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Vulnerability Quotes

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Vulnerability Quotes

“When basic human needs are ignored, rejected, or invalidated by those in roles and positions to appropriately meet them; when the means by which these needs have been previously met are no longer available: and when prior abuse has already left one vulnerable for being exploited further, the stage is set for the possibility these needs will be prostituted. This situation places a survivor who has unmet needs in an incredible dilemma. She can either do without or seek the satisfaction of mobilized needs through some "illegitimate" source that leaves her increasingly divided from herself and ostracized from others. While meeting needs in this way resolves the immediate existential experience of deprivation and abandonment. it produces numerous other difficulties. These include experiencing oneself as “bad” or "weak" for having such strong needs; experiencing shame and guilt for relying on “illegitimate” sources of satisfaction: experiencing a loss of self-respect for indulging in activities contrary to personal moral standards of conduct; risking the displeasure and misunderstanding of others important to her; and opening oneself to the continued abuse and victimization of perpetrators who are all too willing to selfishly use others for their own pleasure and purposes under the guise of being 'helpful.”

NeedsHumanityEvilWeaknessAbuseShameVictimGuiltVulnerabilityManipulationNeglectSurvivorAbandonedChild AbuseExploitationEmotional AbuseDeprivedAbandonmentProstitutionDeprivationAbuse Of PowerBasic NeedsGuilty ConscienceVictimizationOstracismEmotional NeglectExploitInvalidationAbuse Of Authority
Author:J. Jeffrey Means
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“Being Scared-off by Evil Lastly, we deny the presence of evil because we are terrified by the horrendously hurtful, cruel, and bloody kinds of evil people tell us about—if we are willing to listen. This was poignantly brought home during an interdisciplinary case conference involving a resident who was counseling for the first time a woman who had been sexually abused. As we worked with him, it became clear that he was resisting entering what he called the 'psychic cave" of her sealed—off experience from which she was shouting for assistance. Because of his resistance, he was not providing her the support and guidance she so desperately needed, and he was not facilitating her working through the abuse and hurt that were continuing to impact her life. As he was confronted about this at one point in the conference, he stated tearfully: "I'm afraid if I help her move into her memories. I will have to go with her, and if I go with her, my view of the world as a basically good and safe place will be shattered. I'm not sure I can handle that for myself, or be able to think about the fact that my wife and kids may be more vulnerable living in this world than I can be comfortable believing" (Means 1995, 299).”

EvilFearAbuseVictimMental IllnessVulnerabilitySurvivorChild AbusePtsdSexual AbuseWorldviewChild Sexual AbusePsychotherapyCounselingRapidJust WorldNature Of The WorldJust World Beliefs
Book:Trauma and Evil: Healing the Wounded Soul
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“When I was little, I had a children’s book called ‘Guldhjerte’ [Goldheart], which I had very clear and happy memories of. It was a picture book about a little girl who goes into the forest with some slices of bread and other stuff in her pockets. But at the end of the book, when she’s gotten through the forest, she’s standing there naked and with nothing left. And the last line in the book was: ‘But at least I’m okay,’ said Goldheart. I read the book several times, in spite of the fact that my father thought it was absolute rubbish. The story of 'Breaking The Waves’ probably comes from that.”

GivingSacrificeGoodnessVulnerabilityChildren S Book
Author:Lars von Trier
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“These scientific studies countervail the influential claims of the Kants, Nietzsches, and Rands about the nature of human goodness. Compassion is not a blind emotions that catapults people pell-mell toward the next warm body that walks by. Instead, compassion is exquisitely attuned to harm and vulnerability in others. Compassion does not render people tearful idlers, moral weaklings, or passive onlookers but individuals who will take on the pain of others, even when given the chance to skip out on such difficult action or in anonymous conditions. The kindness, sacrifice, and jen that make up healthy communities are rooted in a bundle of nerves that has been producing caretaking behavior for over 100 million years of mammalian evolution.”

