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In this episode, I’m joined by Carol Smaldino, a psychotherapist and author of Vulnerability Protected: Visions of a Dancing Mind.
Carol and I get straight into vulnerability and what it actually means to be vulnerable. Not just telling everybody everything about yourself, because vulnerability and oversharing are two very different fucking things. Sometimes oversharing can actually be another way of protecting ourselves rather than genuinely allowing somebody close.
We talk about victimhood, anger, shame, relationships, and whether vulnerability itself can become something we hide behind. If I’m the vulnerable one and you’re not, does that suddenly make me right and you the problem? Carol talks about vulnerability becoming almost a sport, where being more emotionally open than somebody else can actually be used against them.
We also get into therapists doing their own work. Carol is still in therapy. I’m still in therapy. For me, sitting in the therapist’s chair without being willing to sit in the other fucking chair doesn’t make much sense. Knowing the theory and having the qualifications doesn’t mean we’ve dealt with our own shit.
Eventually we end up back where I seem to end up in most of these conversations. I can spend my life trying to change everybody around me, or at some point I have to deal with me. Carol talks about learning that lesson herself, particularly in her relationship with her husband, and realising that sometimes the other person has an equally valid position and we have to look at our own part.
Carol leaves the next guest with this question:
If you think of yourself living in Nazi Germany at the time of Hitler, do you imagine yourself as a resistor? And if so, in what way?
Carol Smaldino can be found at: https://thehumanclimate.com/about/
Purchase Carols Book on Amazon: Vulnerability Protected
Who the Fuck Are You? In Session with a Psychotherapist
Hosted by Chad Taylor. Author of It’s You. Oh Fuck. It’s ME
No tips. No fixing. Just real conversations.
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