The reason we have thorns is to protect our vulnerability. Love your thorns, your succulence, and your vulnerability. 
For the most part, we dislike feeling vulnerable. We prefer being in control of our emotions, our income, our children, our pets, our aging parents, our kitchen, our bodies. Self-control is good, and protecting ourselves from harm is good … but when we don’t enjoy and appreciate the receptive, trusting, confiding, juicy, sweet, intuitive tenderness that is also part of being human, we tend to stay in this outward world of thorn, rather than the inner one of succulence, fragrance, and a different kind of energy that creates blooms. Try this: Knowing you are safe and protected by your strong thorns, breathe into your succulent, delicate, very vulnerable self. What do you find? Who do you find? It’s only in the paradoxical balance of control and letting go of control that we can be truly happy.