The First Step to Being Truly Seen

There is a peculiar kind of loneliness that has nothing to do with being alone. It happens in a crowded room or a busy meeting. You are physically present, people might even look at you, but you feel like a ghost. Your words seem to hang in the air for a moment and then vanish. You have the sense that if you were to disappear, it would take a while for anyone to notice. This feeling of being invisible is deeply unsettling. It's a fundamental human need to be seen. Not just noticed, but truly seen for who we are.

Our first instinct when we feel invisible is to try to become more visible. We think we need to be louder, funnier, or more interesting. We try to figure out what people want and then perform that version of ourselves. We think the problem is external, that we need to change our signal to be better received. But this is usually a mistake. Performing is exhausting. And worse, it doesn't work. When people sense you are performing, they may be entertained, but they won't connect with the real you. They can't. The real you is hidden. The performance just reinforces the feeling of being unseen.

See Yourself First

The real first step to being seen by others is to see yourself. This sounds like a paradox, but it is the foundation of genuine connection. Before anyone else can understand you, you must understand yourself. Before your voice can have weight for others, it must have weight for you. Being seen is not about grabbing attention. It is about presence. And you cannot be fully present with others if you are not first present with yourself. This means taking the time to excavate your own thoughts. To listen to your own internal monologue, not just as background noise, but as important data. What do you actually think about things? What are you afraid of? What excites you? Not the answers you think you are supposed to have, but the real ones.

Why We Avoid Seeing Ourselves

Most of us are strangers to ourselves. We spend very little time in quiet observation of our own minds. Why? Because it can be uncomfortable. Our thoughts are often messy, contradictory, and repetitive. We might discover things we don't like, such as envy or fear or pettiness. It is easier to distract ourselves. We fill our time with work, entertainment, and the noise of other people's lives. We focus on how we appear to others because it feels more manageable than facing the complexity of who we actually are. We seek external validation as a substitute for internal clarity. We want someone else to look at us and say, "I see you," hoping it will make us feel solid. But this validation is fleeting. It depends on others, and so it is fragile.

A Practical Method for Self Seeing

So how do you start to see yourself? You have to make your thoughts concrete. A thought that stays in your head is like a cloud. It is shapeless and hard to grasp. To understand it, you must give it form. The most common way to do this is by writing. But an even more direct way is to speak your thoughts out loud. When you speak, you are forced to formulate a sentence. The act of articulation is an act of clarification. You cannot mumble your way through a spoken thought in the same way you can with a purely mental one. Hearing your own voice say something has a different effect than just thinking it. You hear the hesitations. You notice the points where your logic is weak. You discover what you truly believe by hearing what you actually say, unfiltered by the careful editing of typing. It is a powerful way to get a clear signal from your own mind. It is you, observing you.

From Self Seeing to Being Seen

Something interesting happens when you get into the habit of seeing yourself clearly. You stop trying so hard to be seen by others. You become less preoccupied with their reactions because you have a stronger sense of your own reality. You begin to speak and act from a place of authenticity, not from a desire for approval. And that authenticity is what people are drawn to. It is the bedrock of presence. When you are no longer performing, you can truly listen to others. You can engage with them without the constant anxiety of how you are coming across. You become a person who is solid. When you speak, people listen, not because you are loud, but because your words are connected to something real. You occupy your own space in the world with a quiet confidence. You are visible because you are fully there. The work was internal, but the results are external. To be seen, you had to stop looking for your reflection in other people's eyes and instead build the source of light within yourself.

Give it a try for yourself with the prompt below.