the heart as it is | courage • grief • beauty

Today’s prompt from Onsite is “What fears do you hold about opening up to others ?

To be honest, at this point in my life I have developed a much better sense about who to be opening up to. Because of the years and efforts of trust built, I know I can open up more easily to my husband, close friends, and mentors. Sometimes if there is fear, it is usually because I am afraid of how they will respond or react, and I am afraid of feeling responsible mainly for their feelings in that manner. It’s difficult to remember while I am responsible to people’s feelings (to be respectful, kind, and accountable as best as I can), I am not responsible for people’s feelings (trying to make them feel better right away because I may be feeling uncomfortable).

I think it is very healthy to be skeptical about opening up to strangers. My favorite analogy for this is from one of Brene Brown’s podcasts, in which she talks with her daughter about a trust jar. We know we can trust someone when they make many efforts to fill up our imaginary trust jar with them. Each trustworthy and safe action is a marble that is deposited into our trust jar. The more the marbles, the more we know we can trust someone. Hence, it is difficult to open up to strangers because they don’t have any marbles with me. The rare circumstance I have opened up to others is in a professional therapy environment or with therapists in general because I expect all those people to help me, but otherwise I only give small amounts of information at a time.