Survival of the Weakest

Do you believe showing weakness is a bad thing? That it puts a target on your back? 

Many people adhere to this belief. If crying is a display of weakness, you ought never let it show. It’s a matter of self-preservation. The world is all one massive competition where the strong survive and the weak suffer, so you have to project strength at all costs.

Some emotions are considered weaker than others, too. While you’re busy shoving them all into that bottle in your mind, anger has permission to leak out, because it proves you’re strong. Anger threatens those who would use your weakness against you.

This perception is an isolating one. Humans are social animals, and depending on each other is what has kept us alive as a species. Dependency, connection, and vulnerability—these are adaptive strategies that help us to succeed evolutionarily.

Mental health discussions often try to reframe vulnerability as strength instead of weakness. It’s a noble goal that aims to justify intimacy to people who prefer isolation, but it’s a flawed argument to that point. Calling vulnerability strength ignores all of the nuance of a deceivingly rigid belief, when really, justification lies in that nuance. Vulnerability is, by definition, weakness. It describes exposure, susceptibility, or otherwise weakness to an attack or manipulation. What needs reframing is, instead, this belief that strength beats weakness.

Survival and evolution are neutral. There is no effort to create the strongest life form. Competition is not between organisms that are better or worse—strong or weak. It’s between individuals who are most fit for their circumstances. That’s the meaning of “survival of the fittest.”

Fitness, therefore, is also neutral. It’s not just a synonym for strength. It reflects that circumstances can change at any time, and which adaptations are beneficial will change with them. In truth, the only trait that could be defended as an explicit strength instead of a neutral feature is diversity. By having a variety of traits within one group, that group is more likely to adapt and survive changes in their circumstances. Each individual with unique traits within the group are equally neutral, regardless of their supposed strengths and weaknesses, because it is not strong individuals who create value or survive. It is whichever ones happen to adapt best to the next change in the environment.

Showing weakness is not a bad thing to be avoided at all costs, and neither is showing emotion. Expressing vulnerability is a neutral trait which will be fit for some circumstances, and unfit for others.

Dependency is a unique human adaptation that has increased our survival. Making ourselves weak to each other promotes connection and growth. By caring for each other and building relationships, more individuals survive and our groups become more diverse, which helps us to be prepared for new diseases, predators, and environmental disasters.

Vulnerability is weakness, but it has a purpose. By identifying vulnerabilities, we can strategically lean on one another to create a strong support network. By sharing vulnerability, we build relationships and connect emotionally—the same connection that is part of our human social adaptations. Showing our weaknesses may not be a strength directly, but it is often what is most fitting to develop relationships.

This Too Shall Pass

In developing those relationships, emotional vulnerability is often understood as giving someone else the power to hurt you. Fear of being hurt, betrayed, or targeted are factors that dissuade people from being vulnerable. It’s not a risk they’re willing to take. Self-isolation is more comfortable, whether it is actually advantageous or not.

This is something that could more aptly be reframed.

Firstly, being hurt is not a risk at all. Avoidance of emotional intimacy or relationships for fear of being hurt is a hopeless endeavor, because injury is guaranteed.

Like all of your other emotions, sadness, joy, fear, and hurt are temporary. Feelings flow in and out of you like breath does. You might not be comfortable with them, but bottling them up or avoiding them certainly will not improve your comfort level. If you want being hurt to hurt less, you have to allow yourself to feel without judgement, and then let your feelings pass.

You will feel hurt as often as you feel any other emotion, whether you express your vulnerabilities or not. The temporaryness of your emotions will still be true if you express as few as you can. Change is still inevitable. The decision, then, becomes whether or not you value connection over isolation.

Secondly, you’re not in any more or less control when you self-isolate. There is a perceived control in rejecting and denying relationships, but vulnerability is not actually sacrificing control over your emotions to someone else. You’re just as in control of the hurt you do feel when you invite someone else to observe your weaknesses as when you bury them.

