself is also really important. And this is a concept that a lot of us don't think about or read about, but vulnerability with yourself leads to emotional healing.

And I'd say vulnerability with yourself is a. The best place to start with becoming more vulnerable, you know, admitting these things to yourself, admitting that you have these, these deep, vulnerable emotions. But the problem is it doesn't feel natural for most of us to be vulnerable. And there's reasons for that.

Our culture has created this narrative that we're weak or we're not good enough if we experience. An uncomfortable emotion, but here's a newsflash. We are human beings and we are designed to feel emotions such as rejection, betrayal, abandonment, you know, and, and, and many, many more. As human beings, we are biologically and psychologically wired.

To feel emotions like rejection and betrayal and abandonment, not because we're broken, but because we're built for connection. These emotions are part of our internal alert system and they come about to let us know that our sense of belonging is, is threatened. From an evolutionary standpoint, our survival depended on staying connected to a group.

Being rejected or abandoned could mean isolation, and this isolation could mean danger. I mean, this was serious. This was like life or death. Our nervous systems treat emotional disconnection as a real threat. That's why betrayal, it hurts so much. It violates trust, and trust is the glue of human bonding.

Even today though, we're not facing these physical survival threats anymore. Not in the same way our brains and bodies still respond to the emotional wounds, like they're very urgent. These emotions while really painful, they're also deeply human. They show us what we value, what we long for, and where healing is needed.

Feeling these emotions doesn't make us weak. It, it makes us human. The reason I'm saying all this is to give validity to your vulnerable emotions and to help us remember that having and sharing these feelings is, is really natural. In the show notes, I've linked an online test that can show your level of vulnerability, and the questions are pretty interesting.

That can help you kind of gauge where you fall in this spectrum of vulnerability. I think one of the best ways to start looking more at your vulnerability and opening up to how you can be more vulnerable is to use your mindfulness to look at the reasons why we don't wanna be vulnerable. So here's a list of five reasons why we often don't want to become vulnerable.

Number one, we fear that if we open up about feeling afraid or feeling emotional pain or not knowing the answers, people will abandon us. The risk of someone pulling away, it really feels greater than the reward of that connection that will get if we do open up. So instead of sharing how we really feel, we pretend we're okay, or we get angry, or we act like we just don't care.

So yeah, I'd say using some mindfulness to notice. You know, what are these situations that I am not vulnerable that, that maybe I could experiment with being more vulnerable in. Second reason why we don't wanna become vulnerable is we are afraid we will experience shame. So these fears, this fear of, of not feeling shame is often unconscious.

So a lot of us might not realize that it's happening, but what it feels like is we want to avoid that icky feeling that we're not good enough or that we're inadequate. But vulnerability means revealing parts of ourselves. And these parts of ourselves, we feel unsure about things. We have some fears coming up, or we just, we feel pain, we feel misunderstood, we feel dismissed.

But what happens a lot of time for some of us is that instead of revealing these things, we act like we have it all together. Yep. I'm good. Everything's good. Here's the third reason that we don't wanna become vulnerable, and that is that we are afraid of getting someone angry. If you grew up in an environment where honesty and emotion led to conflict, it led to rejection or punishment, it makes sense that you avoid vulnerability, uh, to keep the peace.

You might walk on eggshells. You might people please, or stay quiet instead of speaking your real truth. The goal becomes avoiding other people's reactions, especially anger, even at the cost of your own emotional honesty. The fourth reason here, why we don't wanna become vulnerable is we are afraid of being invalidated.

It's so painful. When we finally get the courage to open up, share something deep, insecurity, something like that, and then the person that we open up to dismisses us, judges us. They might tell us we're too sensitive or we're making a big deal when we shouldn't be making a big deal about something. So rather than risk being invalidated, we keep our feelings to ourselves.

And what's more is we often invalidate. Our own emotions. We do this all the time. We tell ourselves it's not worth our energy. We might tell ourselves, we're making a big deal out of this situation. We might even tell ourselves it's our fault, so we shouldn't even feel this way. We literally come up with all these reasons to not feel our emotions, and I think that's where we start with that, right?

We start validating our own emotions. It's understandable. I feel rejected because they didn't respond. And here's the fifth reason I've got here. For us not wanting to be vulnerable is we are afraid of being seen. At first glance, this might seem like the goal of vulnerability, right, is to be seen, but it's also what makes it so hard.

Being truly seen means letting go of of some control. It means exposing our messiness, our uncertainties, our insecurities, and it can feel really terrifying. How can those people who are close to us really see us if we don't share some of our inner emotional process of what's going on? And chances are that's gonna lead them to have even more admiration for you, not less.

