How To Maintain Vulnerability In Therapy

Vulnerability, or being open, honest, and true to yourself, can be important both in therapy and in everyday life. In fact, vulnerability in therapy can often be crucial to successful mental health treatment. Being vulnerable with a therapist can help you express your emotions, dig into your past experiences, and increase your trust and vulnerability outside of therapy. Choosing to express yourself honestly, even when it may be stressful or scary, can be extremely beneficial to the therapeutic process. Working with a therapist you trust and feel comfortable with can empower you to embrace vulnerability. You may be able to connect with a licensed therapist who can help you with any mental health challenges you may be experiencing through an online therapy platform.

What is vulnerability?

Vulnerability has become more common in our vernacular over the past few years. Its search frequency jumped almost 300% from November 2021 to December 2021 alone, showing just how important this word may be for our current worldview. 

An example of this could be expressing to a close friend your goal of going to a university or particular work entity in a different state or country. You might feel a sense of nervousness, fear, or, more aptly, vulnerability because you’re likely unsure of how your friend might react to this news. Will they be happy for you? Upset? However, this honesty and vulnerability may provide an opportunity for individual and relationship growth. Having open conversations like this may open the door for deeper relationships with yourself and others as you learn to be more open and truer to yourself.

You can be vulnerable with friends, family, and loved ones, in romantic relationships, in public, and in therapy. Accepting the emotional risk of honesty, the chance of feeling hurt by someone’s reaction or lack of response, and being open about one’s feelings, regardless of the outcome, can all contribute to feeling vulnerability.

We’re often taught that vulnerability can be ugly, scary, or weak. Unlearning the idea that vulnerability makes us fragile or unattractive can be uncomfortable or difficult, and learning to open ourselves up to that feeling of emotional risk can be even more challenging. But the benefits of vulnerability in relationships tend to outweigh the danger of emotional harm.

The importance of vulnerability in therapy

In therapy, vulnerability is often vital for successful and effective treatment. Opening a therapeutic relationship to vulnerability may ensure that your therapist can meet your needs. A lack of fear of vulnerability can prevent you from truly learning and growing in therapy. Therapy should generally be a safe place where you can feel comfortable expressing your feelings and showing vulnerability. This can help you manage mental health conditions, grow your relationship with your emotions, and otherwise reach your mental wellness goals.

Vulnerability in therapy can be particularly beneficial for emotional expression, working through past experiences, and learning to be vulnerable outside of treatment, which may benefit your relationships and life quality.

Emotional expression

Learning to express our emotions doesn’t always come naturally, especially when we have been taught to avoid doing so by parents or other adults during childhood. Emotional expression can look different for everyone. It might be communicating your boundaries, acknowledging your emotional needs to yourself, explaining your feelings to a therapist, or any behavior that helps you connect with and communicate your emotions with yourself and others.

Vulnerability can come into play with emotional expression because many instances of emotional expression can require vulnerability. To have a successful therapeutic experience, it can be essential to work on expressing your emotions to be as honest and open with a therapist as possible. That openness can help you work together as a cohesive and effective team with your therapist.

Digging into past experiences

For many people, therapy can be helpful to work through past traumatic experiences, shape how they view the world, or otherwise impact their emotional wellness. Exploring those experiences can be emotional, upsetting, and frightening in many cases.

Developing vulnerability skills can be an integral part of digging into past experiences. For a therapist to help you move past an event, explore trauma related to an experience, or otherwise assist you in making progress, they usually must understand the details of the experience. That often requires vulnerability - speaking about an experience or feeling, even if it feels scary or upsetting. Because vulnerability in the real world is not always free of judgment, practicing in a safe space like therapy can be helpful.

Increasing trust and vulnerability outside of therapy

Being vulnerable in therapy can also help you build trust in other people. Though therapists are generally licensed professionals trained to come to the session free from judgment and with thoughtful advice, they are still people. Learning to be vulnerable with your therapist can help you trust yourself and others by experiencing the positive effects of vulnerability.

Acknowledging your feelings and communicating them to another person can demand the action of vulnerability because you may not know how the other person will react. Similarly, other forms of communication may leave you vulnerable because you may express yourself without knowing how the other person will respond. Exploring that vulnerability in therapy by learning how to communicate your emotions surrounding topics during a session can also help you do so outside of therapy.

What does it mean to be vulnerable in therapy?

Vulnerability in therapy may look different than in interpersonal relationships with friends, family, or partners. However, the common thread may be that vulnerability typically involves openly communicating your thoughts and emotions with another person.

Being vulnerable might happen in obvious circumstances in therapy, like when your therapist asks you a question you are nervous to answer. Perhaps you’re discussing your fears, an upsetting experience, or an embarrassing moment. An instance of vulnerability may be choosing to explain your thoughts or feelings, even if it feels scary.

Vulnerability may also look like expressing your emotions in a way that generally feels uncomfortable to you. If you avoid crying in your personal life but feel tears coming on during a session, allowing yourself to cry can be a vulnerable act. Similarly, communicating those emotions to your therapist can make you feel vulnerable and help you tap into that openness if you find it challenging to show your anger or fears.

Being vulnerable in therapy might even look like having a conversation with your therapist about something they did that upset you. Maybe they responded to a thought you had in a way that didn’t make sense to you or made you feel hurt. You might take vulnerable action by communicating your feelings to them.

How to maintain vulnerability in therapy

As a client, the most critical part of maintaining vulnerability in therapy may be finding a therapist you can trust. In treatment, vulnerability can be extremely difficult or even impossible to implement if clients are not working with someone who feels safe to them. Your therapist should show empathy during counseling sessions that help create a feeling of safety and comfort. The depth of emotions, hurt, fears, trauma, and experiences you explore in therapy usually needs to be with the help of a supportive, trustworthy therapist. It can be extremely beneficial to find a therapist you connect with who can help you build that trust over time, and vulnerability may come more easily throughout your sessions.

It can also be important to remind yourself that vulnerability can be a part of successful treatment. On days when you find it difficult to be vulnerable, encouraging yourself to do so with the knowledge that it is for your benefit may be helpful. Similarly, your therapist should provide the tasks and framework for you to explore vulnerability in your sessions. Whether those are grounding exercises, options to write instead of speaking your thoughts, or other practices to cope with anxiety and discomfort, your therapist may help you work on your skills over time.

Vulnerability often takes practice. Some people have worked on vulnerability for years and may make it look effortless, but being vulnerable is usually a constant decision for most people. Making that decision in therapy can be helpful for your life outside of counseling.

Learn to be vulnerable in online therapy

Embracing vulnerability can be challenging, particularly if you’ve resisted it in the past. However, working with a licensed mental health professional in therapy can provide you with the safe space you may need to overcome challenges and open up and express yourself in a way that is honest and true to you.

If vulnerability feels especially intimidating for you, you may find that connecting with a therapist online from the comfort of your home can make it easier to open up. As this study explains, online therapy can be highly effective in creating strong patient-therapist relationships and treating a wide variety of mental health disorders and concerns. If you’re ready to be vulnerable and begin your healing journey, please be sure to reach out and connect with the professional support you deserve.