Rituals of Openness: Vulnerability Practices in Multidisciplinary Professional Settings Beyond Healthcare
Abstract
Professional cultures often valorize control, expertise, and emotional composure, rendering vulnerability a counter-normative and high-risk act. While recent scholarship has begun to conceptualize vulnerability as a relational strength, less is known about how professionals in non-clinical, multidisciplinary settings practice and interpret emotional disclosure. Building on the process model introduced by Bouchard et al. (2025), this study explores the ritualized interactions through which vulnerability is enacted in a university-based research team composed of diverse disciplinary roles and institutional hierarchies. Using ethnographic methods including nonparticipant observation, semi-structured interviews, and participatory discussion, we identify a patterned process of vulnerability involving phases of individual disclosure and communal reflection, bridged by theorizing practices. We further introduce the concepts of recursive appraisal loops and interpretive authority to explain the variable uptake and perceived risks of vulnerability practices. Our findings reveal that while formal reflective spaces can enable emotional openness, power asymmetries shape who speaks, who is heard, and whose vulnerabilities are validated. We theorize holding environments as episodic and performative accomplishments that require constant interactional maintenance. This study contributes to the literature on emotional labor, psychological safety, and identity work by showing how vulnerability is both a humanizing and precarious social practice in contemporary professional life.
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