What Really Happens When You Are Seen?

One of the greatest things I’ve ever done for myself was to start this process of quantifying what people who come to see me for coaching and counseling really want and streamlining a way for them to get it. When covid hit two years ago, I was slammed like every other therapist and I wanted to find a way to help more people. It didn’t feel good to turn people who were hurting away - especially when the demand was so great and resources were so limited. 

What creating this resource has done for me was make me focus on my own growth, feelings, and experiences as a human being because I am my own guinea pig. If something strikes me in a good way, I want to share it. If I make a discovery, I want to share that, too. And the biggest big picture take away from this experience so far has been that we all want to be seen. 

If you name just about any problem, being seen may not solve the problem because some things can’t be solved, but it definitely helps. 

Here’s what I mean. I’ve always been the type of person who strangers walk up to and a minute into what started out as pleasantries, they are telling me a story that starts with, “I’ve never told anyone this before, but…” For example, I am about eighteen at the Virginia Beach oceanfront on the boardwalk. It’s early morning, so not a lot of people are out. It’s that lovely time of day when the birds are running in the waves searching for their breakfast and not a lot of people are out. The sun is burning off the last of the fog or dew and it’s not yet hot and I am sitting on a bench facing the waves and someone comes up to me and sits down.

Mind you, there are plenty of places to sit. Nobody is out here, but this old guy comes up and sits next to me. Maybe he was feeling lonely and wanted to feel connected to another human being, I don’t know, but he’s sitting next to me.

He starts talking about how he’s been out on the pier fishing and how nice it is out there with the wind blowing softly. He’s here with his wife and his grandkids, and that sort of thing. Then he started telling me a personal story. I could tell he was getting lost in it because even though he wasn’t looking directly at me, he had a far off sound to his voice, and I could hear the emotion in his voice. 

And when he finished talking, he said, “I’ve never told anyone that story before” and I could tell that, even though this guy was a complete stranger and we’d never meet again, we had shared something special. He felt seen. 

All I had done was give him a safe space to be seen and to see himself. And that’s such a healing and precious thing that we all want, but don’t often get. Maybe we think that when we like someone, we have to look attractive and show them a good time. We have to be entertaining and have innovative thoughts when all we really need to do is to show up.

You see, when we show up in all our honesty, it’s always glorious. The good, the bad, and the ugly is all so attractive because we’re One. What I see in you is also in myself. And if you dare to show me myself, I can’t help but connect with that, if I am honest. 

We get into trouble when we don’t, right? That’s what we call our Shadow. The things we don’t want to acknowledge, we throw into Shadow and hide them out of guilt or shame. It’s like, “No, I can’t condone lying and cheating” and we put ourselves on a pedestal which only distances us from other people and creates the loneliness and isolation that we seek to overcome.

I once had this client who was so self-righteous, and I share this story as a person who used to be pretty similar. I hope not to her degree, but I was definitely self-righteous. I am an enneagram type 1, so I get it honestly. Anyway, she came to me for help dealing with her boyfriend of husband who had cheated on her, and all she wanted was the satisfaction of grinding his shame in his face, and he wouldn’t give it to her. 

She wanted him to beg and grovel and earn her forgiveness, and even though he’d done a lot of what she wanted, it was never enough. She kept saying, “How could you do that? Don’t you have any morals? You’re such a liar.” And all that preaching and judging drove him away, and when she was all alone with only her self-righteousness for company, she chalked up their failed relationship to him being a bad person. She never took any responsibility for any of it.

As I am talking about this, I am sure most of you will easily see that her judging and self-righteousness probably had something to do with why he strayed. If someone were judging me all the time, I’d want to go somewhere where I was appreciated just as I am.

None of us are Jesus. We’re all Judas. We can all lie, cheat, betray, and do all sorts of things if the conditions are right. We’re all just trying to get through life the best we can with what we have.

So when someone is vulnerable and trust me enough to show me their tender, unguarded side like that man on the beach, I feel honored. It’s a chance for me to hold space for someone else and also to learn something about myself. 

We’re all mirrors for each other and when we shine back masks, it can either lead us down false trails because the stories that we are telling are lies, or it can make us feel disconnected. 

