How to Conquer Your Parent-Induced Vulnerability Hangover
Vulnerability is a key ingredient that can build healthy relationships between friends, family, and romantic partners. When you’re embraced for who you are at your weakest and most vulnerable form, a relationship can strengthen.
Unfortunately, not everyone grows up in an environment that supports a growing relationship. For many, being vulnerable with their parents or family isn’t easy.
In an ideal world, your parents should make you feel safe, seen, and heard. If you and your family have a complicated relationship, especially if you have emotionally immature parents, you can have difficulty sharing your opinions, perspective, thoughts and feelings freely. In moments when you do have the courage to open up, you might feel regret or shame at the thought that you overshared your emotions, needs, or desires. That’s what Brené Brown terms a “vulnerability hangover.”
Dealing with a vulnerability hangover is extremely uncomfortable, but over time sharing about how you feel can become easier and lighter.
What does a Vulnerability Hangover Feel Like?
A vulnerability hangover contains lingering negative feelings after opening up to someone else.
Imagine you have a new friend that makes you feel safe and comfortable enough to share with them about your inner world and experiences. When you’re with them, the conversation flows and it feels good to finally connect with someone on a deeper level. They hug you and you’re grateful for the conversation with such an understanding friend.
That is, until you get home and you start to feel a sense of sinking shame. You begin to analyze everything you said and did and try to remember exactly how they responded, minute by minute.
“Did they look judgemental when I said that?”
“What if they just gave me that hug out of pity because they didn’t know what to say?”
You overthink and worry about what your friend thinks of you now that they know your personal thoughts. A part of you wishes you had just kept it to yourself, even though your friend was caring and supportive.
This example illustrates why vulnerability hangovers can happen in even the best scenarios with people that make us feel safe. Being vulnerable can be associated with deep feelings of shame that you experienced with your emotionally immature parent(s), and can be hard to shake in other relationships in adulthood.
Why those with Emotionally Immature Parents are Especially Prone to a Vulnerability Hangover
Emotionally immature parents have a knack for making you feel like you're "walking on eggshells.” Sharing something so personal and intimate with such uncertainty makes you feel even more guarded and afraid. Add in lots of shame on top of that and you have the perfect recipe for experiencing a vulnerability hangover that can make you feel even worse.
Here's a breakdown on why you are so susceptible to a vulnerability hangover when you have emotionally immature parents:
You expect an inconsistent response
Instead of feeling like you’re confiding in a consistent and trusted safe source, you never know what kind of reaction you’ll receive. At times, your emotionally immature parent might be overly supportive, which leads you to feel more comfortable sharing something even more vulnerable in the future.
However, their responses are unpredictable.
The next time you try to express your thoughts or feelings they might be dismissive and berate you for your point of view. This can make you question your own experience. At the very least, you’ll be unsure of how much you’ll want to open up to them again in the future.
This uncertainty then carries over to anyone you have a relationship with. How can you feel safe sharing with someone else if you’ve been conditioned to always be on the defense?
You have difficulty setting boundaries
Having healthy boundaries with others does not come easy, especially when you don't have a good role model to guide you.
You might have dealt with a parent who was always micromanaging you, overly involved in every aspect of your life, and highly critical of your choices. They might have treated you more like another adult when you were a child, unfairly allowing you to feel responsible for their emotional wellbeing.
Your parent’s wants and needs become hard to distinguish from your own wants and needs. Your parent’s feelings were put ahead of your own. You were used by your parents to meet adult needs as a child.
Changing these dynamics and patterns can be extremely difficult when you try to assert yourself and how you really feel. Your sense of self can become so damaged that you feel shame in being your own person with your own desires.
You have a fear of judgment or rejection
When you are able to assert yourself to others, you do so with hesitation and worry that you won’t be accepted.
Growing up, your emotionally immature parent frequently dismissed or criticized your emotions. You probably heard that you were being “so dramatic” or that you were “overreacting.” Your emotions went unvalidated and that left you feeling rejected by your parent. It’s natural that this fear would create heightened anxiety after you’re vulnerable with others.