This isn’t so simple as choosing to not be hurt when other people reject you. I don’t mean to say that you ought to have so much control over your own feelings that you steel yourself when expressing emotional honesty. That wouldn’t be vulnerable at all, and would fail to help build those vital connections that are so important to human nature.

Instead, what I mean is that your fear of rejection is not a fear of rejection. When you fear or feel hurt by opening yourself up to others, you’re not actually afraid of them. Another person’s actions and beliefs are fairly neutral. What you’re afraid of is confirmation of your own beliefs.

When you share something you’re really confident in, it doesn’t really matter if another person rejects you. At worst, you’ll probably think they’re weird for having an opinion about something so natural to you.

When you share something vulnerable, though, you are putting insecurities on display. You already believe in those insecurities. You fear that you’re not good enough, or there is something wrong with you. The thing that is so scary and painful about sharing those beliefs is that someone else could prove you right.

You’re the one who is holding those beliefs against you like a threat and hurting yourself.

Therefore, expressing vulnerability is as much about connecting with others as it is about connecting with yourself. It is not surrendering control to someone else; it is consent to observe your relationship with you, and the ways that you hurt and comfort yourself.

Each time you open up to someone else is an opportunity to try and treat yourself more gently, to reduce the sting of believing hurtful things.

Follow Your Fears

Vulnerability also doesn’t look the same for everyone. People often say they’re afraid of vulnerability, but vulnerability and fear are inherently connected. You can’t be vulnerable without being afraid.

If something that you’ve called “vulnerability” turns out to be completely within your comfort zone, you might need to look further to figure out where your true insecurities lie. As you change, those lines will get redrawn, and investigating what makes you vulnerable will be a lifelong process in order to keep connecting with people.

The best way to identify what makes you vulnerable is by following your fears and analyzing what situations make you afraid.

I consider myself an open book. There’s not a lot about myself that I am afraid of sharing with others. While someone else might keep their feelings heavily guarded or feel deeply vulnerable when sharing stories of their past, I’m not strongly attached to either. I don’t feel vulnerable when I share those things, and I can tell by the fact that I’m not afraid to. Figuring out where my vulnerabilities are involves pushing to find which discussions scare me and putting myself in uncomfortable situations.

It’s as easy as breathing for me to talk about the difficulties I have been through, but I shut down when I have to investigate what I want. I can explain where the root of that insecurity comes from with ease, but grounding myself and deciding, never mind communicating, that I want something? Horrible.

I was able to identify that distinction by investigating fears I have about sexual intimacy. By following that fear, I was able to observe how my subconscious belief that I don’t deserve things I want affects my relationships everywhere else, too.

Now, when I want to nurture my connection with someone else, or improve my relationship with myself, I can lean into that fear. I can subject myself to the mortifying ordeal of confessing that I want something. I have to reassure myself that rejection doesn’t mean I don’t deserve things. There is an inherent value in wanting—whether I receive or not.

Our experiences—hurt, rejection, desire—they’re innately human. Your human experience can’t be a bad thing. There’s nothing wrong with the emotions you feel, and nothing about being you is justifiably worse than other people. The worst you can be is neutral.

So, what is it you’re really afraid of? What is the weakness you’re afraid of showing, and what beliefs do you hold onto that are validating it?

What is the actual obstacle behind your fear of being afraid?

About the Author

I’m an LYF administrator and wellness coordinator who works closely with the writing teams. I have a background in journalism, technical writing, poetry and creative prose.

Introspection and careful behavioral analysis have been my most refined skill. I take a deep care in observing and understanding the people around me. It’s an interest that is only fair or possible to do if you're 100% accepting of what you're going to find in people. To discover the things they can't admit because they dislike it in themselves is cruel and unkind unless you take on a particular perspective that at worst their worst traits are neutral.

I define myself by that perspective of radical acceptance, and I hope that you as readers can feel warmth in my work.