Vulnerability & Healthy Attachment, because we are wired for connection….

One of the biggest misconceptions I hear is that vulnerability is weakness… or that needing connection means you’re “too sensitive,” “clingy,” or “codependent.” Let’s clear that up, please.

Human beings are biologically wired for attachment. Not desperation. Not obsession. Not dependency. Attachment.

Safe, regulated, reciprocal emotional connection isn’t a flaw or a shortcoming, it’s a nervous system need. What we often call “clingy,” “avoidant,” or “too emotional” is usually a trauma response: a nervous system that learned connection was unpredictable.

We build our attachment style based on:

• how our needs were responded to

• whether our emotions were met with curiosity or punishment

• whether proximity felt soothing or dangerous

• whether love meant safety… or labor

So yes, many adults become anxious, avoidant, or shut-down, because their inner child still cringes at the possibility of being unseen.

Let’s define them simply:

Anxious attachment: “I chase closeness because I’m terrified of being left.”

Avoidant attachment: “I distance myself because intimacy feels risky.”

Secure attachment: “I stay open and grounded , even through vulnerability, because love feels safe.”

Here’s the truth most people don’t want to face: Codependency is not connection It’s the absence of self. Healthy connection is built on vulnerability, sovereignty, and mutual presence… not fixing, controlling, clinging, or disappearing. When vulnerability is rooted in fear, it creates dependency. When vulnerability is rooted in truth, it creates intimacy. And vulnerability is the bridge between wounded attachment and secure connection.

Why?

Because vulnerability softens the armor around the heart. It restores energetic circulation, and it shifts the chakra system out of defense and back into openness. Your heart chakra cannot expand while your ego is running interference. Your nervous system cannot downshift into safety while you’re busy performing a false self. When you allow vulnerability, you’re saying: “I want to experience love more honestly than I want to protect my fear.”

Most people think they fear judgment or rejection from others. But let’s be honest:

Who’s been rejecting you first?

Who’s been judging your voice before it ever leaves your throat?

If you strip it down, you realize much of our fear around vulnerability is self-imposed. We reject our own need for closeness before anyone else has the chance. We silence our truth before anyone hears it. We assume abandonment before any real conversation happens.

Vulnerability, done consciously, rewires that pattern.

It teaches the body:

“I am safe letting someone see me.”

“I don’t need to hide the parts I once shamed.”

“I can open without expecting punishment.”

The more you show your true emotional landscape, the more your system learns what secure connection actually feels like. And life starts matching that frequency. Because this isn’t just psychological work, it’s energetic.

One of the most powerful (and overlooked) ways to open the chakra system is through honest, regulated vulnerability. When the throat is unclenched, the heart softens. When the heart softens, connection becomes safe. When connection is safe, the nervous system stops bracing for loss.

This is how healing becomes relationship, and relationship becomes healing.

3 STEPS TO USE VULNERABILITY AS POWER:

1. Name what you’ve been hiding… without explanation.

Not as a confession. Not as a plea. But as truth. Begin with: “I want to share something real.”

You are practicing self-permission. Not asking for acceptance.

2. Stay with the discomfort instead of collapsing or fixing it.

Your fear response is just the limbic system remembering a wound. You don’t need to exile the sensation… breathe through it and stay present. This is emotional alchemy: pain transmuted into authenticity.

3. Ask a second question:

“Whose voice told me vulnerability was dangerous?”

Was it a parent? A partner? Religion? Culture? Your own mind? Most of the time, the fear is not yours. It’s inherited.

Vulnerability becomes power when you realize that protecting yourself used to be necessary… but now it’s outdated. Let the armor fall.

You are not meant to numb your heart to survive, you are meant to use your heart to wake up.

Reflection Prompt

• Ask yourself: Why do I fear vulnerability?

Most people answer: “Rejection” or “judgment.”

Let me press deeper: If rejection terrifies you…

which part of you have you already rejected first?

If judgment scares you…

why are you already judging your own voice, needs, or truth?

Vulnerability doesn’t expose you to danger. It exposes the lie or limiting belief that hiding is safer. Shame dissolves with presence. And you don’t create healthy attachment by withholding your heart, and you create it by showing up honestly and letting yourself be seen without performing.

Bent, not broken.

Soft, not small.

Whole, not armored.

Your heart was never meant to be a wall… it was meant to be a doorway.

Before You Go…

If you want to go deeper into this work… to actually understand your patterns, rewrite your beliefs, and shift your emotional frequency from the inside out, grab a copy of Bent, Not Broken: A Journey Through Transformation.

It’s not just a workbook. It’s the mirror, the map, and the medicine.

Or pick up The Little Bent Book of Mindset Shifts for in-depth lessons, reflection prompts, and perspective-shifting questions that help you actually apply this inner work to your real life.

More books. More tools. More “WTF-is-happening-to-me” resources are on the way.

Stay tuned!

Your becoming is just getting started.