No one talks about the vulnerability hangover

The other day my friend hurt my feelings. We were texting about a project we are collaborating on and I didn’t think my needs were being considered. I started to get overwhelmed and anxious by what I experienced as lack of care. In the past, when I’ve felt this way with friends, family members or partners, I’d go into people pleasing mode, and convince myself that it wasn’t a big deal because I was the flexible one, the one who could better handle disappointment.

But I’ve been consciously trying to change those patterns so instead of not saying anything I decided to communicate how i was feeling: something along the lines of this isn’t working for me. I need this instead of that.

And my friend was very receptive and gracious and you’d think that would be the end of the story. But it wasn’t.

After we were done talking and I started getting ready for the rest of my day (showering, making breakfast tacos, sitting down with my laptop on the couch) I noticed a feeling of dread setting in and getting stronger with each passing minute. It was a mixture of anxiety and lethargy. Am i getting sick? Am i hormonal? I tried to shake it off to no avail. I got grumpier and grumpier. Felt weaker and weaker. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t write.

Damn it’s happening again, I thought. The vulnerability hangover.

A vulnerability hangover is when you do something emotionally challenging that requires being courageous, and afterward there are lingering feelings of emotional exhaustion and/or fear that there will be unwanted repercussions for advocating for yourself.

Take the issue with my friend for example: I have for most of my life been a people pleaser because of growing up in a volatile family environment where I took it upon myself to not make it worse by being “too needy”. I made myself as small as I could to avoid my mom’s anger. Some of my most difficult memories are of being punished for doing things i hadn’t anticipated would set my mom off.

My trauma taught me that if I prioritize my needs I will lose the affection of the people whom I love the most. I might even be punished. And despite how much I have healed those wounds my nervous system is not used to me standing my ground.

So in the aftermath of taking up that kind of space in my relationships I feel uneasy, melancholy and a little paranoid: Maybe my friend is secretly mad at me now. I should just text them and say we can do what they want instead.

These sad and anxious feelings are a temporary emotional backlash for breaking unhealthy patterns similar to when you work out and push yourself by lifting a little more weight, you will most likely be sore the next day. Maybe when you get sore and it’s difficult to move your body, you think, I feel weaker, this sucks. But it’s all part of the process of building muscle.

the more I heal, the more