With all this being said, there are some people who are not safe to be vulnerable with. This would be a healthy reason to not be vulnerable. Right. You've identified this is an emotionally unsafe person for me to open up to. These people are the ones who are emotionally immature because they do a lot of the things I just went over and they're over the top with it.

They do it in mean ways or they use what you say against you. I published a really good episode on emotionally immature people last August, August, 2024. So that will go into a lot of detail of the characteristics of emotionally immature people, the people who are unsafe to open up to discerning who you can be vulnerable with.

Is important. However, I'd say that most of us are choosing not to be vulnerable with some people who, who are pretty safe to be vulnerable with, or they just need a little coaching. We can front load our moments of vulnerability, such as might say, I'm not saying what I'm about to say because I'm criticizing you.

I'm sharing this because I want you to have a better understanding of my internal emotional process. So setting it up that way can help them relax their nervous system a little bit and help them be less defensive and more supportive. Vulnerability in dating is important. Hinge the dating app, did a survey and found that 93% of singles prefer to date someone who is emotionally vulnerable.

So that's pretty much everybody. And the survey indicated that vulnerability was more important to them than physical attractiveness or income. That's awesome. People are really looking for this, and I'd say people are looking for this because this openness creates a deeper connection, making the interaction that you have with this potential boyfriend or girlfriend, more meaningful.

However, according to another survey, only 32% of people show vulnerability on first dates. Maybe it's because they're afraid of being judged or rejected, even though openness is usually appreciated. So I am a huge bachelor fan. I know that sounds really crazy considering what I do for a living, but I watch all the seasons and they talk a lot about vulnerability on the show.

So I imagine they have like these psychologists or coaches or something working with all these people and helping them learn how to be more vulnerable. But if you are also a watcher like me, I'll point out that those one-on-ones that they have at the dinner, they always have a vulnerability discussion, right?

It's just like the way it's set up. And they do that to foster a. This connection, right? Because it works. It's like you open up, you're vulnerable about something and it really moves the relationship. On an example of being vulnerable on a first date is sharing a challenge you overcame or an insecurity you have.

This survey also showed that we are 66% more likely to get a second date if we're vulnerable on the first. In long-term relationships, if you discuss your fears and your insecurities with your partner, you strengthen the trust and the intimacy that you have Fostering a more supportive relationship.

Again, vulnerability is admitting that you're scared that you're in emotional pain or you don't have it figured out. You can argue about schedules and people's behaviors. But if you move the conversation to be talking about emotions, there's nothing to argue about. Everyone is entitled to their emotions, but this only works if you communicate with vulnerability, you're not attacking, right?

So it really matters how you bring up your emotions. This means not arguing about who's right and instead of being defensive, you ask questions. So that's like that part of vulnerability of not having all figured out is just taking a pause and asking your partners some questions, not feeling like you have to completely understand why they're feeling what they're feeling, or even understand what the feeling is.

Just kind of being like, you know, I don't, I'm not really sure about this. Let me ask some questions. Being open about your internal emotional experience helps your partner see things from your perspective. And this vulnerability shifts the focus from fixing, right? Fixing the problem or winning the argument, which we wanna move away from.

And instead, the vulnerability moves us into connecting and understanding. I had the episode on Internal Family Systems that I uploaded in March, so if you wanna go into Internal Family Systems a little bit more, that'd be a great episode to listen to. But Internal Family Systems also refer to as IFS. Is a good way to understand what keeps us from being vulnerable.

IFS is based on this idea that we have these parts of ourselves that have behaviors that protect us from pain. It's these parts that conceal our vulnerability. We might have an overthinking part or an anger part, or an avoid conflict part. These protective parts of us. Often the ones that are keeping us from being vulnerable, for example, an overthinking part might constantly analyze situations to try to fix things instead of feel things.

An angry part might lash out to give us some sense of control over a situation versus just feeling this emotion of helplessness, which is vulnerable to me. It's vulnerable to feel helpless and to share that with, with someone close to you. A conflict avoidant part might stay silent or agreeable to prevent confrontation, even if it means ignoring your own needs.

While these parts are trying to help us stay safe, they also end up concealing our softer, more vulnerable emotions like sadness, like fear, or longing to be loved and accepted. Internal Family Systems offers this compassionate way to explore these inner parts, um, not by fighting them or pushing them away, but by getting curious about what they're protecting us from once we so through this internal family systems process.

We actually get these protective parts to relax a little bit, to take a step back, not be so involved. And when we do that, then we can connect with our pain and our wounded parts and we can begin to heal. And this really opens a door to genuine vulnerability where we can express ourselves honestly and be seen for who we truly are without the fear of rejection or, or shame.

