How to Cope with Vulnerability Hangovers

What they are, why they arise, and how to recover (no greasy food required)

Now that I’m in a bigger city, I have opportunities that I didn’t have in the smaller one. Over the past two days, I attended a talk and workshop with John J. Prendergast, Ph.D, a Sounds True author, spiritual teacher, retired depth psychologist and one of the most empathetic humans I’ve ever had the privilege to meet. He is what fully embodied and awake awareness looks like.

Fifteen years after a spontaneous awakening and almost 20 years into a meditation practice, this was only the second time I’d had the opportunity for in-person meditation with others, and it was the first time I’d been part of a group workshop.

The potential healing that vulnerability offers us

On Friday night, I noticed my body visibly (and palpably) trembling with the fear of being judged and ostracized. This happens especially when I become overstimulated and dysregulated, because people often see it as something other than overwhelm—naïveté or emotional immaturity, a lack of boundaries, anger issues—and then they judge me for that. With John’s witnessing, I was able to talk about all this without attaching to it, and the terror dissipated. It was magical.

I had deep, meaningful conversations with people I’d never met before, in a beautiful centuries-old Quaker meeting house surrounded by trees. During a dyad-based exercise, I experienced complete presence, deep peace and a sense of oneness. A hummingbird even made an appearance.

Not this exact hummingbird, but aren’t its feet adorable? (Credit: Sarah Chauncey)

Even in this idyllic setting, by Saturday afternoon, my system was way overstimulated. It was a deeply fulfilling experience, to be sure, but seven hours was still a huge stretch for me. My energy was completely dysregulated and flew out from every direction. Just as I’d feared on Friday night.

Strange, because for the most part, I’d been able to stay present and drop into inner quietude (my comfort zone). Not strange, because my social capacity is typically—you might want to brace yourself—a one-hour interaction with one person per week.

The “morning after” vulnerability

After four decades of inner work, shame doesn’t arise in me nearly as much as it used to.

So it shocked me to wake up and notice waves of shame cascading over me. My face flushed, my chest constricted, my body ached, and I just wanted to roll over and pull the blankets over my head.

Brené Brown coined the phrase “vulnerability hangover” in her 2010 TED Talk, “The Power of Vulnerability.”

“A vulnerability hangover is that post-exposure dread of: “Oh god, what did I just share?” —Brené Brown

Intellectually, I know this feeling doesn’t mean that anything is wrong, but rather that I stepped outside my comfort zone (substantially so!) and allowed myself to be seen and held in authentic presence. In a culture that values performance and conformity, that’s a radical act. But still, staying in bed seemed like an excellent idea.

In a culture that values performance and conformity,
being authentic is a radical act.

I cringed as I recalled opening up to strangers—including this highly respected teacher, in multiple moments—who were completely present, kind and warm, but who—how would I know?—might have been just being kind to me. Was I cornering people? Why was I acting so weird? My entire mind-body system (ego) still remembers and recoils at the consequences of not “fitting in” as a child.

“Just be yourself…eww, not like that!”

For more than 50 years, I’ve heard a variation on the above comment (maybe you have, too?). When people invite us to ‘just be yourself’ and then reject or dismiss us for doing exactly that, it’s painful. When it happens repeatedly, “I’m not acceptable as I am” becomes a belief we hold subconsciously.

The vulnerability hangover re-awakens that experience of shame—not that we’ve done something wrong, as Brown says, but that we are something wrong.

As a child, I was told on a daily basis that I was a burden to others. Even though I now understand that’s not true, old tapes of that criticism arise, as does the fear of it being true. Whenever people spoke kindly to me (adults or kids), my father would say, “They’re just being nice to you. They don’t mean it.” Sure, that was his own projection, but the child-part who heard this incessantly was the same part that was activated this morning. It took a while to recognize that the shame was just the result of an old tape playing. Not truth, just old conditioning.

Being neurodivergent is difficult for many reasons, not least that being mis-perceived is a daily occurrence.

Tips like “just centre and ground yourself” are designed for much denser energy and more contained NT systems, not ND ones. In addition to executive functioning issues (remembering what to do when we feel overstimulated), we seem to have porous energy fields that can’t filter anything out. Our nervous systems become overwhelmed much, much more easily. It takes exponentially more time—often alone, or with animals, and in nature—to reground.

Healing the vulnerability hangover

I wanted to pull the sheets over my head and go back to sleep. Here’s what I did instead:

• Allowed the feelings to be there.

• Put on the comfiest sweat-clothes I have to provide sensory comfort.

• Listened to soothing music, without lyrics to stimulate the mind (Mozart piano sonatas, to be specific)

• Cleaned the apartment to move the energy through the body. One upside of living in ~300 square feet is that it only takes an hour to make everything look pretty good. (And nothing brings me back down to the physical plane like cleaning the litter box. Again, perhaps you can relate?)

• Ate a nourishing breakfast.

• Once my brain was fully alert and out of the ‘falling back asleep’ zone, I meditated.

• Played my usual word games, which gave me a sense of routine and comfort.

• I didn’t go for a walk, because this is a huge tourist weekend—more people was the last thing I needed.

To borrow a Buddhist phrase, I chopped wood and carried water. I focused on the mundane in ways that supported my well-being. This is what I recommend for times when you have a vulnerability hangover, although your list might look different than mine. By the time I began writing this post, most of the shame feeling was gone. Not all, but at least I recognized it as an old tape.

The entire workshop was about letting go of control, which I’ve had lots of practice in doing over the past 15 years… in all areas except human relationships. Letting go is a scary thing for someone to whom people are largely or completely unpredictable.

Finally, I remembered what I said at the end of the workshop: “If I can trust life enough to take care of me when everything fell apart, and to move to a different city without knowing why, surely I can trust it to bring the right people into my life.” It took re-regulating to be able to access that memory.

Some energetic residue lingers, even now. I know that it’s not “me,” and it’s just an echo bouncing around my energy system. Eventually that kinetic energy will exhaust itself and dissipate, like a squash ball that bounces around a closed court and eventually rolls to a stop.

What brings up vulnerability hangovers in you, and how do you handle them?

In the comments, I invite you to share what you do when vulnerability hangovers strike. Which situations are most likely to give rise to these emotions, and what practices help the emotions move through you and release?

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