Ellen Hendriksen
speaker
55 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Ellen Hendriksen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So vulnerability is a term that gets kicked around a lot, but let's define it so we can just be on the same page. So vulnerability is when we have a willingness to reveal thoughts, actions, emotions that might result in criticism or rejection and taking a leap of faith that we won't.
It's letting people that we want to be closer to, not just anyone, not our boss, not some authority figure, but letting the people we want to be closer to see some of the mess because that signals two things. One is vulnerability signals, I trust you. I trust you to see some of my struggle or mistakes, and I trust you not to judge or reject me for it. And second,
It signals we are the same, that just like you, I struggle or I need help or I need to ask for some advice. This is not a teacher-student relationship or a mentor-mentee relationship. If this is someone you want to get closer to, being equal and on the same footing is important. the foundation of that.
So being vulnerable and showing a little bit of what, you know, what might not go right all the time signals we're the same.
Right, right. We're trying to keep ourselves socially safe by being impressive, by putting our best foot forward and hiding the mess. But then we come across as superhuman or unrelatable or intimidating, and that keeps us disconnected. So not to get too academic about this, but humans' impressions of each other fall along two fundamental dimensions. There's competence and
there's warmth and competence is you know how capable skilled and or effective is this person whereas warmth is how trustworthy caring and kind is this person and in perfectionism we put a premium on competence. Again, that lie of perfectionism tells us we have to perform as superbly as possible in order to belong. But the most important dimension is actually warmth.
Because evolutionarily, we have to assess other people's intentions. Are they friend or foe? Are they in my tribe? So we have to assess their warmth, essentially, or lack thereof, before we evaluate their capability to fulfill those intentions, before we evaluate their competence. So warmth comes first and carries more weight.
Yeah, no, I actually, I love this question because I, so I take the subtitle of my book really literally, it's self-acceptance for self-critics and perfectionists. And there we don't even have to change anything. So, okay, let's take self-criticism.
So like I, you know, I have learned over the years that whenever I do something with a microphone or whenever I put a piece of writing out into the world, my brain will automatically
think it sucks and think it wasn't good enough but i have realized that this is just how my brain is wired that some brains are wired to be more optimistic or pessimistic more you know introverted or extroverted my brain and the brains of any other people with perfectionism are just fired to be a little more self-critical
But that doesn't mean that I have to listen to those thoughts or to take them so seriously or so literally that I can take the stance of listening to my self-critical thoughts like I listen to the music in a coffee shop. it's there in the background. It's, you know, it's happening and I can hear it, but I don't have to dance along. Like I don't have to sing the lyrics.
And this is a method called cognitive diffusion, which gets some perspective on the fact that our self-critical thoughts are just that, thoughts. And there are lots of ways to do this exercise. There's a A fan favorite method of doing cognitive diffusion is to sort of play with the thoughts to make them irreverent or like a little bit ridiculous. Again, to emphasize that these are just thoughts.
So I have a client who likes to picture animal from the Muppets banging his drum set and yelling his thought, which is everyone will judge you. And I have another client who her thought is, you're going to let everyone down. And so she pictures that thought on a coffee mug. And she pictures herself taking a little sip from the mug when she has that thought.
And again, it's to emphasize that this is not truth. These are not facts. These are products of our own brain. They're just thoughts.
Thank you so much for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. And I enjoy talking to you. You ask great questions.
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