There have been many times when I have felt on the receiving end of being seen. One time that stands out in my memory was when I was at a ritual. I don’t really remember the details of what happened - which is often the case with things like this - but I remember how it made me feel.

I had a thought, feeling, or issue and the facilitator just asked me about it. He heard me, validated it, assured me that whatever I thought, felt, or did next was a-okay, and that was it. It wasn’t anything earth shattering, but it went a long way in making me feel seen, important, and worthy. 

I’ve been on the completely opposite side of that as well - again, at a ritual. Rituals can provoke emotions, and I was reacting. I went to the facilitator for support and was basically invalidated, not seen, and not supported. When I asked again for support, she drilled down on the fact that I was wrong and got someone else to support her in that. And it wasn’t even an issue or right or wrong. It was just about having an experience and wanting to make sense of the experience.

I think that’s the story of all our lives. We’re all having experiences. How we respond to them isn’t as important as feeling that we have a right to those thoughts and feelings. Instead, we can judge each other and value each other based upon what we share.

We get judged on the clothes we wear, how many romantic partners we’ve had, how many books we’ve read, which books we’ve read, and so many things that have nothing to do with who we are on the inside.

Seeing people and being seen requires a level of emotional intelligence. Well, no. Emotional intelligence for sure, but not just emotional intelligence. We have five different types of intelligence: intellectual, emotional, somatic, creative, and spiritual. 

We all know intellectual intelligence. That’s book learning and the ability to think critically. That’s the type that people focus on for job readiness and just about everything else. But the others are just as important for a happy, holistic, well-lived life.

Seeing people and being seen requires us to have empathy. That’s emotional intelligence. It’s about knowing when to talk and when to listen, what to say and what not to say. Somatic intelligence can help you to determine what is your experience and what is someone else’s. It can help you to prioritize when to deal with your experience and when to let it be someone else’s turn.

Creative intelligence can help you problem solve and grow beyond those experiences. Spiritual intelligence helps us to make meaning from it all in a bigger picture way.

So we need to be holistic people in order to have a full life and great relationships. This holistic way of being can help us to show up, be seen, and see others in a way that creates this mutually beneficial love bomb that just keeps on giving.

I am new to Twitter. I have been off social media since January of this year and I signed up for Twitter in a move of solidarity for free speech. I have exactly one follower, so if you are on Twitter, I invite you to come check me out at LauraGIles804 and double my followers overnight. 

I am not on there very often yet, but I went on on Thanksgiving and my wall was awash in negativity, judgment, and hate. I was like “Ew. This is not what I want to see, but my philosophy is that if you don’t see love, bring your own. So, I started love bombing people with positive responses and encouragement. I posted something lovely on my own wall. 

I don’t think that we always have to talk people out of their feelings or negative behaviors. It’s okay to be down, but when you’re using your platform to bring other people down, that’s when I like to give another path. They don’t have to take it, but if we’re stuck in a downward spiral, It may not occur to us to turn around if we don’t see a different example, you know what I mean?

So, sometimes “I see you” can be a cry for help. What we project can be a sign that we’re lost or in need of connection. When I did the podcast about Jeffrey Dahmer and the question of evil, that was prompted by someone asking a question. I did a lot of research for that, and I think that people who do things that hurt us - whether they are lies, cheating, or murder - they typically do it because they are disconnected. They want to belong. 

I know that there is a lot of distance between lying and killing someone, but I think it’s an issue of degree. I can’t lie to you if I love and respect myself. I can’t murder you if I love and respect you. If I am have felt the miniscule difference between you and me, then I can’t hurt either of us because what I do to you, I do to me. It’s similar to the Thoreau quote, “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.” You and I are the same.

When I see you, I see me. I host talking circles to give people the opportunity to discover this. We listen to our own stories in someone else’s mouth. And it can help us to make sense of our own experiences, get clear on what we think and feel, take ownership of our thoughts and feelings, stop blaming, let go of things, forgive, and really work through some things.

I’ve definitely had experiences in the talking circle where I was touched by seeing someone. I think that showing up honestly is an act of love. First, it’s about loving yourself. Then it’s sharing that with someone else. 

I think love is a spiral that keeps on giving. If I see something in someone that delights me, it's in me, too. I love it in both of us. If I give that love back, it keeps going. If I withhold it, both from them and myself, it diminishes. I don't know why we aren't all intoxicated with love every minute. There is so much to love in every thing. But we can't enjoy it if it's not on full display.