So you might be curious about attachment styles and how attachment styles play a role in vulnerability. Just as a little bit of a background attachment styles show how we interact in relationships, and they are created probably when we're infants. I mean, this starts really, really in the beginning of our lives.

There are four different types of attachment styles. The first one is called secure attachment, which means we feel comfortable with closeness while also we maintain some independence. It's like a good balance. Another attachment style is anxious attachment. These people crave closeness and they like to get to the bottom of emotional conflicts like as soon as possible.

It's really painful for that waiting period to resolve. Resolve something that feels uncomfortable in a relationship, another style avoidant attachment. These people value independence and often delay emotional conversations. The fourth is called disorganized attachment, and they struggle with both the behaviors of someone who's anxiously attached and someone who's avoidantly attached.

So they seek and fear connection both, trust me. No shame. No matter which attachment style you identify with. I'm personally disorganized. I, I, I hate the name, but, but I'm personally disorganized, uh, which has the reputation to be experienced by those of us who've had the most trauma. So when I go over all this, please know I'm not judging these behaviors at all.

I've been there. I've personally dealt with a lot of this, and the reason I want to address these attachment styles is because at first glance you'd think that people who are avoidant struggle the most with vulnerability, but that's actually not true. Avoidant and anxious both struggle with vulnerability, but they do it in different ways.

People who identify with avoidant attachment style, and remember, those are the people that value independence and often delay emotional conversations. Um, these people will often do the following. They might push down or ignore difficult feelings even from themselves, but suppressing emotions, it's not vulnerable, uh, because it avoids facing or sharing one's internal experience of pain and of fear and of sadness.

People with avoidant attachment value independence. They rely on themselves so much that they don't let others in often to avoid the risk of being disappointed, the risk of feeling hurt or let down by others, but allowing someone to support you and be helpful creates. Closeness. It's really good for relationships.

People of avoidant attachment might keep conversations non-emotional. They might steer away from deep or emotionally charged topics, or they might feel awkward or overwhelmed when others open up about their emotions. And so instead, they might talk about logistics or facts instead of feelings to avoid being judged, but emotional conversations foster more closeness in a relationship.

They might also withdraw. They might pull back, cancel plans, especially when the relationship becomes closer. Instead, it would be more vulnerable to share how they're feeling deep down that, that they're scared. There's like some fears that are coming up that, that they, they're unsure. And they might downplay problems.

They might act like everything's fine to avoid discounting deeper issues, but it would be more vulnerable to express their pain, to express their confusion or their need for some support. When I work with clients who are more on this end of the spectrum of attachment styles, what I find is the overall theme is this fear of failure.

You know, there's just real sense of I don't wanna express my emotions or have emotional conversations because I'm gonna suck at it. Like, I'm not gonna know what to do. I'm not gonna know what to say. But that's something to be vulnerable about. That's something to open up and share about with your partner is, you know, this is the reason that I'm, I have a hard time with these emotional conversations.

'cause deep down I'm just really scared that I'm gonna mess it up. I'm gonna say the wrong thing. Next here I'll speak about what people who identify with anxious attachment might do in regards to not being vulnerable. And again, people with anxious attachment, they often crave closeness and they like to get to the bottom of emotional conflict.

Um, ASAP. One thing they might do is overextend themselves. They might take care of others emotionally to avoid focusing on their own inner world and facing their own unprocessed emotions or unmet needs. So that might look like spending a lot of time focused on the emotions of the other person versus your own emotions.

People with anxious attachment often struggle to state their needs. Instead of directly stating, this is what I need, they might hint or hope that their partner just knows what they need, and this is often because they're afraid that they'll be rejected if they bring up their needs. Instead, it would be more vulnerable to say, I feel lonely.

I need more connection. Stating a need takes a lot of vulnerability because you're admitting that you have a need that's that's vulnerable. People with anxious attachment avoid sharing about their pain. Often they might seek reassurance rather than expressing their own underlying pain. They might ask, are you mad at me?

Instead of saying, I feel really insecure when you pull away from me, which would be more vulnerable. And lastly, people who have anxious attachment often focus the conversation on the other person's actions. They might say, you never listen to me, which is blaming and blaming is never vulnerable, and it will probably set the other person up to be defensive.

Instead, it would be more vulnerable to say something like, I feel hurt and unimportant when I don't feel heard, because this reveals something personal about themselves. I hope you found some of this information helpful in terms of your own journey into vulnerability. In the show notes, again, I have linked a test that could show your level of vulnerability, and I've also linked a tool that's specific for relationships outlining how we often can become less vulnerable in a relationship.