I’ve been immersed in the teachings of Brene’ Brown for the past few months and had a huge moment of sadness and realization when I heard this quote. 

“When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding.”

Brene Brown

If that doesn’t make sense to you (it took me a few times) Brene’ goes on to say that “Joy is the most vulnerable emotion we experience. And if you cannot tolerate joy, what you do is you start dress rehearsing tragedy.”

What that means to me, is that we can be so afraid of living in the now and fully allowing JOY into our life, that we instead start to worry or hold back for fear of what we might lose.

Is that as terrifying and sad a thought for you as it is for me?

This quote made me realise vividly that somewhere along that journey amid the challenges life has thrown at us, I began to close down the emotion of joy as a means of survival … but in doing so I began to lose my capacity for joy – like a muscle it no longer knows how to flex fully.

I don’t smile and laugh nearly as much, I have stopped practicing daily gratitude habits, and overall feel like a key part of who I am has been lost or misplaced… like there’s a gaping hole inside of me. 

And for a naturally positive, bubbly extrovert it feels pretty scary to not be able to fully feel joy in my heart, fully. 

I’ve known for quite a while that something was missing in my life, but had not known why or how, only that I was not able to fully connect with the bright shimmer of who I really am. And it hurts… It hurts to realise that I’ve been covering myself in armour to survive and weather the challenges of this current life. It hurts to feel friends pull away and not know why. It hurts to feel less joy and happiness – like someone just turned the light off, and the removed the light switch. 

Brene’ Brown is a shame researcher who talks about the importance of Vulnerability in helping us to connect with others and be more true and authentic as ourselves. 

Those words of hers words hit me hard when I first hear them, as the realisation came that I have been limiting my capacity for Joy, through being afraid to be Vulnerable.  For it seems when we limit our expression of vulnerability, we inherently put a cap on the range of empowering joyful emotions we can experience too.

I feel like the world is suffering, many people are experiencing the same things, and we all need to be less silent, more real, and more vulnerable.

Reflections:

Maybe you would like to join me in being more truly you again too????


The growing conversation around vulnerability feels very poignant to me; don’t you agree we can so easily hold ourselves apart from the things we desire or deserve? So – ask yourself

  • what are you fearing or avoiding??
  • are you living in fear of what you need to face, and thus play the avoidance game instead?
  • where do you feel un-worthy of love?

If you are open to exploring the topic of vulnerability too, I’d love to hear how this resonates with you. ❤

xxxx Bree | Bree Taylor Molyneaux

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About the author

why Im loving essential oils | Bree Taylor Molyneaux

Bree Taylor Molyneaux is a Brisbane based women’s self-care and wellness coach specialising in emotional self care. Read more of her blogs around self care and essential oil wellness solutions here.

She most often supports women with challenges in fertility, pregnancy + birth, birth trauma, motherhood + parenting and travels Australia offering workshops on emotional self-care , low-tox living & holistic wellness solutions for families.

As a trained a Clinical Hypnotherapist, NLP practitioner, HypnoBirthing® educator, and personal renewal facilitator, Bree also supports women all around the world with 1on1 coaching and also has a range of hypnosis downloads available on iTunes.