I AM HERE TO BE SEEN!! :) I love it when you are, too. It adds to the beauty and enjoyment in life, even when it's brutiful because life is all that. It’s a balance of light and dark, inspiring and deflating, brutal and kind, hard and easy.

I don’t know how humans became such a warlike species. Humans are animals. Animals take what they need. They are not typically jealous. They don’t attack each other out of insecurity. While they do battle for territory and mates and things like that, they don’t create alliances and wage ongoing wars. They do their business, settle their issues, and then they go back to living their lives. 

I think that if we spent more time cultivate the five intelligences and seeing each ourselves within each other, we’d have more compassion and less fighting. When I see you struggling and feeling isolated, being seen creates a connection that may make the struggle more bearable because you feel more connected. 

It’s like having a birth coach or doula when you are giving birth. If you have a clinical hospital birth where strangers and doing all the technical things to help you have a baby, that’s not the same thing at all as having someone beside you who is caring for your physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental needs. If you’ve ever gone through anything - a dental procedure, hospice, putting your down down - anything where all your senses are bombarded and someone is there who might not be doing anything more than holding your hand, you know the value of being seen and held by another person.

It doesn’t really make the ordeal any easier. You still have to get through the same stuff, but the load feels lighter and you may not carry any emotional baggage afterward because you didn’t walk it alone.

That’s what I am talking about, guys. This is something we can all do for each other, but we have to show up for ourselves first. And that’s a really vulnerable space to be in, I know. What if we’re laughed at. What if we’re not seen? What if…. 

I’m going to invite you to do it anyway, because life’s brutal for all of us. None of us are going to survive it, but if you want to get through the process feeling like “Man, what a ride! I am so glad that I squeezed every inch of juice that I could from it” rather than getting to the end feeling dried up and defeated, you’ve got to risk being embarrassed, not being seen, not being appreciate, and all those things that keep us silent and stuck.

When you see the old pale dude dancing hip hop with the young dark skinned teenagers, they both risked being seen and saw themselves in the other. They connected through a shared love of dance and music. Go on TikTok and you will see hundreds of examples.

When you see the gay make-up artist with thousands of straight followers, or the quirky comedic filmmaker with thousands of fans, they all dared to be seen. They shared their love of something and their personalities with other people who saw and appreciated their light. They may have a lot of things that are different, but when they look into the other person’s face and saw themselves looking back, they bonded.

We fall in love with people who see us as our true selves and love us, anyway. So, we can’t be truly loved if we aren’t authentic. And we can’t truly love someone else who is wearing a mask. 

So, if you are someone who isn’t finding love, I’d start with you. Are you wearing a mask? Now, to be fair, we all have more than one face. We’re all like the mayor in The Nightmare Before Halloween where there is a nice face and an anxious one - if not more. I think the nice face is just as appealing as the anxious one. As long as it’s a true one, people can gaze into it, see themselves, and fall in love. So, I guess we all have a little Narcissus in us.

For example, I used to work in a maximum security prison. I was the sex offender treatment provider and also had some people on my case load who were criminals insane. Now, you might think that there was nothing redeeming about people who fell into either of those categories, but I bonded with all of them. 

Some of them had really hard, angry faces. But those aren’t their only faces. We all have at least two - a hard one and a soft one. If you accept the hard one as it is without judgment, criticism or expecting it to be different, and you can find that same energy within yourself, you can bond with that person. We are One. 

This doesn’t mean that you’ve killed someone or are crazy. It means we all have the potential to do and be anything. We really are limitless, and the energy that keeps us on the side of love, creativity, and community is love.

When someone starts speaking in the talking circle, they start with “I’m here to be seen.” Everyone acknowledges them with “I see you.” We’ve started doing this outside the talking circle too in my online tribe. It’s such a small thing, but it makes a huge difference. I can tell you that when I say it, I mean that the words or images that are being shared touches me in more than a superficial way and I see into that person’s heart. And they touch that part me of that has had that experience or feeling before too. Or if I haven’t had that experience or feeling, I’m still moved that I have seen a shade of humanity that helps me to appreciate them more and my human existence more.