You experience a constant state of alert
Your home environment with your emotionally immature parent was unstable and inconsistent and you’ve been conditioned to try to keep on your parent’s good side. You never know what could trigger unpredictable behavior, emotions, or responses.
To prevent any unwelcome responses, you tried to control each situation as best you could. Your hyper-vigilance and constant state of alert meant that vulnerability was especially tricky to navigate.
Moving forward, you can be all too aware that being vulnerable comes with risks. Anxiety can become associated with letting your true self out and leave you feeling anxious after sharing with someone.
You overthink
You are hardwired to do whatever it takes to keep yourself safe. Naturally, you have learned to be very careful when dealing with your emotionally immature parent growing up because of how unpredictable their reactions can be. You wonder what they might do with what you’ve shared with them.
You're all too accustomed to emotional guilt trips that leave you doubting yourself and feeling responsible for their emotions. As you’ve grown, you’ve learned to overthink as a way to cope with this manipulative behavior from your parent.
When sharing with others, overanalyzing and worrying about how each interaction went is part of how you maintain safety for yourself, but it also drives your vulnerability hangover.
You internalize shame
Internalized shame is possibly the biggest factor why those with emotionally immature parents are so likely to experience a vulnerability hangover.
When your parent constantly dismisses how you feel, you start to feel shame for expressing the more personal parts of yourself. You can start to believe that your emotions are a burden to others based on how your parent responds to your vulnerability.
You should know that your emotions are not a burden to others, but that your emotionally immature parent lacks emotional availability to give you what you need. Feelings of being unworthy and unwanted stem from this neglect that started early on and can still show up after you share personal aspects of yourself to others.
How to Start Healing
Now that you know why those with emotionally immature parents are more prone to experiencing a vulnerability hangover, let’s look at how to overcome them so you can continue to grow healthy and supportive relationships in your life.
Show Self-Compassion and Label the Survival Response
Self-compassion helps shed feelings of shame and judgment that happen after you're vulnerable with your others. Whenever you start to feel ashamed of sharing your feelings and being vulnerable with someone, take a moment to show yourself compassion.
Talk to yourself kindly and label your survival response by recognizing what you’re experiencing.
This might look like saying to yourself, “It makes sense I'm over-analyzing because I've been dismissed or betrayed in the past. I'm going to be gentle with myself as I build healthier relationships and friendships.”
Practice Grounding and Mindfulness
Vulnerability hangovers live in the unknown out of your control. You can’t control what others think of you, but you can learn to ground yourself in the present moment and mindfulness techniques to help calm your anxiousness.
Try a deep breathing exercise by focusing on your breath as you inhale and exhale.
You could also try the 5-4-3-2-1 method that actively engages your senses. Identify 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste.
When you learn to practice grounding and mindfulness, you can work through your anxiety more easily without letting it drive your behavior. You will be in control of your anxious feelings without ruminating on them or seeking reassurance.
Slowly Increase the Level of Emotional Sharing
Another way to guard against vulnerability hangovers is to share only what you feel comfortable sharing with others, especially when it is a new and untested relationship.
Over time, you can start to share more deeply as you continue to build a safe relationship with those you trust. Your tolerance for vulnerability will grow as well as your resilience to vulnerability hangovers. With this predictability you’ll be able to have meaningful relationships that won’t cause you to feel shame about yourself.
Find a Safe Place to be Vulnerable in Therapy
One of the greatest causes of vulnerability hangovers when you have emotionally immature parents is the lack of a safe place or person to confide in. That’s why having a safe place to be vulnerable and feel validated is so important.
A trusted therapist who understands what you’re going through can do wonders to help you overcome feelings of shame by helping you through processing your feelings and showing you how to develop coping mechanisms.
Vulnerability Hangover: Final Thoughts
When your parents haven’t been a solid source of emotional safety for you, it’s tempting to believe that you’ll always feel ashamed sharing the more intimate parts of yourself with others and wish you hadn’t. Dreading vulnerability hangovers can keep you from experiencing emotional intimacy with others which is simply too big a cost to your overall happiness and wellbeing.
With some intentional practice, as well as finding trusted and safe individuals, you can start to release the shame and build the beautiful community and support system that you deserve!
