Episode 4 - Are Emotions Vulnerabilities or Weaknesses

Today on Chop Water Carry Wood we talk about how expressing emotion is viewed as a weakness and how reframing this could be valuable.

I was inspired by a recent discussion - they had gotten very upset and were profusely apologizing for crying. They appeared almost as, if not more, upset about the fact they were crying than the actual traumatic experience we were discussing. That pulled me to this thought: “What if we think about emotion as a vulnerability instead of a weakness?”

That is to say: let’s view emotion as an intrinsic expression of human feelings and be aware of both its positive and negative aspects.

For example: Imagine a tank in the army, its armor is one of its defining characteristics, and that armor confers both the strength to protect the tank and the weakness of reduced mobility. If we think only of the tank’s reduced mobility we have missed the point of its armor.

So when we consider our emotions as a vulnerability it helps to remind us that any weakness they may confer is accompanied by strength as well.