Every human being is born into this world helpless; the immensity of the soul with its entire potential, its wisdom, seems to be trapped in a small and helpless baby-body. It is a crucial moment, because as a newborn baby, we are dependent and in constant need of being taken care of, which causes our first experience in life to be one of extreme vulnerability. This sense of vulnerability, which is the energy of the ‘Inner Child’, is still very close to our original sense of uniqueness, of who we truly are. As such, it is the doorway to our Essence.
Growing up and developing the many parts of our personality that protect the vulnerable Inner Child, the child energy gets buried; we lose the connection with Essence to a large extent. In order to survive in this world, we need to develop a certain power and hide our vulnerability.
The Inner Child energy is the part in us that has an extremely fine-tuned sensitivity to the moods of people and is able to detect the slightest changes in the atmosphere around us. It is the part in us that enables us to be truly intimate with others. Therefore, it’s important to rediscover this part in ourselves in the course of the inner work we do. On the other hand, the strong parts of our personality stand between us and our deeper contact with other people. Having our vulnerability and our Inner Child energy available to us enriches our relationships. It seems a paradox. We need our strong parts to get along in life, but we also need to wake up to who we really are and stop being just the strong parts, in order to be whole again. Blocking the vulnerability blocks the passageway to our core being.
Each year on the first day of our five-day training, we give all the participants a raw egg to carry with them – day and night – for the duration of the training, as a symbol of the vulnerability of their inner child.
Carrying the egg on their body helps them remember, both mentally and physically, how vulnerable they are in many different situations, including on a physical level. They become more sensitive to the needs of their own ‘Inner Child’ as well as the needs of other people; they become more caring, which expresses itself in opening a door for someone or getting them a cup of tea. Even hugging becomes an act of conscious holding, respectful of the boundaries that are so easily trodden over.
Being identified with power – with the strong parts of the personality – is one of the main reasons that many intellectual, powerful people are often cut off from their vulnerability. They consider vulnerability equal to weakness, as having no backbone, or being a wimp, and they look upon power as the utmost goal in life. They have forgotten that love and affection are the basis of true strength, and that genuine power ultimately derives from balance.
They may concentrate on developing power, financial success, and recognition, which might make them a successful businessman, but if they forget to develop other qualities such as sensitivity, social awareness, and the ability to be close to someone, they may ultimately find themselves incapable of playing some of the cards that life might deal them. They may not be prepared to have a fulfilling, intimate, and meaningful relationship, to deal with personal loss, or with the death of a loved one.
It is significant to note, the number of high-powered businessmen who radically alter the course of their lives after a heart attack or a life-threatening illness. It is as if they suddenly realise that there is a whole other life to be lived and cherished.
They open their eyes to a whole new set of values and wonder how they could ever have survived without them. They begin to recognize that daring to be vulnerable is the same as true strength.
Ben, a banker, had been working and working and working for years, often neglecting himself as well as his wife and kids. He loved them dearly but was so identified with being the ‘responsible father’ that he often forgot about his inner needs and failed to recognise that neither he, nor his wife and children, were missing out of something extremely valuable. Deep emotional contact.
At 48, Ben had a heart attack and was rushed into hospital. When he came round, his wife was sitting next to him. He looked at her with tears in his eyes saying, “I love you so much. I have been neglecting you as well as myself. I needed to nearly die to understand what I have been doing. I need and I want to change. I want to come back to being close to you and the children.”
Ben fully recovered and altered his way of living dramatically. He acknowledged his physical vulnerability as well as his inner needs. He began to see how he had cut himself off from feeling by just living his power side. The atmosphere in the family changed and they all became conscious of the values of love, care, and affection. Ben began to control his workload so that he and his family could finally spend more quality time together.
In Breathwork Therapy, we are always in search of the original sense of ‘Self’ and the connection to Essence, without losing the indispensable sense of power we need to function in the world. The road leading there is through the rediscovery of our vulnerability. It demands that we be completely and brutally honest with ourselves. It needs us to admit our failures, our distress, our fears, our pain, our compulsive behaviour, and our weaknesses as parts that belong to us. We need to stop denying what has gone wrong. Only then the space for change can be created.
On the other hand, being identified with weakness, feeling like a victim, is not the same as being conscious about vulnerability. Vulnerability is certainly not the same as weakness.
Sometimes clients are identified with the victim part in their personality. We have to support them to re-connect with their strength by becoming conscious about which areas they still act like victims. Acting like a victim means not taking responsibility for who they are and will most often cause them to become angry, which seems – only temporarily – to bring back the power they were looking for. The moment they take responsibility for their thoughts and feelings, giving up the blame, they begin to honour both sides of their personality, both the power side and the vulnerable side. Taking responsibility is being conscious about the different sides of our personality. People regularly confuse anger with being powerful. When we get angry, we first need to reflect, stop re-acting, and look inside to feel what is going on, then ask ourselves some serious questions.
Because anger derives fear, we need to ask, “What am I afraid of, underneath my anger?”
Then, we need to ask ourselves if we really want to make decisions from the part of us that is afraid.
And finally, we need to know what we would do if we were wise and compassionate. Then we can create authentic power.
Anita, a woman with a good job, was making herself emotionally completely dependent on the man she was with. Whenever he treated her in an unfriendly way, which happened regularly, she would make excuses for him, denying the true nature of their relationship. Even during her sessions, she swallowed her anger to the point where she was nearly suffocating. When Anita finally exploded, I asked her, “Underneath your anger, what are you afraid of?” She became conscious of her belief of not being able to survive without a man. “Would you decide about what you need coming from that position of fear, or would you rather decide from a position of inner wisdom?”
She recognised the unhealthy space she was in, a space from which she didn’t want to decide about staying in the relationship.
Honouring her fear, while seeing that in reality she was very well capable of fending for herself, Anita decided to take a two-month break from the relationship to test her true feelings. She re-discovered her strength, found that her dependency was not love, and broke up with her partner permanently.
Both man and woman have to develop their power side, their male energy.
Both man and woman need to develop their intuitive and sensitive side, their female energy.
Without female energy, male energy may express itself as brutal force, manipulative behaviour, and misuse of power.
Without male energy, female energy may express itself as dependency, manipulative behaviour, and misuse of weakness.
To become and be whole, we always need a balance between these two energies.
©️ Tilke Platteel-Deur Vulnerability & Power 2008