ScienceCompassionPsychologyGoodnessVulnerability
Book:Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life
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“Andrei avoided the internet as well and this evasion only added to his gloom. He loved music, especially old songs, and he loved movies, of all sorts. If he had the patience, sometimes he would read. While most of the pages he turned bored him to sleep, certain books with certain lines disarranged him. Some literature brought him to his feet, laughing and howling in his room. When the book was right, it was bliss and he wept. His room hushed with serenity and indebtedness. When he turned to his computer, however, or took out his phone, he would inevitably come across a viral trend or video that took the art he loved and turned it into a joke. The internet, in Andrei’s desperate eyes, managed to make fun of everything serious. And if one did not laugh, they were not intelligent. The internet could not be slowed and no protest to criticize its exploitation of art could be made because recreations of art hid perfectly under the veneer of mockery and was thus, impenetrable. It was easy to use Chopin’s ‘Sonata No. 2’ for a quick laugh, to reduce the ‘Funeral March’ to background music. It was a sneaky way for a digital creator to be considered an artist—and parodying the classics made them appear cleverer than the original artist. Meanwhile, Andrei’s body had healed playing Chopin alone in his apartment. He would frailly replay movie moments, too, that he later found the world edited and ripped apart with its cheap teeth. And everyone ate the internet’s crumbs. This cruel derision was impossible to escape. But enough jokes, memes, and glam over someone’s precious source of life would eventually make a sensitive body numb. And Andrei was afraid of that. He needed his fountain of hope unblemished. For this reason, he escaped the internet’s claws and only surrendered to it for e-mails, navigation, and the weather.”

ArtInspirationSadnessLonelinessInternetSocial MediaVulnerabilityAdulthoodSensitivityNumbness
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“He clutched the handle of the knife with the same strength the gang members used to kick him. He was worthless, like a crumpled bit of trash thrown, but not worth picking up, that doesn’t even deserve a courteous foot nudge to hide. He was unseen, like the skin beneath the toga of a female statue made of stone. He was ugly, like the damaged face of the deformed stranger you try not to look at because you don’t want it in your memory. He was as soft as the pull-tab of a soda can, as easily broken as a straw wrapper, and as close to death as a baby slug crawling next to a group of kids at summer camp.”

PainSadnessLonelinessDepressionVulnerabilityIsolationUglinessAlienationSad QuotesThe Goodbye Song
Book:The Goodbye Song
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“Splendora cried, often times, bout things and people for no reason anybody else could see. Her nerves, or her brain, seem to "feel" things bout everything round her. Sensitive, I blive they call it, cordin to the new words I learn from my lame son who paints. She "sensed" things. Thought most everybody was sad. We laughed at her then, but as I grow older I begin to think she is right. She said even things like curtains, trees, some animals, looked sad to her. I looked this word up with my son, vulnerable. That's what she thought. People, too, even when they be laughin, she said.”

FeelingsSadnessVulnerabilitySensitivity
Book:The Matter Is Life
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“A culture of a shame and secrets is bound to hide its dirty laundry and continue the same offences for generations. You can't healthfully and successfully sweep your dysfunctions under the carpet and pretend nothing has happened. Whether it's your family culture, or your religious culture, or both, this is a great way to grow deep roots of poison and toxic dysfunction in all of your close relationships. It's a great way to destroy yourself and your loved ones. End the culture of secrecy. End the follied pride that seeks to cover up its shame rather than admit it. Face your offenses head on with a desire to fix them and heal.”

TruthHealingPrideLiesAbuseShameAddictionVulnerabilitySecrecyToxicity
Author:Jennifer DeLucy
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“You may find that you have been telling yourself that practicing optimism is a risk, as though, somehow, a positive attitude will invite disaster and so if you practice optimism it may increase your feelings of vulnerability. The trick is to increase your tolerance for vulnerable feelings, rather than avoid them altogether. […] Optimism does not mean continual happiness, glazed eyes and a fixed grin. When I talk about the desirability of optimism I do not mean that we should delude ourselves about reality. But practicing optimism does mean focusing more on the positive fall-out of an event than on the negative. … I am not advocating the kind of optimism that means you blow all your savings on a horse running at a hundred to one; I am talking about being optimistic enough to sow some seeds in the hope that some of them will germinate and grow into flowers.”

OptimismVulnerability
Book:How to Stay Sane
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“This is the problem with the gig economy, I think as I squirm around in the trunk. Everyone is so vulnerable and the rules for what constitutes civilized behavior--well, they're coming apart so quickly I've decided those rules were illusions all along. We have stopped seeing each other as people, as fellow travelers on this dying earth; we just see a gig or an economy.... The system is designed to keep us so depleted that we forget our sense of decency and become so mercenary about our own survival that we have nothing left to contribute to the common good.”

WorkEmpathyVulnerabilityIsolationDecencyCommon GoodDepletionFreelancersContractorsGig Economy
Book:I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories
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“Work is freighted with difficulty and possibility of visible failure, failure to provide, to succeed, to make a difference, to be seen and to be seen to be seen. Work, therefore is robust vulnerability, and a good part of the time, a journey leading us through very unbeautiful private and public humiliations.”

