Being Seen

Being seen sounds simple until you realize how many of us have built our entire lives around not being fully known. We talk about the question that sits underneath so much emotional pain: “Do you really get me?” and what it does to a person when the answer has been unclear for years. This conversation is for anyone who looks fine on the outside, functions well, and still feels lonely, unseen, or strangely disconnected in relationships. 

If you’ve ever wondered whether love and being seen are the same, or what it would feel like to stop performing and start living more honestly, hit play. Subscribe, share with someone who needs to feel less alone, and leave a review telling us where you feel most seen.

Get in touch with Dr. Shemena

·        Tweet me at @ShemenaJohnson

·        Follow me on IG at @DrShemenaJohnson

·        Email me at info@shemenajohnson.com 

Thank you for listening!

Transcript

Welcome To Dark Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:05

This is the Dark Matters Podcast with Dr. Shemina. I'm Dr. Shemina, a licensed therapist that underwent my own transformation, and I'm here to share my insights and revelations. This is a podcast that goes well beyond the surface of everyday psychology to help you become conscious and aware. It's about understanding and it's about empowerment so that you can take control of your life in this challenging world. So, what do you say? Let's dive in.

What It Means To Be Seen

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Hi, this is Dr. Shemina, and on this episode, I want to talk about being seen. The healing power of not only the therapeutic relationship, but relationships in general. There's a question that lives, I think, quietly beneath the surface in so many of us. The question of does this person really get me? Do they really see me? Do they really understand me? So here I am talking about what does it mean to truly be seen? Not evaluated, not managed, not admired for being strong or accomplished, not loved only for who we can become or who we need to be for others, but being seen clearly, honestly, and without someone turning away. I think this question sits at the heart of so much emotional pain. And in many ways it sits at the heart of therapy too.

How We Learn To Hide

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Because long before we had language for our uh experience, we had relationships. We have the faces, the voices, the bodies, and emotional availability of the people that are around us and in our community who first cared for us. And those earliest relationships and being in our community shapes so much of how we come to know ourselves. They teach us what to do with our needs, our feelings, and our vulnerabilities. They teach us whether our inner world will be welcomed, will be ignored, will be misunderstood, or treated like it's just too much. And when there isn't enough room for our emotional experience, when no one helps us really make sense of what we really feel, it's not like we stop needing. We actually learn to adapt. We become vigilant, self-contained, we become pleasing, we become high achieving. We become that person that says it's fine. I'm okay. That doesn't matter. No one cares. We learn how to function without ever fully being known. And that adaptation can look impressive from the outside. Sometimes it even becomes part of what others admire about us. But inwardly, it can also leave part of us feeling particularly kind of lonely. The loneliness of being surrounded by people, maybe even loved by people, and still feeling unseen.

Loved But Still Unseen

SPEAKER_00 4:03

This is something I know very intimately. There was a time in my life when I believed I understood relationships fairly well. I am, I was, I wasn't, you know, was intelligent back then, very accomplished and capable. I had a lot of ideas about myself, ideas about love, ideas about what it meant to be strong. And if I'm being honest, there were ways I confused competence with wholeness. I thought that if I could say the right thing, do the right thing, become the right person for this person or the other person, then I would arrive at some secure place inside myself, almost like it was a solution. But beneath all of that was something different, almost like a quieter truth. I did not really feel deeply known, not even to myself. And what still surprises me even now is that the first person who, when I think of really saw me wasn't a romantic partner. It wasn't a family member. Though in those relationships there was a lot of love, a lot of love. And I think that matters to say out loud because it is possible to be loved and not seen. The two are not always the same. But the first person who really truly saw me,

A Therapist Who Stayed Present

SPEAKER_00 5:37

not only for who I was as a person and how accomplished I was, but also for my inner pain and my loneliness, it was my therapist. And surprisingly, I mean, he was an older man, you know, psychodynamic in his way of working. And there was something about his presence that was different from what I had ever known. Being in therapy for some time, you know, it was a very slow, kind of drawn-out process. And he didn't rush to fix me. He didn't try and tell me how I should be. And even when there were times where I was so angry about life and relationships, like he didn't move away from my anger, or even when I resisted knowing parts of myself, my vulnerabilities, or even the parts of me that just weren't really polished. Like he didn't move away. He had a way of staying with me, present, of listening beneath what I was saying, and of holding my emotional truth of my experience, even when I could not yet hold it myself. At first, I didn't, the experience was not comforting. It was so uncomfortable. In fact, some of it stirred a lot of anger in me, of someone really knowing or seeing parts of me that I didn't even know myself. I mean, to really be seen can be deeply disorganizing. I mean, you've built a life around managing how you are perceived. It can feel very exposing, sometimes even threatening. But alongside that discomfort and was something else, there was this sense of relief. The relief that I no longer had to perform, the relief that I did not have to persuade someone about my pain and what I was going through. The relief that there might actually be a place where I could come undone and still remain present, liked, cared for. And little by little through my therapy process, something began to shift. Even in my own world, I began to stop performing, I began to feel more, acknowledge and validate my own feelings. I began to understand that what I had called strength was in some places survival. And eventually I began to see myself with more honesty and more compassion. This is one of the deepest things I have come to believe about change. It does not happen through insight alone.

