
This week, I heard for the first time the phrase “vulnerability hangover.”
AndI know—I’m late! I’m soooo late!
Apparently, the author Brené Brown coined it about 20 years ago. One of my students even told me it’s been in the lexicon so long, bad actors are already weaponizing it.
I am fascinated.
A vulnerability hangover describes the feeling people often have after sharing something deeply personal—they get swamped with a kind of buyer’s remorse, but more intimate. They’re embarrassed, worried they’ve made their audience uncomfortable, or worse, that they’ve alienated them.
It really is a perfect expression. It describes what every writing teacher sees in their inbox about ten minutes after writers post their stories for workshop. I’m now convinced it’s the reason Gotham’s tech support team gets so many emails from students who want to delete and re-upload their Booths, just so they can fix one typo.
The next time someone tells you that all the really great expressions are borrowed from languages other than English, you can retort “Oh, yeah? What about ‘vulnerability hangover’?”
Even more fascinating: Once Brown identified the vulnerability hangover, researchers started exploring it, and they discovered a related phenomenon, which they named, perfectly, the “beautiful mess effect.” It describes the audience, the people who hear the deeply personal confession. Overwhelmingly, they tend to view the person who made the disclosure as strong. They admire them for having the courage to share something so raw. And the flaws at the heart of the story they shared? They see them as part of the beauty of being human.
Basically, just your average night in a Gotham workshop.
I want you to picture it: A classroom above Eighth Avenue in NYC, raised voices, car horns, and the smell of pizza wafting in through the open window. At one end of the table sits a writer, bracing themselves for the class to start discussing their story, their face scarlet, their breathing shallow. Maybe their arms are protectively crossing their chests, maybe they’re kneading their hands between their knees, maybe they’re massaging their temples.
The vulnerability hangover is pounding.
But around them, their classmates are buoyant, chirping with excitement.They can’t wait to tell their fellow writer why their words resonated with them, what they love about the pages, how they hope when it’s their turn, they can be just as brave.
They’re drinking in the beautiful mess.
In every scene, the real action simmers beneath the surface. In every scene, all the characters see the same action in wildly different, often polar opposite, ways, while also cluelessly believing everyone sees it as they do.
Every scene is a beautiful mess.
And so are you, writers. Keep that in mind next time you hyperventilate after you pour your heart into your story, and show it to someone else.
Don’t take my word for it. It’s science.*

Kelly Caldwell
Dean of Faculty
*OK, I haven’t reported out the research on this, so I’m like 85 percent but not 100 percent sure it’s science, just take my word for it, and whatever you do, don’t tell Neil DeGrasse Tyson.