Emotional vulnerability What is and how can we handle it?

All people experience different levels of emotional vulnerability at different times of their lives. However, it is common for certain erroneous ideas about what it means to be vulnerable in the emotional field. In addition, we usually fall into two ends: either we are very vulnerable or we do not allow ourselves to feel injured at all.

Following this line, Emotions vulnerability is not a positive or negative quality. In the end, everything is reduced to the way we manage it. In this way, it can be a factor that benefits or plays against us.

Content

• What is emotional vulnerability?
• Emotional vulnerability: advantage or disadvantage?
• How to manage emotional vulnerability?
  • 1. Work on your self -knowledge
  • 2. Pay attention to your thought
  • 3. Let yourself feel
  • 4. Learn to be assertive

What is emotional vulnerability?

When we talk about vulnerability, we refer to how susceptible is a living being of receiving any damage. For example, children are quite vulnerable because they do not have the same capacities as young adults. In other words, we talk about how exposed we are to hurt us.

Following this line, Emotional vulnerability has to do with our ability to feel emotional damage and be aware of it. There are different elements that influence this quality, among these we find cognitive biases when interpreting situations.

Tran, Siemer and Joormann (2011) conducted a study on the influence of cognitive biases in psychological vulnerability. It was concluded that a negative interpretation of different social scenarios reduces people's self -esteem and increases negative emotions.

On the other hand, there is a theory with the name of the strength and vulnerability integration model. This proposes that as we become adults, We learn different strategies to evade or limit harmful stimuli.

Emotional vulnerability: advantage or disadvantage?

When talking about psychological vulnerability, it is common for people to fall into extremes that are harmful. On the one hand, there are those who avoid being vulnerable at all costs and repress any emotion for fear of feeling "weak". While others have a high sensitivity to negative stimuli and hurt in different ways.

What are cognitive biases and what are the main

From this perspective, it may seem that emotional vulnerability is negative. On the one hand, repressing how we feel can have serious effects on health such as psychosomatic diseases. Similarly, being too vulnerable exposes us to a lot of displacing emotions such as sadness, anger, disappointment, anger, etc.

Nevertheless, There are people who are placed at a balance point with respect to their emotions. They are those that protect themselves from external stimuli, without resorting to the repression of their discomfort.

In this way, being vulnerable at the emotional level becomes an advantage in several ways. For example, it gives us the space we need to process our feelings. At the same time, it gives us the ability to recognize when we feel injured and do something about it. It also helps us to recognize what things cause us discomfort to avoid or handle them when they appear.

How to manage emotional vulnerability?

As we saw before, emotional vulnerability can be an advantage for us, as long as we learn to manage it. For that reason, we will present some strategies that can be useful to achieve balance in this aspect.

1. Work on your self -knowledge

To begin to better manage our vulnerability, we must first look in. Knowing ourselves is fundamental because it allows us to better appreciate what things affect us and how they do it. Thus, we can be attentive and protect ourselves when these situations occur. In the same way, it helps us to be more aware of how we feel.

A useful technique to know you better is to write a newspaper where you write down your thoughts and emotions. Maybe at first you do not realize anything important, but as you fill pages, you may visualize some patterns.

2. Pay attention to your thought

As explained in previous paragraphs, cognitive biases significantly influence emotional vulnerability. Interpret reality in a unimportant way, can make us feel injured by different situations. Therefore, it is most advisable to use the vigía technique to analyze thoughts.

This method is to imagine that our thoughts are travelers who want to enter consciousness. However, in order to do so, they must first go through a kind of mental customs where there is a guard. That guardian will be ourselves and analyze the thoughts with some questions:

• How realistic is this thought?
• What helps me think in this way?
• What other logical explanation exists for this situation?

As you ask yourself, you may notice that certain thoughts do not bring you any benefit. In that case, access to consciousness will be "prohibited" and we will prevent us from generating discomfort.

3. Let yourself feel

Experimenting emotions such as sadness, angu, anguish, stress or anxiety, does not mean that we are weak. Every day, all people fight internal battles and feel sad, anxious, etc. But, even so, they manage to find strength to move forward with their goals.

On the contrary, those who repress their emotions are exposed to illness or even incapacitated. Remember that the fact of suppress an emotion, does not make it disappear and this continues to affect us without being aware. Because of that, the most advisable is to give us a space to realize how we feel and express it.

4. Learn to be assertive

Assertivity is about communicating our thoughts, feelings or opinions without disrespecting others. An assertive person can say that something bothers him without being hurtful and being firm at the same time. This is a key tool to express how we feel and protect ourselves from possible harmful situations.

Finally, if you think you have conflicts with your emotional vulnerability that are more serious, consider psychological attention. Sometimes, psychological conflicts are deeper and self -care techniques can be insufficient. In those cases, professional intervention is the best alternative.

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