Learning to Feel Safe Enough to Be Vulnerable Again

When the person you trusted with your most vulnerable parts becomes the reason you’re afraid to open up again

There is a particular kind of trauma that can come from having someone use your vulnerabilities against you. When someone you trusted deeply has seen you at your lowest and then later uses those same vulnerable places to hurt you, it can change the way you experience vulnerability altogether. You may know intellectually that the person who hurt you is no longer in your life, but your body can still remember what it felt like to be exposed and unsafe.

It played out in my marriage.

My now-ex-husband saw me at my lowest low, an incredibly humiliating and vulnerable place to be. I was psychotic and was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward. Years later, in the months leading up to me asking for a divorce, he made the statement to me twice that he “wished he would have left me when I first got sick.” He wished he would have walked out the door and left.

So much for “in sickness and in health.”

Of course, he tried to explain the comment afterward by saying that he meant he felt like he had made my life worse after I got sick and that I would have been better off healing without him. That may have been how he wanted me to understand it, but that isn't how it landed.

It was a gut punch that left me pretty speechless.

There were certainly times when he was supportive. He went to appointments with me and helped with things like dinner on the nights when I had no energy. But there were also so many times when I felt completely abandoned. He chastised me for wanting to explore different approaches to healing, including ones that I believed might eventually allow me to come off of the medications I had been prescribed. He was embarrassed by me and by my inability to “be normal” again quickly enough.

And later, my mental health became his explanation for why we were getting divorced. I was the “crazy” one.

The pain of having someone close to you present during your darkest and most vulnerable hours, only to eventually turn around and hurt you with the very things they witnessed, cuts incredibly deep. It makes you question whether you could truly trust someone again. It can make you want to shell up, do as much as possible on your own, and keep as much of yourself as possible to yourself.

One of the major lessons I took from that experience, though, was compassion.

Because if I’m having a conversation with someone now and they begin telling me something vulnerable about themselves, I don't want to be a person who makes them regret opening up. In fact, I frequently try to lighten the mood and make people more comfortable in those moments by saying something like, “I’ve been humiliated and put in a psych ward twice. I understand, and your feelings are safe with me.”

I know what it feels like to be ashamed of something that happened to you. I know what it feels like to wonder whether someone is looking at you differently because of the parts of your story you just revealed. And because I know how painful it is when someone responds to that vulnerability without compassion, I want to be intentional about offering the opposite.

At the same time, I don't think “armoring up” and keeping everyone out is always the answer. I also think we need to be cautious and discerning about who we share our sensitive feelings and stories with. Not everyone is empathetic, and not everyone has our best interests at heart.

Especially during a healing process, there can be wisdom in protecting ourselves while we are learning how to trust again. We don't have to give everyone access to our deepest wounds simply because they have shown us some kindness. Vulnerability is not something we owe to everyone.

There is a difference between protecting yourself and closing yourself off. I think for a long time I confused the two.

When you have experienced betrayal from someone you trusted deeply, it can feel safer to simply stop needing people. If I don't tell you what I'm struggling with, you can't use it against me. If I don't let you get too close, you can't hurt me. If I handle everything myself, I don't have to experience the disappointment of realizing that someone I trusted wasn't actually capable of showing up for me.

There is a certain logic to that kind of protection. It isn't irrational. At one point, it may have been exactly what you needed to survive.

But survival strategies can remain long after the circumstances that created them are gone.

I think that is part of what I've been noticing lately. I am no longer living in the same circumstances I was living in when I learned to protect myself this way, but there are still parts of me that react as though I am. My mind may understand that I am safe, while my body is still waiting for the moment when being seen becomes something I will regret.

And vulnerability can be especially complicated when you have had your most vulnerable moments used as evidence against you.

When someone knows your deepest wounds, your fears, your mistakes, your insecurities, or the moments when you weren't functioning at your best, there is an incredible amount of trust involved in allowing them to know those things. You are essentially saying, “Here is a part of me that could be hurt. I trust you not to hurt it.”

When that trust is broken, it doesn't just change the way you see that person. It can change the way you see vulnerability itself.

You start wondering whether being known is worth the risk.

I've had to remind myself that the answer isn't necessarily to become less vulnerable. It is to become more discerning about where I place my vulnerability.

