Clients will choose to make themselves vulnerable if they believe that the rewards are worth it. Emotional vulnerability is an essential part of intimacy and feeling truly loved. Everyone has ways to reflexively protect themselves from emotional hurt. For example, your client might be smiley and pleasing (so they don’t offer any threat), or they might be stony-faced and grumpy (so they look tough and dangerous). They are hiding their deeper thoughts, feelings and desires from view so that people can’t use those thoughts, feelings or desires to manipulate or hurt them. They feel vulnerable, so they act defensively.

Remember, the more important someone is to you, the easier it is for you to feel hurt by them. When a stranger ignores, rejects or attacks you, that’s bad enough; but when an Attachment figure does, the pain is so much worse. That pain causes your amygdala to see your loved one as a threat. In a committed relationship, you organise your life around an Attachment figure. A rupture in that relationship threatens not just your feelings but also your living arrangements, your financial security, and your connection with your children (if you have them).

So, when their partner is upset, insincere, grumpy or withdrawn, your client may feel very vulnerable to hurt. Their instinctive response is to protect themselves. But when your client puts up their walls and acts defensively in turn, this is an ineffective way to try to care for themselves. It destabilises the Attachment relationship, making them more open to significant hurt in the long run.

To maintain their connection, they must accept their vulnerability to their significant other rather than fight it. Being vulnerable is part of acting with integrity. Consciously sharing what’s happening inside you does give their partner information they could use to hurt them. It’s a risk. But they are far better to take that risk and find out whether their partner can meet them, as well as whether they can look after themselves when their partner is unavailable.

Being vulnerable requires being Differentiated — knowing and showing how it is for you at the same time as being accepting of and interested in how it is for your partner. Being vulnerable also requires effective management of your neurobiology, i.e. good self-regulation. Your client’s impulse to protect themselves will arise and require managing. Remember, tolerating vulnerability is a hallmark of those who are Securely Attached. If they’re just ‘acting Secure’, then learning how to be vulnerable, rather than focusing on the anxiety of how vulnerable they feel, is a crucial component. The script below offers your clients a structured pathway to being vulnerable with their partner. Feel free to use it in your practice.

Here is a step-by-step guide for how to respond when you feel vulnerable or hurt.

I feel VULNERABLE
(maybe because I have been hurt)

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Triggers reflexive impulse to self-protect or act out, distract, feel numb, etc.

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Recognise the impulse for what it is, allow self to feel the VULNERABILITY and don’t let yourself act impulsively

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Go slow and self-soothe — attend to VULNERABLE or hurt feelings (including reaching out to friends and other supports)

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Organise your thinking — maybe write some notes, or practise talking out loud to yourself or a friend, so that you have clear, non-judgemental language to describe what’s going on for you

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Be VULNERABLE
Open up to partner about the original VULNERABLE or hurt feelings (use non-blaming descriptions)

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Compassionately explore and discuss the VULNERABILITY, focusing on meanings you make, your interpretations and insecurities (not the same as justifying self-protective behaviour)

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Be sure to talk about how much VULNERABILITY and hurt is from your upbringing rather than focusing on what your partner did

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In adult attachment, there are real dangers if we simplistically apply this picture of what a “stable attachment object” looks like to our intimate relationships. While it is unhealthy to deny our emotional and practical dependence on our partner, it is also unhelpful to have unrealistic expectations of their ability to meet our needs without help. As adults, we have much more complex needs than an infant, many more resources of our own and we are wired for autonomy as well as dependence, so we have to strike the right balance between self-care and being cared for.

Our relationship needs to be one of interdependence, of teamwork and mutuality. A leading attachment researcher, Jude Cassidy, suggested* that to make adult attachment work we need to both need to exercise four key abilities.

1. The ability to seek care

If we are feeling stressed or threatened, it is important that we reach out for help, rather than isolate and avoid. This requires trust that other is reliable/responsive and also trust in the self as lovable (developing a positive image of self may require healing). Note that, unlike an infant, an adult is expected to ASK for care. In developmental terms, thinking that your partner “should know” what you need without you asking is a key sign that a person is still in the “symbiotic” stage of development.

2. The ability to give care

If our partner is the one who feels stressed or threatened, we need to be able to recognise this, respond to their requests for help and make our selves available, to put their emotional and psychological needs first (temporarily). As well as being loving, this requires respecting the truth of another, accepting a range of ways of being and feeling that are different from our own (i.e. supporting your partner the way they need it not the way you want to give it).

3. The ability to maintain an autonomous self

Intimacy requires knowing what you think, feel and want as well as taking individual responsibility for your actions and being able to regulate your own emotions. Many of us either are either overly dependent on our partner to feel acceptable, loveable, sexy etc OR we emotionally isolate in an attempt to avoid all emotional vulnerability. Maintaining a strong sense of self whilst staying connected to your partner, regardless of their mood or behaviour (within reason) is essential for relationship stability.

4. The ability to negotiate closeness

We have to be able and willing to deal with the anxiety raised by difference, especially around how much closeness and intimacy we want at a given moment.   Partners are often not automatically in sync and so need to NEGOTIATE the level and nature of contact. To be able to negotiate closeness, having positive learning experiences help. Examples include:

• Trust in self (“knowing yourself”)
• Trust in others/the world as reliable
• Trust that this relationship is solid

As well as being essential for secure attachment, points 3 & 4 are crucial to the process of Differentiating (see our previous blog for an explanation of this concept). Note how much these abilities rely on the autonomy and self-regulation of the individual. While we do want people in intimate relationships to be able to rely on each other, it is important that therapists do not over-emphasise the role of the partner in providing emotional regulation. A key reason for this is, when it is a conflict with my partner that is causing me distress, it is often not practical for me to look to them for assistance, at least in the short term. I have to be able to settle myself, soothe my own hurts and behave in a way that is constructive for myself and our relationship.

Paradoxically, if we can both do that, then we will be much less reactive or avoidant in the relationship and hence become “stable attachment objects” for each other over the long term.

* “Truth, Lies and Intimacy – an attachment perspective” by Jude Cassidy (2001). Attachment and Human Development, Vol 3 No 2 September 2001.