It’s a way to keep the love chain going and the wonder of being alive going. 

If you want to feel that too, there are two quick and easy ways you can bring that into your life. The first is to join us in the free community at player.letigonow.org. You can practice showing up, checking in and holding yourself accountable for your walk as a human being. You can learn about yourself, share yourself, and support others. Just do what you feel called to do.

The other way you can bring this into your life is to pay more attention to yourself, how you show up, and to other people. When you want to be seen, show up. Show up naked and authentic. Don’t worry about how it lands. Don’t worry about whether someone will see you. Do it for yourself. Don’t judge.

If it feels uncomfortable, sit in the discomfort without judging it. Let it slide on by until all that is left is the satisfaction of having a real moment. When you experience the joy of being real, you will begin to crave it. You will begin to crave it with other people. 

That’s that love intoxication that I am talking about. When we’re all shining, it glows with a warmth and delight that knows no boundaries. But it’s fragile. A little criticism, self-consciousness, or feeling of unworthiness and it can vanish in a moment. Don’t let it. If that shows up, love that too. Live that too. Let that shine for a moment until it leads to the next moment.

And when someone else shows up authentically with vulnerability and purity, tell them, “I see you.” Maybe you say it in words or maybe you say it with a squeeze of the hand or a pat on the back. We all want to be seen, just as we are, with love and appreciation. Give that to other people. Teach it to other people. Lots of us don’t know how to do that because we’ve never experienced it.

When I go on spiritual travel tours, that’s what I experienced in sacred places. I felt the beauty of the land and acknowledged it. The land opened itself to me and I to it, and we delighted in each other’s presence, and I wanted to share it with others, so I did. And they opened to it and it gave back. It's the same with amazing trees. 

Have you ever leaned back against a tree, or hugged a tree and received the calming, healing energy of the tree? They don’t always do this and they don’t all do it in the same way. Each tree is different and each time you approach a tree is different, but everything is energy. Everything can do this.

When I took a group to Puzzlewood, there is a grove of young yews just as you enter, and yews - if you don’t know, are one of the most famous for their healing properties. They can regenerate themselves, so they have the reputation for being eternal. The older they are, the more juicy they become. But these trees are young and don’t have the reputation for being particularly powerful. But as we walked in, everyone could feel it. It was like being hugged in a bubble of intoxicating and warm delight. They were saying, “we’re here to be seen” and so we paused to take in their luscious softness. 

And when we came out again, there was nothing. They had stopped shining, and it was like they said, “We’re not up for being seen now,” which is okay too. You don’t have to be on for anyone 24/7.

But this is just another example of what it’s like to see and be seen. It’s an exchange. When someone or something shines, it fills the heart of the one who shines as well as the one who receives the light if it’s acknowledged. We see this with performers all the time. A person can play for themselves and take great delight in what they do, but when it’s shared, the energy of a thing increases exponentially. 

This is true whether what we share is positive or negative, so why not share the beauty inside? 

If someone is angry, see beyond the hurt and frustration into what’s making them feel upset. That’s why they’re angry to begin with. They feel trespassed upon and not seen. This is why I actually loved the people that I worked with in prison. Yes, they had done some awful things, but most of them had had awful things done to them. It’s all they knew, and when the face they saw reflected back to them was of a human being, it helped them connect to their humanity and show that face instead.

So, seeing and being seen is a way to be more human. We all need each other. Humans are relational creatures and we’re not doing a great job of that because of our fear. We isolate and compete with each other when we could be loving, appreciating, and giving to each other instead.

So, if you want some practice with that, head on over to the tribe. The website is in the show notes and start practicing. Habits have to be cultivated, you can’t just think about it and have it done. 

Before I go, I want to say thanks to Belinda and Claudia for the reviews. A podcast relies on reviews for ranking and without ranking, we can’t be found, so a big thanks for that, and if you enjoy the show and want to show some love, please review the podcast wherever you’re listening. They all have a way to review podcasts, or you can to go the podcast website at letitgonow.net and there is a review button at the bottom of the page.

And don’t forget to follow me on twitter. Let’s see if I can double my 1 follower to 2. I’ve got big goals. I want to double my reach, and you can help. Thanks, guys. I’m Laura Giles. I’ll see you next week.