There’s a special place in my heart for the people who make me feel seen.
When we feel seen, heard and respected, we feel safe.
And feeling safe is having our most basic needs met.
I’ve been thinking lately about the people who make me feel seen and by virtue of comparison I find myself considering those who don’t or didn’t in times past.
When I was 16 I experienced a period of what we would now diagnose (and treat) as depression and social anxiety.
I was a member of a large group of friends but I always felt so alone.
I felt invisible to my friends, that they were blind to my low self worth and loneliness.
Outside of school and work I read books, listened to George Michael CDs and watched 80s movies on repeat with my brothers.
The void I felt, the desire to be seen and heard was so vast and I ached for it to be filled. I wanted to matter to someone.
Nature hates a vacuum, so the void was always filled by some distraction, particularly as I started working, had some success and felt like I was “someone”.
Decades later, now I’m in a safe space, I have the light bulb moment.
To feel seen, heard and respected you must first see, hear and respect yourself.
You cannot receive the love and respect of others when you do not love and respect yourself.
To seek the validation of others when you do not even believe you are worthy is a fruitless quest. But so many of us do it for so long!
How’d I get the memo?
I found myself thinking more and more about my relationships – fleeting and long lasting, with friends, lovers, family, work colleagues – through a lens of how safe I felt with them.
Could I truly be myself with them?
Did vulnerability come easily?
Did I feel energised or drained by them?
Did I feel I had their full attention, that they cared enough to be present with me?
Was there recoprocity? Or was one of us more invested in the relationship than the other?
Did I feel like their equal? Or was I merely convenient?
The one thing the positive relationships shared was that I felt safe. Many of the relationships that dropped away were those where I realised I didn’t like myself very much when I was around them. So how could I have expected those people to see or hear me? They might even tell you they felt they barely got to know me at all!
So many decades wasted hating on myself and hiding from myself. So many heartbreaks that didn’t have to be suffered alone. So many friendships that dissolved because I wasn’t in a place where I could accept the love and kindness that was being offered up to me.
How to find the way out
It’s one thing to have an “aha” moment, its another thing entirely to act on it.
But as with all important growth, it starts with the inner work.
The most profound and lasting inner work I have ever done started with a Bali retreat in 2014 with Charlotte Thaarup and The Mindfulness Clinic.
This 5 day retreat in the Indonesian hills was more than an eye-opener. It was a heart and mind opener.
Through a daily program of mindfulness techniques, learning about the brain-body connection and exercises, I came to see how disconnected I was from myself, heard all the negative stories I had been telling myself and saw all the unfair expectations I was putting on myself and the people around me.
The simplest yet most powerful lesson I learned is that peace comes from loving kindness. And that loving kindness for yourself is of fundamental importance, before you can truly offer that to anyone else.
Learning to sit without judgement, to accept the present moment, to recognise the triggers of emotions and negative self talk and the catastrophising that quickly followed – this quite literally changed the course of my whole life.
After more than 30 years of desperately wanting to be seen and heard, to be considered someone of importance in the eyes of others, I started just seeing and hearing myself, for who I truly was, not with all the labels I had attached to myself.
I came away feeling healed, cured of my “not good enough” stuff.
A friend, not unkindly, told me that my fears would soon return. That five days in an island paradise could not cure me of my self-doubt.
He was right.
BUT, I had seen the path, a way out of my self-imposed prison where I had handed over the keys of my happiness to others, and that is why my life took a sudden turn for the better. It was a slow turn, but a turn all the same.
How to be seen and heard
The mindfulness retreat gave me tools and exercised to do the inner work. Deep excavation, curiosity about my beliefs and re-established the connection between my brain and my body.
In short, I started noticing how I felt and where my thoughts were taking me.
I was taking off the masks and veils I had piled on to myself, dressing myself up to be – the responsible daughter, the talented leader, the hard worker, the dutiful wife, the perfect mother – and challenged where that had come from.
Stripping away false beliefs, reframing past experiences, learning to just love and be kind to myself, I started to see and hear my true essence and I started liking myself again!
From this place, not only could I see and hear myself, but I was drawn to people who I felt saw and heard me, too. I paid better attention to those people as well, and relationships that energised me flowed.
I got better at seeing the red flags of toxic relationships and narcisissts and avoiding having those people in my circle of influence.
It’s a work in progress, and there’s always the very real risk of relapse, particularly as I get older and my priorities and needs change.
Takeaways and next steps
In this age of self awareness and wellness, there are tons of resources available to support your inner work, but it can be an overwhelming exercise to navigate, particularly on your own.
Here are some ideas to get you started based on my lessons learned:
- Find someone you can trust to support you. When I first started on the mindfulness journey, some of my friends rolled their eyes, seeing it as just another of my “causes”, passing interest that they made fund of. Staying on the difficult path of inner work is made easier if you have someone who’s on the journey with you, or at least can be trusted to gently guide you back if you lose your way.
- Experiment with techniques you can work into your daily routine. We can’t all spend hours a day meditating, or following lengthy protocols advocated by wellness gurus like Robin Sharma in his “5am Club” (who I love by the way!). Set yourself up for success with an inner work practice that is manageable given the demands on your time. Maybe it’s 10 minutes as soon as you wake up, or perhaps before you take off in the car for your commute to work, or journalling last thing at night which also helps you sleep better. Don’t be afraid of not getting it right straight away. Experiment with exercises, times of day, apps, professional therapists and online resources. If it takes you a year to find something that fits, you’ll still be better off than if you tried one thing and failed because you bit off more than you could chew.
- Don’t let fear scare you off. Starting this journey can bring up some ugly, painful truths in just the first few steps. Inner work can be painful, terribly uncomfortable and even traumatic. Pay attention to what comes up. If it is upsetting, consider engaging a professional therapist before going on further, so you have the proper support and tools to manage the trauma. And if it’s just scary to think of closing your eyes and breathing for five minutes, start with just 60 seconds, or five breaths (with your eyes open!). Notice how this small moment makes you feel. Better? Good… maybe you can go for 2 minutes tomorrow…
- Take care of yourself as the priority. Doing inner work to feel seen and heard can be exhausting, and you’ll need all your energy to keep it up. Exercise. Journal. Get good sleep. Eat proper food. If you’re still drinking heavily, eating loads of comfort food, or burying yourself in work, you’ll be numb to the benefits of the discoveries you are making!
- Expect the unexpected. When you truly see and hear yourself, sometimes its the start of a great unravelling of things in your life like work, relationships, spirituality and the way you show up. When you see yourself as you are, and not how others want you to be, the big and little decisions we make are made through a different lens. For me, climbing the corporate ladder slowly became much less important, and I sought to deepen my friendships with a smaller group of people instead of striving to be on everyone’s invite list. In fact, I stopped striving so much altogether, and instead became more connected to the present moment and feeling peace, joy and happiness. You might have an “aha” moment and take a sharp left turn, or the changes may be small and incremental so that you don’t notice them until one day your life looks significantly different.
True wisdom is found when we can truly see and hear ourselves and the world around us, as we and they are, and not through a lens discoloured by what we’ve been told it should look like.
Life looks a lot better when you’re looking at it with loving kindness, in the present moment, and with endless compassion for yourself and others, flowing freely through your veins.
the-well-club.com 