THE POWER OF BEING VULNERABLE AND OPEN

Sometimes I feel like a sheep in wolf’s clothing. What I mean by that is sometimes I may give the wrong impression to people, people like you who read my work and people who work with me personally, and it may not be totally by accident.

I write this column you’re reading and another like it. I work with individuals who want to improve their lives. Some are doing fine and want coaching to do better. Some are struggling and want to learn skills to help them flourish, and find joy and success in their lives. I lead and co-lead groups. I love the work. I’m good at it.

           It’s easy for me to allow you to see that part because that part is strong. That part is societal accepted, encouraged and rewarded.

           We’re a society of doers, achievers, and winners. We succeed.

           Except of course, when we’re don’t. Which can be often. 

           Often there’s pain, discouragement, loneliness, fear, confusion, disappointment, and what we judge to be failure, but we want to come off as strong and unafraid, courageous, clear, and effective.

It’s often not easy to reveal oneself, to be honest and vulnerable, to show that side of us we want to hide. For some of us we may want to come as off as wolves, or lions (I’m a guy, remember.) and often we feel like sheep.

Others may come off as sheep, gentle and quiet, and hide a shadow of anger and upset.

Many of us are not good at being genuinely who we are. We hide, even from ourselves. Or at least we try. We feel that when we expose ourselves we open ourselves to pain, suffering and attack. We feel weak, vulnerable, and we don’t like it.

Maybe, at times, I’ve done that in these columns, hidden a bit, come off as knowing more than I do, as feeling more self-directed, contented, and successful than I often feel. The truth is I can struggle with uncertainty, fear, confusion, and moodiness with the best of them.

That’s what I meant by saying I sometimes feel like a sheep in wolf’s clothing. It’s easy for me to show the competent exterior, but it’s hard to allow others, even those close to me, to see my struggles. 

I am sharing this because part of the secret to happiness and joy is a sense of belonging, a sense of being worthy of love and connection. And almost paradoxically, what weaves us into a living fabric of connection, worthiness, and belonging is a willingness to being open, to being vulnerable, to being able to stick one’s neck out emotionally, and share the truth about ourselves.

Putting up a front of invulnerability, our attempt to protect ourselves, leaves us feeling isolated, fearful, and vulnerable, the exact opposite of the sense of security and wellbeing we were looking for in the first place.

One of the foundations of a happy, well-lived life is an underlying sense that “I am enough”, but for many of us that’s not so easy to come by. Many of us suffer daily from bouts of “I am not enough” and the pain is enormous. And it’s vulnerability, a willingness to be seen, even by ourselves, just as we are, that opens the door to accepting ourselves as we are and feeling that we are enough.

That’s why I wanted to come clean a bit in this article. I wanted and needed to take some of the medicine I have just described. I was starting to feel like I had to come off in a certain way, that in some respects I had to hide. I was feeling like I needed to know more than I did. I was feeling a bit like I was not enough. And I realized that feeling was coming from not saying certain things, things that were true for me but made me feel vulnerable by saying them, things like struggling, at times, with uncertainty, fear and moodiness.

And you know what? I feel a lot better. And I hope you realize that I would not have taken up your time with an article that I thought was simply about me. I shared about my own experience because how else could I reasonably ask you to share about your’s?

So, take a look at where you are hiding, at where you are coming off as knowing the answers you don’t really know. Take the time to begin to feel the feelings you may be denying.

Don’t think you are the only one who may be hiding, who is putting up a front and paying a heavy price for it.

Dr. Brene` Brown states we are the most obese, most in debt, most medicated cohort in US history.

Why do you think that might be?

And in the political arena, why do you think we’re slinging around so much blame and so much vitriol?

The more we attempt to make uncertain things certain, the more we try to have dead answers to living questions, the more invulnerable we try to feel, the more uncomfortable and disconnected and strident we get.

I hope I’m not coming off as judgmental, or that I’m falling into the very trap I’m describing, talking as if I know more than I do. Check it out for yourself. Notice how you feel, notice how your relationships go as you attempt to hide the truth about yourself, as you refuse to admit that you are afraid, or uncertain, or angry, or sad. See how well it works and whether you feel better afterwards.

To live life fully, you have to take risks and the biggest risk we take is with ourselves, the risk of offering who we are, freckles, warts, and all to the world. 

The poet e.e. cummings wrote:

To be nobody but yourself

 in a world

 which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else

 means to fight the hardest battle

which any human being can fight

 and never stop fighting.

           

So, go out and live your life, missteps, wrong turns and all. Be who you are.

And notice that often the well-intentioned person who is trying the hardest in some way to make you like everyone else is you.

Namaste.

