“Does your voice shake? Are you emotional? Are you nervous? That’s actually communicating to the person, ‘This is important to me.’ Me saying something that feels vulnerable, that’s vulnerability. But even more vulnerable is for me to let them know, behaviorally or through nonverbal cues: it’s our willingness to not just share something vulnerable, but to actually be vulnerable in the moment of sharing it,” It’s when there’s a mismatch of the content (this is me being vulnerable) and the nonverbal cues (this is no big deal) that misunderstanding can arise.