Discomfort And Relief Of Visibility

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Insight matters, of course. Language matters, understanding matters, but change, especially deep, deep change, happens in relationships. It happens through an emotional experience with another person that is different enough from what we have known before that it opens something new inside of us. Same way my therapist practice, which was very psychodynamic, is the same way that I practice as well. And part of that is that when we understand that, we understand that the therapeutic relationship is not incidental to healing. It is the medium of healing. The relationship becomes a place where old patterns can emerge, where longings, deep longings and fear and shame, dependency, anger and grief come alive, actually again. But this time there is a possibility that they can be met differently. And this is not a small thing. I think to have someone stay with your sorrow without trying to shut it down, to have someone tolerate your anger without retaliating or withdrawing from you, to have someone really listen for the meaning beneath your defenses instead of condemning them. It's a truly profound experience. Because some when someone can bear what you feel, when they can help hold what has felt unbearable, you begin to internalize something new. You begin to sense that your experience, your experience has weight,

Change Happens Through Relationship

SPEAKER_00 10:07

that your internal world really matters, that you are not too much, that maybe what you feel can be survived, thought about, is also understood. And from there, something essential begins to grow, which is the capacity to be able to stay with yourself and your own emotional experience. And that to me is one of the great gifts that therapy has given to me. Not that it erases anything, what was missed, not that it perfectly repairs early wounds, but that it helped me develop an inner relationship with myself that I think was sturdier, more kinder, and more truthful than the one I may have inherited. Over time, the therapist's mind can become something you carry with you. Like those experiences and talking through and reworking things through, like I carried that with me. And it became a way of seeing my own self and shaping my own experience. I think the thoughtfulness became a model for how I began to think about my own experience. And it was with less shame and more curiosity. And there's something else that emerges through the work of therapy, which is something I'll name, which is love. Not romantic

The Relationship As The Healing

SPEAKER_00 11:32

love, not possession or anything like that, but I think a real human sense of caring, a deep regard, a meaningful investment in the life of another person. I think sometimes we become shy about naming that, especially as a therapist. You don't want it to get misconstrued, especially in clinical spaces. But I think genuine therapeutic work is not sterile. It is alive, it is relational, it acts something of both people. And while the frame is different, while the roles are not equal or interchangeable, there's still something deeply mutual in the experience of being changed through the encounter. I mean, as a therapist, I'm so deeply moved by my clients as well. I'm changed by their courage. I'm changed by the risks that they take daily to be known, to have new experiences. There's a lot of reciprocity in the work, and still being seen is not easy. You know, a lot of times people come into therapy wishing to escape themselves, escape their issues, and to leave behind the shame, the grief, and some of the damage that, you know, of the old story. They want to become someone new, someone more lovable, but less burden. And I understand that wish. I think most of us do. But therapy and building that kind of relationship often ask something more difficult and more humane, which is that to sit in the tension between who we are and who we hope to be is that's where healing really is. And to be able to grieve what we missed or what wasn't given, to face what has been defended against, to reckon with our limitations as a human being without collapsing into hopelessness. That's the middle ground that's hard to find, but it is there. A place where you don't have to become perfect to be worthy. You just inherently are worthy. Real change is not about becoming someone else. It's about becoming more fully yourself, being honest with yourself, being integrated, more able to bear your own complexity as a human being. And that process begins very simply with one's willingness to see yourself clearly. Stay through the mess, stay through the grief, stay through the anger and the confusion. Stay long enough for you to begin doing the same for yourself that I did for myself. And that's the healing power of a therapeutic relationship. And that's the healing power that

Staying With Yourself

SPEAKER_00 14:21

you can also take with you to other relationships. So as I come to a close, I want to leave you with a few questions to sit with yourself. Is there a place in your life where you've felt truly seen? Not for what you do, not for how well you hold it all together, but for who you are beneath the performance, beneath the surface. Like what parts of yourself have you learned to hide in order to be loved, accepted, or feel safe? And what might begin to shift if those parts of you were met by others with more curiosity, more compassion, and less judgment? Not even

Questions To Reflect On

SPEAKER_00 15:07

just by others, but even yourself. Maybe the deeper questions are: what does it feel like to be in a relationship with someone who can stay with you emotionally? And just as importantly, what would it mean for you to begin staying with yourself in that same way? Thank you for spending the time with me today in this episode. I hope this episode gave you something to reflect on, something to feel, and maybe even something to carry with you. Until next time, take good care of yourself and be well. Thank you for listening in.

Subscribe And Final Reminder

SPEAKER_00 15:50

You can find me at shaminajohnson.com. All the links of where you can find me are in the show summary. Come back often and make sure you subscribe, rate, and review because I'd love to hear your comments. And remember, either you deal with your feelings or they deal with you. See you guys soon.