Zoe Shobbrook-Fisher writes about how reframing our perception of vulnerability can help us have more access to joy. Zoe is one of the lead teacher trainers of the Mindful Self-Compassion course in the UK.
What happens in your body, heart and mind when you repeat the word vulnerable a few times? For many of us the word might be heavy with negative connotations: weakness, exposure, risk. What if we radically reframed vulnerability and understood, as mindfulness and compassion invite us to, that avoiding vulnerability is a source of suffering? We might even see it as a pathway to genuine freedom.
Developing the courage, and the personal support system, to be vulnerable is at the heart of the mindful self-compassion course. I teach and train others to teach this radical programme. For me this courage has grown through practice, over and over meeting the layers of defences I’d built up. Over time (and still learning) I’ve discovered that embracing my vulnerability forges the sense of connection I long for, leading me to a greater intimacy with life, with others and to more joy, love, and creativity.
Rethinking vulnerability
So, I’d like to suggest some ways we might rethink vulnerability.
At its simplest, vulnerability means to be at risk of harm. It means to be exposed, affected, touched by life. We are porous, susceptible beings. Vulnerability is the core of all emotions and feelings. To feel is to be vulnerable. There is an inherent fragility, instability, unpredictability to existence. This is dukkha, the Pali word often translated as suffering or dissatisfaction now translated by some contemporary Buddhist teachers, like Christina Feldman, as vulnerability. With life comes vulnerability, that’s the deal.
As it’s part and parcel of being human the only choice we have is how we relate to it. As the poet and writer David Whyte writes, it is for us to decide how we inhabit our vulnerability.
“Our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.”
Resist or inhabit your vulnerability
How do you want to inhabit your vulnerability? Our deepest impulse is understandably to resist vulnerability, driven by our instinct for survival and comfort. In our own particular ways we harden, we contract and perhaps focus on strategies to control life to stay as safe as we can. Some of those strategies are of course wise and helpful. We seek safe places to live, we look after our physical and mental health. We contribute to our communities to do what we can to make the world a good place to live in. But subtly we may also believe that if we try hard and search widely enough we will find a way to be immune to pain, physical and emotional. We may imagine that mindfulness and compassion will be the way we might avoid our vulnerability, along with all the other behaviours, diets, therapy etc that we co-opt into the project. We search for the magic pill, and we live in a culture that offers us plenty of possibilities for fuelling this fantasy, numbing out and papering over the cracks again and again.
But sooner or later our strategies fail. It doesn’t work. We discover resistance is futile. We still get sick, we age, we still experience loss and relational hurt and we think ‘why is this happening to me after all my efforts to be well, happy, Ok?’ Me who is so mindful and compassionate! We might start to think all our efforts have been for nothing. Not so. In our wobbles we find ourselves ‘standing at a crossroads’ as Christina Feldman puts it. It turns out none of us can bypass our vulnerability. It’s a wonderful paradox that in this realisation, this radical acceptance of the way things are, lies our deepest freedom – the freedom of an open heart.
Ice mountains in our hearts melt
Once we give up the hard work of trying to avoid or suppress our vulnerability the core question becomes “What’s possible in response?”
The practice of mindful self-compassion empowers us to take the next step. We turn toward vulnerability, our tenderness, our wounds, the impossibility of life sometimes, with love and care. All those times when things don’t work out as planned, when life serves us lemons, when we make mistakes, we hold ourselves just like we would someone very dear to us. We tend to ourselves as we fall. We empathise with ourselves, we soothe, and we encourage ourselves to act when needed. No longer brittle and defended, we learn to feel bravely vulnerable.
I was one of those kids who always had scabby knees, with fresh cuts and bruises acquired from racing after footballs and netballs and climbing trees. I remember the hot anger I felt when I fell, and how my nine-year old self swore like a sailor much to the horror of the nuns at my catholic primary school. I berated my stupidity and felt the hot shame of the indignity of losing my footing. Once just before the finish line at the front of a race. Oh, how tenderly I feel towards that little girl now. I’d scoop her up and acknowledge how much it hurts, the shock of it. I’d remind her how falling over happens to others too, and that I understand how disappointed she is and how hard she’s been trying. I’d tell her I love her, unconditionally, in all her weepy raging mess.
With this self-compassionate response the shame I felt for the ways in which I am vulnerable, sensitive to the ‘ouch’ of life, has melted away over time. My hard defences have softened. That’s the work, softening and surrendering to life, with steadiness, again and again. Anam Thubten describes the transformational process as like “the ice mountains in our hearts melting”. It can be very tender work, but it’s also a great relief.
Creating space for joy
Facing my fear and turning towards the tender places has taught me a lot. It’s a work in progress but here are just some of the benefits I’ve noticed.
I’ve learnt that acknowledging vulnerability opens us to care. It’s a necessary part of the shift to befriending ourselves and being our own best ally. I recognise my limits (a bit more) now rather than pushing on through regardless. I’m more careful about the places I go, and the company I keep. This is the protective active aspect of self-compassion. As a young adult I thought I could handle it all. It was a defence that blinded me to the risks I ran in my early relationship choices. I really was at risk when I thought I was invulnerable! Now I appreciate the mature stance of self-care as I prioritise protecting myself from avoidable harm.
I’ve learnt that vulnerability melts separation. When we drop our defences, we recognise the same raw vulnerability in others. This shared humanity connects us across divides, paving a way to more peace and understanding. It takes courage to be authentic, but it is this “wobbling into connection” that brings me into deeper intimacy with others.
I’ve learnt that by avoiding pain, we also rob ourselves of joy. As the saying goes, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Brené Brown, whose research identified vulnerability as our greatest strength writes,
“When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding… We pull back from joy for fear of the inevitable loss/pain that follows. We try to beat vulnerability to the punch.”
Opening up to life
Coming to terms with vulnerability opens us back up to life. It’s a profound transformation for many of us. We begin to navigate our relationship to everything with an opening heart, meeting whatever arises with courage and a willingness to be real. I’ll let Mark Nepo have the last words on this. I suggest you notice what happens in your body, heart and mind now, as you read this.
“We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time.
When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which, if not put down, diminishes our chances of joy.
It’s like wearing gloves every time we touch something, and then, forgetting we chose to put them on, we complain that nothing feels quite real. Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable.”
The next Mindful Self-Compassion course runs Saturday mornings from 18 April 2026. Find out more here. Zoe is running a workshop, Freeing the Heart for Joy on Saturday 13 June in Brighton. Find out more here. If you are interested in training to teach Mindful Self-Compassion you might like to attend a free information session. Find out more at the bottom of this page.