Opening with Discernment: Between Vulnerability and Protection

I have, as long as I can remember, a lot of difficulty truly opening up to others. Especially about the deepest things, the ones that hurt the most, the ones that marked me the most.

In general, it has always been difficult for me to talk about myself.

For several reasons.

Starting with the feeling that I might be bothering or boring the other person.

That maybe it is not that important.

That I am exaggerating or being dramatic.

And then there is also the practical difficulty.

How do you even start a conversation like that?

How do you enter a vulnerable place without feeling like you are invading the other person’s space?

But there is also another layer that I feel has been built over time.

A programming that says that, by sharing something before it happens, other people’s energy can interfere. As if telling a dream, a plan, or a desire could open space for it to stop happening.

So many times I preferred to protect in silence.

Keep it to myself.

Not tell before the right time.

As a way of preserving what was important to me.

And although today I am better, I still feel that programming alive in some parts of me.

But life has also brought me some very special friendships. People with whom I have finally started to feel something different.

People with whom I can share something beautiful and feel genuine joy on the other side.

Without envy.

Without resentment.

Without competition.

And also people with whom I can share something difficult and feel support, presence, empathy, care.

Without pity.

And that made me truly understand the difference between pity and compassion.

Conceptually I already knew they were different.

But I had not yet felt that difference so clearly within me.

I understood it through the mirror of the other.

Because in these friendships there is compassion. There is deep empathy for pain, for the moment, for vulnerability. There is a willingness to support, to be present, to care.

But there is no “poor thing” gaze.

And that changes everything.

Because pity, in essence, diminishes the other.

It places them in a small place. Fragile. Inferior.

While compassion sees the pain without taking away dignity.

And then I also started to notice something else.

When I feel envy, pity, resentment, or any other emotion coming from the other side, it does not always really have to do with me or with what I am sharing.

It has to do with what that person is experiencing within themselves.

Because there are people who receive exactly the same sharing with genuine joy.

And others do not.

So that shows me that the feeling is born much more from the inner space of the listener than from what is being said.

And interestingly, that also brought me more compassion.

Because I can understand that often someone only reacts with envy, pity, or resentment because they are in pain.

And I can have empathy for that pain without needing to abandon myself in order to hold it.

I can understand without needing to constantly expose myself to spaces that drain me.

I can choose where I open up.

I can choose with whom I share.

And that is not a lack of love.

It is discernment.

At the same time, I know that this idea that “I cannot tell before the right time” is a programming.

Because the truth is that breaches only exist when I open them myself.

And the simple fact of living with fear of this interference is, in itself, an opening.

Conceptually I understand this.

But in feeling… I am still learning.

And maybe that is exactly how it happens.

First we understand with the mind.

Then, little by little, the body and the system follow.