On Being a Wuss

This is an offering for those of us who sometimes walk around with a bit of anxiety. It seems pretty common these days.

Try to get your head around this statement: “I accept my vulnerability.”

It's not about the fact that, for example, in a bad economy you are vulnerable to cut backs, it's about the emotional vulnerability inside of you.

"I accept my vulnerability."

Say the little sentence a few times, and try to mean the words. Rephrase the sentence, if that helps. Try, “I do feel vulnerable (in my situation), but that’s because vulnerability is a part of my make-up; and I accept that vulnerability.” Or, “I spend energy resisting my vulnerability, but if I accept it, I won’t have to expend that energy. It is, after all, a part of who I am.”

In other words, you are anxious because a part of you is, well, a wuss. That’s okay. There’s wussness in each of us. We were certainly wusses when we were little kids. You have to admit that. Well, the wuss program is still there. Always will be.

If you actually accept that there’s a wuss inside you (okay, I’ll define it; it's a subpersonality, a natural child ego state, one component of the cluster of subroutines that make up who you are), then you don’t have to resist him/her.

Accept your vulnerability. You’ll still have the problem that provokes it, and you'll still have the appropriate, short-term emotional response flow through you, but you’ll have measurably less angst.

One example: Belinda is afraid her pet turtle is going to die. Belinda for days has been feeling an underlayer of anxiety. She can’t change the turtle situation, and of course there is a sadness that goes along with it. But she doesn't like the anticipatory anxiety. The fear.

That's right. There's a third party here: aside from the turtle's health problem and the appropriate sadness response, there's the fact that Belinda's struck by it in a way she doesn't like.

Belinda would be smart to say, My turtle is going to die. It makes me feel terrible. The fact that I carry this anxiety with me comes from the fact that I have a wuss inside me, a vulnerability. I accept my vulnerability. I accept that i have a vulnerable child in my psyche. Lovable, perhaps, but vulnerable. And that's okay.