Not everyone gets access to the deepest parts of us, and I don't think they should.

There is something very different about being guarded because you believe nobody can be trusted and being discerning because you understand that trust is something that should be built over time. One comes from fear. The other can come from wisdom.

I don't have to tell someone my entire life story the first time I meet them. I don't have to hand someone the most tender parts of myself simply because they have been kind to me a few times. I can let people reveal who they are through their consistency, their character, their ability to take accountability, and the way they respond when I have a need or a boundary they don't particularly like.

I can pay attention to whether someone makes me feel safer over time or whether I find myself constantly explaining, minimizing, or defending my feelings around them.

That kind of discernment has become really important to me.

Because I don't want to become so afraid of being hurt that I miss out on being known.

There is something deeply human about being known by another person and discovering that they don't think less of you because of what they see. They don't use your pain to gain power over you. They don't bring your worst moments back out when they need ammunition. They don't make you regret trusting them.

They simply hold what you gave them with care.

And I'm incredibly thankful that I have people in my life today who have shown me that vulnerability doesn't always have to come with fear.

I have people I can talk to honestly. People who have seen the messy, imperfect, painful parts of me without making me feel ashamed of them. People who have earned my trust enough that I don't have to constantly wonder whether something I share will eventually be used against me.

That kind of support matters more than I think we sometimes realize.

We talk a lot about healing as something we have to do within ourselves, and there is certainly an important part of healing that belongs to us. But safe relationships can become part of that healing, too. When you repeatedly experience people responding to your vulnerability with compassion instead of judgment, you begin to have new experiences that challenge the old ones.

Someone listens and doesn't weaponize what you told them.

Someone sees you struggling and doesn't make you feel like a burden.

Someone disagrees with you without attacking your character.

Someone learns something tender about you and treats it as something to care for rather than something to use.

Those experiences matter.

They don't erase what happened. They don't magically make you trust everyone again. But I think they can slowly teach us that the person who hurt us was not representative of everyone who will ever love us, care about us, or know us.

Sometimes healing happens in the quiet accumulation of those experiences.

A friend responds with compassion when you expected judgment. Someone respects a boundary you were afraid to set. You share something you normally would have kept to yourself, and instead of feeling exposed afterward, you feel understood.

Little by little, the body learns something new.

Maybe this person is safe.

Maybe I don't have to hide this part of myself.

Maybe being known doesn't always end in being hurt.

I'm still learning this.

There are parts of me that are very comfortable being independent. I know how to take care of myself. I know how to figure things out. I know how to keep moving when I'm hurting, and I know how to carry things quietly.

Those abilities served me well when I needed them.

But I don't want my strength to become another way of keeping people out.

I don't want independence to become isolation. I don't want discernment to become suspicion. And I don't want protecting my heart to mean that my heart never gets the opportunity to experience something different.

Because there are good people in the world.

There are people who can hear something tender and respond with compassion. There are people who can disagree with you without attacking your character. There are people who can know your history without using it to define you. There are people who can witness your difficult moments and still see your humanity.

I know that because I am trying to become one of those people myself.

Maybe that is one of the unexpected gifts of having experienced what it feels like to be handled without compassion. I know how much it matters when someone chooses gentleness instead.

I know what it feels like to be ashamed, so I want people to feel safe telling me the things they're ashamed of.

I know what it feels like to have your worst moment remembered as though it tells the whole story of who you are, so I want to remember that people are always more than the hardest thing they've ever been through.

And I know what it feels like to have your vulnerability turned into a weapon, so I never want someone to regret trusting me with theirs.

Perhaps healing isn't about becoming fearless enough to be vulnerable with everyone again.

Maybe it's about becoming grounded enough to know that we can protect ourselves and still remain open to connection.

We can have boundaries and tenderness.

We can have discernment and compassion.

We can be independent and still allow ourselves to need other people.

And we can learn, slowly and patiently, that being vulnerable doesn't always end in being hurt.

Sometimes, someone sees you exactly as you are and chooses to handle your heart with care.

Sometimes, having those people in our lives long enough helps us remember that it is safe to be seen.

I think some part of me is still learning how to believe that.

But I'm grateful that I don't have to learn it alone. ❤️‍🩹