Last week, I had an important conversation with a friend. It involved sharing something important to me and setting a boundary. It was one of those tough-but-crucial conversations.
And boy did I sweat it. I made notes for the main things I wanted to say so I wouldn’t forget in the adrenaline rush of doing something hard. My stomach churned. I paced.
Even though we have a good relationship, it was still a hard conversation to have. It felt awkward and uncomfortable. I barely made it out alive. (Only a minor exaggeration…)
The first time I heard the term was from Brené Brown. She described the feeling the day after doing her (very famous) TED Talk as experiencing a huge vulnerability hangover at having gotten up and talked about shame (including her own) on a big stage. While my conversation was not quite akin to taking the main stage at TED, it was no cake walk.
But here are two things I know now:
I can have hard conversations and survive them
The feelings afterward, those wrought pangs of vulnerability, are survivable and remind me that I did something that was important for me to do
Sometimes we think that the sign of doing the right thing, or doing it well, is that we feel great afterward. That we’re skipping through green fields of grass, singing like Maria in The Sound of Music. But the important things are rarely that easy. Like the scrapes and bruises we get while learning to ride a bike or a new sport, these are the emotional discomforts that come with leaning into a new or difficult behavior.
The key is to do it anyway.
Oh, and to have a delicious carton of ice cream handy for that inevitable vulnerability hangover…
