When we are underconfident, the last thing we would think of doing is admitting to our distress; a confession threatens to make an already difficult situation untenable. So, when we are sad, we smile; when we are anxious, we change the subject; when asked how we’re coping, we say, ‘Very well indeed, thank you.’ We aren’t deliberately out to deceive; we’re practising the only manoeuvre we know and trust in response to our vulnerability.
Yet there might be an alternative to this punishing and isolating philosophy – one that involves going in precisely the opposite direction. We might reveal that things really aren’t perfect for us; that we’re struggling to cope…and that we are badly in need of a hug.
The ability to pull off this feat relies on holding on to a further piece of maturity: the knowledge that everyone is, at heart, as scared, sad, lonely and anxious as we ourselves are. Even if they are choosing not to let on about any of this, we can feel confident in assuming that they are doing so not because they are more robustly constituted than us – but because we are all collectively hemmed in by an image of what it means to be serious adults: one that doesn’t allow us to share a sufficient degree of our vulnerable reality.
To help you practice the art of vulnerability with a partner, we’ve designed an exercise – taken from our latest book, The Confidence Workbook – that we call Vulnerability Tennis. To download for free, click the link below.