SuccessWorkFailureDifficultyVulnerability
Book:Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
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“Love is not the answer, peace is. Throughout my whole life I have experienced and seen others use love as a reason to treat people with unkindness by being controlling, jealous, shouting in anger, and projecting guilt and shame. If you love someone but there is not peace in your heart when you think of that person then your work is not done. Do not stop at love, continue all the way towards the freedom of inner peace. Love starts when peace begins. Without peace love is simply a mask for our insecurity, judgment, and egoic attachments.”

LoveInspirationalGivingHeartFeelingsWisdomSpiritualPeaceGrowthRelationshipsFreedomAnswersConsciousnessKindnessPsychologySecurityExpressionEgoJudgmentAngerShameGuiltInsightInner PeaceZenLaw Of AttractionGuidanceHeartacheVulnerabilityInsecurityAttachmentInsightfulFreedom Of ChoiceAnger ManagementFeelings Of LoveDaily LivingAnswers To PrayersReleasing The PastNon JudgmentReleasing ResentmentReleasing ShameGiving And Receiving Love
Author:Alaric Hutchinson
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“Be vulnerable! It is not someone else’s responsibility to break down your walls to get to you. It is your responsibility to let them in. This is crucial. Be more vulnerable with people in your life today. Know that being vulnerable is not a weakness – vulnerability means you are strong and secure enough within yourself to walk outside without your armor on.”

InspirationalWisdomTruthSpiritualGrowthRelationshipsConsciousnessPsychologyAcceptanceInner PeaceZenVulnerabilityPower Of WordsNew AgeNew ThoughtPower Of LoveStrength And Courage
Book:Living Peace: Essential Teachings For Enriching Life
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“Learn to observe your emotions without needing to act or distract yourself from them. Within that stillness your truest most vulnerable thoughts will arise and it is these thoughts that will show you where your healing work must begin.”

InspirationalWisdomSpiritualGrowthHealingConsciousnessLearningPsychologyMeditationThoughtsEmotionsInner PeaceZenVulnerabilityStillnessIntrospectionHealing The PastHealing InsightsStillness Of The MindDaily Practice
Book:Living Peace: Essential Teachings For Enriching Life
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“I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don’t let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry. Or how we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don’t say anything because we’re frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship. Morrie’s approach was exactly the opposite. Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won’t hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, “All right, it’s just fear, I don’t have to let it control me. I see it for what it is.” Same for loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely—but eventually be able to say, “All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I’m not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I’m going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I’m going to experience them as well.”

FeelingsFearLonelinessEmotionsVulnerability
Book:Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
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“Few of us enter romantic relationships able to receive love. We fall into romantic attachments doomed to replay familiar family dramas. Usually we do not know this will happen precisely because we have grown up in a culture that has told us that no matter what we experience in our childhoods, no matter the pain, sorrow, alienation, emptiness, no matter the extent of our dehumanization, romantic love will be ours. We believe we will meet the girl of our dreams. We believe 'someday our prince will come.' They show up just as we imagined they would. We wanted the lover to appear but most of us were not clear about what we wanted to do with them-what the love was that we wanted to make and how we would make it. We were not ready to open our hearts fully.”

LoveLove QuotesAbuseVulnerabilityFirst LoveLove At First SightOpen Your HeartSomeday My Prince Will ComeLove TransformsOne Day My Prince Will Come
Book:All About Love: New Visions
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“I embraced joy as my birthright. Radical black joy is inherent as a human need and not some special trinket you get after you rise high enough on the social-economic ladder or unlock some special level of desirability or accomplishment. –Tanya Denise Fields, “You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience and the Black Experience” (edited by Tarana Burke and Brene Brown)”

JoyGrowthHealingHealthShameResilienceVulnerabilityBlack WomenBlack Joy
Author:Tarana Burke and Brene Brown
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“I admire strength but I fall in love with vulnerability. I admire strong people. People who stand for what they believe , people who are not easily moved by temptations, people who fight their own feelings for their values, but succumb to a mere thought of pain to others. But I absolutely fall in love with them when even for a minute they give away, they break down and cry, the heart takes over, in that moment they are most human, in that moment they take my heart away.”

VulnerabilityBeing HumanWordions ComWordionsDrishti BablaniI Admire StrengthI Love Vulnerability
Book:Uns
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“Sometimes being vulnerable as a child is not knowing what lies ahead. We think our choices will make a huge difference in our lives because our parents and other elders spend so much time making sure we think before we act and make our minds up about what we want to be “when we grow up”. Some are already at that stage early on, some are not. We learn the ways of the world all in good time, but being vulnerable is to be human. We never stop.”

HumanVulnerabilityComing Of Age
Book:Gargoyle
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