I can be reached at 805-680-5572 or drjohnluca@gmail.com.

SCARE YOURSELF TO THE CORE

The half turn of your face

toward truth

is the one movement

you will not make.

                                                David Whyte

Sometimes, we turn away from the things that scare us and sadden us. Sometimes, we turn away from the truth that calls us, the love that awaits us, and the life we say we so dearly want. And, we don’t even know it.

In our time and place, one great turning away is from the body, from what is going on in the chest, the heart, the stomach, the shoulders, the legs, and elsewhere.

It’s a turning away from what we feel.

We struggle with the world, with sex, with joy, with love, with sadness, but we struggle from the neck up. One of the simplest and most powerful techniques of Tantra Yoga is simply to learn to use the breath so we can withstand greater and greater waves of pleasure during lovemaking.

As I write this I feel a bit of tension in my stomach. Part of me has a judgment about what I am writing. As soon as I become aware of the tension in my stomach, it eases and the words continue to come. I think of a friend and how she will possibly criticize these words as wrong or trivial. I feel it, take a breath, and am again able to continue.

We are comfortable feeling a certain size. As soon as someone begins to praise us and we feel ourselves getting ‘bigger’, we quickly deflate ourselves. Thanks, but no thanks, we say. We can almost begin to feel ourselves cracking.

Well-known relationship specialists Gay and Kathleen Hendricks say that often relationships suffer from what they call “The Upper Limits Problem.” The relationship is only allowed to get so big, only allowed so much intimacy, only allowed so much joy. Problems arise simply because one or both partners has reached the upper limits of how much happiness they can stand. Their comfort zones have overheated. Their rivets have popped. Their bubble…you get the picture.

If you look closely, you know this all too well.

Not so fast, we say. Not so high. Not so happy.

We’re afraid.

If we get too happy, we feel our unworthiness.

Or like we’re doing something wrong.

Or like we will be punished. 

We fear that we’re like Icarus in the Greek myth who used wax to fix wings to his body, who, as he approached the sun and the wax melted and the wings tore loose, was plunged to the sea where he drowned.

Many of us have a bit of the myth of Icarus buried in our chests.

It’s not always easy to make that half turn, but that’s where the truth of our life lies, the truth of what we are afraid of, the truth of the questions that have been waiting for us, the truth of who we want to be before we die, the truth of the music we hear when we are alone at night, the truth of what we long for and love.

One of my friends calls this turning towards the truth ‘leaning in’. Another calls it ‘curling around’. It really is that physical. It does require wrapping your body and heart around it. It’s getting cozy with what you fear, with what you don’t like, with what you want to get away from, with what you love and yearn for.

Hard to look,

but you know it has to happen

and

that it takes only the half turn of your face

to scare yourself

to the core.

Seeing again

that strange resolve in your new reflection.

Go for it, wrap yourself, body and soul around your life, and make it a good one.

 Please share. Namaste.

HOW NAKED SHOULD A GUY GET?

I saw a guy change his life last night. Last week I saw another guy change his life.

Three weeks ago I saw another guy die because he couldn’t see a way of changing his. He was 39 years old. He died because he stopped talking.

How do you have the necessary conversations, the talks that come from deep in the heart and the soul and free the spirits, both dark and light, that reside there? How do you unburden yourself? It’s hard to do it alone. Grace helps, as do other people who care and can listen. This takes a lot of guts, and many guys can’t do it, at least not alone.

A guy at the gym explained to a buddy of mine that they were looking at the football game at 6:00 a.m. because, “Guys look at sports so they’ll have something to talk about with other guys.”

Maybe guys play certain sports so they can touch each other without fear of having their sexual orientation brought into question. I know my son thrives on touching me. He’s eleven. I wonder how much longer that will last.

My dog Iko is a guy. He touches me all the time. But he’s a dog.

Real guys can have it hard. We have a tendency to isolate. As we get older, if we’re not careful, we end up like lone grapes withering on the vine. If it weren’t for our women, most straight guys would have no emotional contact with another human being. Gay guys can have it even harder. I guess that’s why being alone as you age is worse for a guy’s health than smoking and drinking.

So reach out to other men. Figure out how to do it. Have the balls to meet with other guys. Not just to chitchat, but to share the journey of being a man.

Men die, on average, seven years earlier than women. Maybe it’s because women talk to one another, and guys too often don’t, not about what matters.

The right kind of talk is not cheap. It’s priceless.

And sometimes, not being able to talk can kill you. Just ask the family of a thirty-nine-year-old man who lost a son, a brother, a father, and a provider.

If you are interested in joining a men’s group or starting one of your own, please contact me at drjohnluca@gmail.com. And help yourself to a good day.