The New Social Worker Vol. 20, No. 4, Fall 2013 | Page 13

Perhaps vulnerability is a no-no for helping professionals, a
weakness okay for others—those we are trying to help—but not us.
Are we good at giving help, but not so good about asking for the
help we need? As a recent graduate told me a short time ago, calm
is what is admired. If you’re sad, you can’t express it to your supervisor, and there’s no room for collective support for yourself or
others. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is what is required.

We are trained to listen to clients and offer counsel and
solutions. At the same time, we are human and therefore experience vulnerability—as true for us as for our clients. Still, we are
expected to remain emotionally detached and to be altruistic
and cool, whether dealing with clients or with colleagues.

I field-tested this sense of vulnerability recently in a survey
of District of Columbia area social workers across the spectrum
of experience, asking what was most difficult or stressful, personally and professionally, past or present. Here are a few responses:
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The lack of clarity and confidence that I experience when
clients are struggling with life questions or crises that are
similar to mine.
The amount of time it took to feel like a competent and
valuable professional.
I often feel there is more I could or should be doing and
worry that my choices regarding what to focus on will not
be most efficacious.
Am I where I belong? Is someone or somewhere else a better fit?
Being a (barely) “good enough” therapist while trying to
recover my health and maintain “good enough” Mom status. I know I'm not unique! How the hell do other people
manage to balance these?!

Here’s the bottom line: These feelings don’t go away with
experience—we need to recognize and deal with them. If we
think they show weakness, then we’re ashamed and unlikely to
talk about them. A negative spiral of isolation, more vulnerability, and shame may result.

Self Compassion, Peer Groups, and Positive
Emotions

Brene Brown (2012), a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, is a popular
speaker whose TED talks on shame, vulnerability, and wholehearted living have been viewed nearly 10 million times on the
Internet. She has developed theories about vulnerability based
on people’s lived experiences and writes about vulnerability
and shame, including her own experience of the same.

Brown’s research found that connection gives meaning and
purpose to life and that acknowledging vulnerability is key to authentic connection. We learn early to protect ourselves from vulnerability by numbing our feelings, putting on emotional armor,
and acting invulnerable (Brown, 2012). I believe this learning is
reinforced in our training as social workers. What to do?

Brown suggests self-compassion and recommends ideas
proposed by University of Texas psychologist Kristin Neff
(2011), who advocates practicing self-compassion by recognizing our common humanity—because we’re all vulnerable and
imperfect. This is perhaps one way out of the isolation we may
feel—knowing our sense of personal inadequacy is part of the
shared human experience.

A more well-known approach is the peer group. In order
to be a safe community in which to get support, members must
have the courage to be authentically vulnerable. To be connected, we must speak what may feel unspeakable or shameful—and ask for what we need. The experience of feeling known
by peers in this way and accepted can be healing (Counselman
& Weber, 2004). We develop resilience to shame (Brown, 2012,
2007).

Self-compassion and peer groups are two ways to deal with
the difficult feelings that are part of our professional lives—they
help us feel better. In fact, recent research in positive psychology shows that happiness (or positive emotions) also:
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broadens our repertoire of how we think and what we do
increases our flexibility to bounce back
helps us cope better with negative situations
motivates us to do new things and have new relationships
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