Brené Browns Ted talk has been watched over 50 000 000 times on YouTube. It’s one of the most popular TED talks of all time in which she talks about courage, shame, empathy and vulnerability.
Vulnerability comes from the latin word ‘Vulnus’ meaning to wound. It’s all about how when we put ourselves in situations that might be wounding there is incredible learning and growth that might come from that. Some of us are drawn to putting ourselves in these positions and some of us are more defended against it.
For a TED talk to get so many viewers it must resonate with so many people out there. It certainly resonates with me and got me thinking.
Are we raising generations of children that are defended against this experiencing vulnerability?
Why are we so defended against vulnerability?
We all have the potential to tune out what is stressful for us, to numb out any discomfort and to suppress certain feelings. Our brains are equipped to do this automatically and it is generally one of the first lines of defence we have to overwhelming feelings and sensations.
The function of these defences is that it enables us to be in wounding environments without becoming overwhelmed. Think about going to school/nursery as a young child. My daughter has just turned 3 and she wants to be close to one of us literally all the time. If we leave the room for a short time, it isn’t long before she seeks one of us out and we are lucky enough that she has similar relationships with other family members. It’s like a setting, she is set to be close to one of us at all times. Can you imagine what would happen if we dropped her off with a bunch of strange adults/children at a school. She’s going to experience a lot of fear and the only way she might get through and not let that overwhelm her is if she blocks it out somehow.
This process can be a good thing because when we would be reunited again hopefully this defence would be dropped and she can experience some of the fear in a less intense way and realise that she did something that maybe she did not comprehend she would be able to do. She might realise that we can be separated and still have a sense of togetherness with us and that everything will be ok.
These defences are best when they are used situationally and temporally. They are completely involuntary and automatic reactions so we have no control of them, but as parents or nurturing adults we can help create the environment where going into these wounding environments is encouraged when the time is right and that we have an environment at home where these defences can come out.
That’s why some mums notice that at school their child can be more ‘like an angel’ but when they get home it is a different story. That is generally a good sign. It’s going to be too much for them to bear if they show that side of them at school, so they save it for the a safe space. All the fear, anger, sadness and whatever it is she might of encountered in her day that is potentially overwhelming is repressed and as one of her closest attachments it would be my job to come along side her and help her now experience these feelings and start to express them.
There are three types of defence mechanisms we can notice:
Emotional Defense - here we can simply lose some feelings completely e.g. when a child says ‘I don’t care’ they have lost their caring feeling.
Perceptual Defence - Our attention goes to somewhere else e.g. difficulty focusing or concentrating or not being able to see what is really happening, like a blindness. For this one think politicians!
Attachment Defence - We are born to seek closeness to those that we attach too. Another way off beng defended is that we can reverse this and want to get away from those close to us. Think child storming off to his room.
All three of these things are perfectly natural. You cannot control them or battle them and it’s great that we have them. because they enable us to go into ‘wounding’ environments and we can get so much growth out of that.
The problem is when we get stuck in them; when they are no longer temporary defences. The ebb and flow from these defence mechanisms to somewhere safe with someone that we love. A place where we can go and drop our guard.
Nowadays many children will finish school in one sense but with the internet and phones they are still connected to peers and being with peers is a ‘wounding’ environment. Children come home late, sometimes with hard-working parents trying there best to support their family, they have homework to do and maybe some chores or they spend time talking to friends on their phone etc. How much time do they have with a loved one when their guard is down? Some children have a ‘wounding’ environment at home too and getting stuck permanently is the best way of getting through their childhood.
My sense is that this time is getting less and less over the years and that as a result of that we are seeing generations of children develop into adults stuck in these states of defendness. I mean all you need to do is look at the way politicians debate each other to see that they are stuck in these defence systems. It’s not that we don’t love our children. It’s that we are not aware of the importance of this time and/or we are aware but life circumstances just mean that we can’t access it. We were never meant to bring up our children so isolated and this time is becoming less and less ‘protected’.
So I invite you, if you have children or if you know any children to consider their own safe space. Do they have somewhere they can be everyday where they are not defended, where they can drop this guard, where they can find their tears for whatever happened in the day, where they can be authentic, where there are no demands on behaviour etc.
Gordan Neufeld asks the question simply:
‘Are they invited to exist in your presence together unconditionally and authentically?’
And the hardest part of this question is the invitation. Is it clear to them that they are ‘invited’ to do this
Notice the ebb and flow of children moving between defendness to letting their guard down. If it’s not flowing on a. daily basis then it is likely to get stuck. That’s a good thing to in a sense. because your child is doing what is necessary to survive, but once you are aware they are stuck, it’s now your responsibility to win them back with these invitations.
If you notice this ‘stuckness’ or defendness in your own life then one way to explore it is through therapy. To find your safe space with a therapist where you can start to explore and experience what it is like with your defences down. If you want to find out more about Compassionate Inquiry then check out my website www.joeatkinson.co.uk and feel free to contact me on mail@joeatkinson.co.uk
https://compassionateinquiry.com