Practice
Healthy relationships and vulnerability — practice worksheet
This worksheet asks you to look at where closeness is developing in your relationships and where it is not — and to consider what your own contribution to that pattern might be.
This practice worksheet is a companion to the Healthy relationships and vulnerability page. Reading that page first is recommended.
How to use this worksheet
Work through each section in writing. The questions are designed to be slightly uncomfortable — that is where the useful information is.
Section 1: Relationship inventory
Think of the three to five relationships that are most important to you. For each one, ask yourself:
How well does this person actually know me? Not what they know about my life, but how accurately they understand who I am, including the parts I find difficult.
Rate each relationship: surface / partial / genuine.
Then ask: what has prevented the relationship from being in a higher category? Your answer — honestly — is the starting point.
Section 2: The armour inventory
Everyone has characteristic armour: the set of behaviours used to prevent certain things from being visible. Common forms include:
- being the helper (so attention stays on others)
- humour (so difficulty is deflected)
- competence performance (so uncertainty is hidden)
- emotional distance (so nothing gets close enough to hurt)
- busyness (so there is no time for anything to surface)
What is your most characteristic armour? Where do you use it most?
Write your answer: ___
Section 3: The cost assessment
The armour in Section 2 does something. It protects. But it also has a cost.
What does your characteristic armour cost you in your important relationships? Be specific. Not "closeness in general" but what specific kinds of closeness have not developed because of this pattern.
Write your answer: ___
Section 4: The small step
Changing deeply ingrained patterns is not achieved in a single act of courage. It happens through a series of small, tested steps.
What is one small thing you could do this week that would be slightly more honest, slightly more visible, or slightly less armoured than your default in one of the relationships you identified above?
It should be specific and genuinely small. Not "be more vulnerable" but "tell X about the difficulty I am having with Y."
Write it here: ___
A note on timing
The worksheet is most useful during a period when your important relationships are relatively stable — when you have the attention to think about them rather than manage them.
If you are in the middle of a significant relational difficulty, the effective communication page may be more immediately useful.