I encourage you to be aware of your vulnerabilities to psychological difficulty.  Know the potential sources of such difficulties for you.  They are unique to each of us.  Your life is yours alone.  But we can gain an understanding of how we may be vulnerable and what we may be able to do about those vulnerabilities.

 Look at this list of six potential sources of vulnerability and consider your own experience.  Maybe you could take a short inventory of what vulnerabilities might apply to you.

 Biological Vulnerability – The mind/body connection means that what is going on in our body can impact us emotionally, and what is going on with us emotionally can impact our biology.  We also know that many psychological disorders have a connection to your biological history.  You may be genetically predisposed to certain psychological problems.  That is why most good research says the best treatment for most psychological disorders is a combination of psychotherapy or counseling and consideration of a medication regimen (psychiatry). 

 Familial Vulnerability – The parenting or care giving you received or did not receive in your earliest years of life plays a key role in your psychological development.  If you were loved and attended to in appropriate ways as a child you are less likely to be saddled with significant psychological struggle as an adolescent or an adult.  If you are rejected or abused in your childhood you are more likely to face psychological struggle later on in life.

 Cultural Vulnerability – The culture you grow up in may impact your psychological health as well.  There are aspects of every culture that are unhealthy and that can precipitate emotional struggle in some people.

 Relational Vulnerability – If you grew up in a family where parental conflict was extreme, and where your parents eventually divorced, this clearly can contribute to your own struggle with your intimate relationships.  Trust of others may be difficult for you.  You may be less inclined to turn to others for help because of this.  In similar manner, if your parents were severely avoidant of conflict, then you may equally be uncomfortable with conflict, feel stymied in your ability to deal with it, and become depressed or anxious because of this.

 Circumstantial Vulnerability – We are obviously impacted by what we experience in the world.  When those experiences include things like service in a war zone, being the victim of a hurricane, or learning of the diagnosis of a serious disease – such circumstances can negatively impact our psychological health.  The body of literature on the experience of trauma and its impact is both large and daunting. 

 Spiritual Vulnerability – We are all spiritual beings, though we might have very different understandings of our own spirituality.  The degree to which we do or do not have a sense of existential or personal meaning in our life impacts our degree of vulnerability to psychological struggle.

Using the definitions above, rank each of these areas for your own life.  Maybe you could use a scale of 1 (no vulnerability here) to 10 (very vulnerable here) and rank each area that way.  Or consider if your vulnerability in each of these six areas is mild, moderate, or severe.  It’s good to know what you are up against.  Awareness is fundamental to psychological health.  Awareness can get you to seek help sooner, before your psychological problems get completely out of hand.  Awareness may even get you to seek out preventive help and support (friends, church, therapist, family, mentor, supervisor) before you get into trouble.

Get to know your vulnerabilities, and then seek out the help and support you need to address those areas of your life where you want to see some change.  The therapists at Sioux Falls Psychological Services are here to help you when you need someone to journey with you.