KYV - Know Your Vulnerabilities

As an individual, it's easy for us to understand what we are good at, which is our strength but on the contrary, what we are not good at is not our vulnerability but it's our weakness, which still has a scope for improvements. In a context to human, vulnerabilities is a quality or state when exposed then chances are that possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally by others.

To my understanding, we also have similar animal instincts and behavior qualities that of protecting ourselves from becoming prey to someone, in a thought that they might hurt us either physically or emotionally.

We do know our vulnerabilities but the very first baby step would be that to acknowledge it by leaving behind the mask of so-called "I am Strong" and it may be true for some people but not for all. So, by covering all our vulnerabilities and not addressing them is not going to make us any stronger. We need to face them, accept them, and conquer them.

Knowing Your Vulnerabilities doesn't mean we are going to reveal them as well. Once we understand our vulnerabilities, the next step would be to protect them, until we conquer them. Revealing our vulnerabilities to someone is like giving them access or chance to hit on it knowingly or unknowingly. It's in our human nature, which would tell us to hit on someone else vulnerabilities unless we are wise enough not to do so. Otherwise, we would exploit to the extent that we hurt others at a very deep level. For an example, let's say, I have a fear of heights but gathered lots of guts to stand near cliff along with a friend and assume, I have told my friend about my fear then certainly that friend would try to push me little forward so that I can feel that fear even for a second. Possibly that friend is joking or trying to pull my leg but the fact remains that they would hit on my vulnerabilities. That's a very naive example and leaving for an individual's imagination to what extreme to be everyone's vulnerabilities and to what possible extent it can get hurt them if they reveal.

I wouldn't contradict myself from my other post where I would have talked about seeking help from someone and being kind enough to seek help without any doubt even if we are seeking emotional help.

This post is not to confuse as well about weaknesses and vulnerabilities and when to seek emotional help and when not to. I don't want to be redundant but to simplify it, I would like to reiterate them that weakness is something we are not good at and for an example, it could be that we are not able to handle a particular relationship, etc. but given the time and having a will power to put effort to handle them well and putting effort to address the core issue, we are certainly overcoming our weakness. On the other hand, vulnerabilities are a quality which talks about why we are bad in handling a particular relationship like being emotionally weak, etc. but exposing our vulnerabilities i.e., by sharing with others has potential possibilities of getting hit if they aren't wise enough to understand.

Sometimes we share our vulnerabilities knowingly or unknowingly with our close ones or we might be at receiving end of information. When we share, we need to understand our nature of vulnerabilities, how much risk it involves not getting self hurt or how could we avoid sharing them but put the information in a totally different way and seek help. And if we are at receiving end of information about others then we should be wise and kind enough not to hit on their vulnerabilities and try to practice cautiousness, it may be funny for a moment or sometimes we understand it but wanted to joke around about it. But, it may lead to trust issues and they may not seek our help in the future or may not share certain information in first place with us, even though they know we could be of their help.

It's a thin borderline of understanding about someone's vulnerabilities and their weakness, let us be wise and kind enough to practice cautious and be a little more responsible when someone is approaching with their problem.

-Ramesh