Latest / In The Driver's Seat / Why Being Seen Feels Uncomfortable (And What to Do About It)
Transcript
- Lisa French: There's a difference between being looked at and being seen. Being looked at is surface level. Someone notices you, they know you by name, they recognize your face, they know a few things about you. Being seen is different. Being seen is when someone understands something about you that really matters. They get why something is important to you. They recognize what lights you up, what hurts, what makes you laugh, what you truly care about, and what you believe. They just they see your soul. There's something deeply comforting about that kind of connection. At the same time, it can feel incredibly vulnerable because most of us want to be seen, but we also spend a surprising amount of energy making sure people don't see. too much. That's the contradiction I want to talk about today. Why does being seen feel so uncomfortable? Because I don't think the fear of being seen is really about attention. It's about what might happen once people are paying attention. What if they don't understand you? What if they think what matters to you is strange? What if they disagree with the way you see the world? What if they see who you really are and they don't like it? That's a much deeper fear than simply not wanting attention. At the heart of it is something very human. If I let you see who I am, will I still belong? And there's a reason that question carries so much weight. Human beings are wired for connection. Let's go back ages and ages ago, back in K-Man time. During that part of history, humans belonging wasn't only emotionally important. Belonging helped keep you alive. You needed other people for protection, food, shelter, helping raise our children, surviving whatever came along. So our brains became very good at paying attention to social signals. Who accepts me? Who doesn't? What keeps me connected to this group? What could put that connection at risk? We don't live in little tribes trying not to be eaten by saber toothed tigers anymore. But that old wiring didn't disappear simply because we now have Wi Fi and DoorDash. We still care deeply about belonging. Now add childhood on top of that. From a very young age, we begin learning which parts of ourselves seem to be welcomed and which ones create a reaction. Nobody necessarily sits us down and says, here's the acceptable version of you. We pick it up. A stern look across the dinner table tells you something. A teacher's reaction tells you something. The way your friends respond when you say something different tells you something. You notice when people laugh with you and when people laugh At you. You notice what gets praised. You notice what makes the room uncomfortable. And because we want connection, we adjust ourselves. That isn't automatically unhealthy. We need social awareness. Part of becoming an adult is learning that every thought doesn't need to come flying out of your mouth the moment that it pops into your mind. We learn how to read a room. We learn how our behavior affects other people. That's maturity, but there's a line between being aware of other people and becoming so aware of everyone else that you slowly lose contact with yourself. That's where the self-editing starts. And I think most of us do this far more often than we realize. You're talking about something you're excited about and notice the other person isn't interested, so you dial it back. You accomplish something you were proud of but instead of owning it, you make it sound smaller because you don't want anyone else to think you're bragging. You're in a conversation and have a completely different opinion. But you decide it's easier to let it go than to deal with whatever reaction might come next. None of those moments look particularly dramatic, but after years of doing that, something interesting can happen. You get very good at knowing how How much of yourself fits in the room. And eventually you can become so practiced at adjusting that you don't even realize you're doing it. You call yourself easygoing. You say you really don't care. You call yourself private. You decide you're simply not someone who likes to stand out. And those things can be absolutely true. But sometimes there's something a little deeper that's worth investigating. Sometimes I don't care means I don't want to risk seeing how disappointed you'll be if you don't care too. Sometimes being easygoing means you stopped expressing what you prefer because it seemed easier than possibly facing conflict. And sometimes being private means there are parts of yourself you haven't learned how to share without feeling exposed. That's where this gets interesting. Because we can spend years saying we want to feel understood while giving people a carefully edited version of ourselves to understand. Then we wonder why nobody really gets us. And yes, there will absolutely be people who don't get you. That is part of being human. But sometimes the people around us haven't been given much of a chance. We ask people to truly see us while constantly showing them the version We believe they'll find easiest to accept. And that's where being seen starts to feel little scary. Because the more authentic you are, the more personal someone's reaction can feel. Like think about it. If I tell you what I think you want to hear and you reject it, there's some distance there. You didn't completely reject me. You rejected the version I gave you. But if I tell you what I really want. If I let you see something I care deeply about, there's more at stake. Because now you're reacting to something that actually belongs to me. That's vulnerability. And I think it explains why so many people have this strange push pull relationship with standing out. We want to feel special. We want our lives to feel meaningful. And to be recognized for who we are as standing out means there's less to cover. When everybody around you is choosing one thing and you choose something different, people notice. And once they notice, they may have questions, they may have opinions, they may not understand why you're doing it. And sometimes before anyone even says a word, we begin imagining what they're going to think. That's another part of the fear of being seen that I find fascinating. We don't always wait for the judgment. We anticipate it. We picture the look on someone's face. We imagine the conversation they might have about us after we leave. And then we change our behavior based on a reaction that has not even happened. Think about how much power that gives an imaginary opinion. Somebody doesn't have to criticize you. They don't even have to know what you're considering. They could be sitting at home eating a sandwich, completely unaware that they're currently influencing a major life decision in your head. That's kind of ridiculous when you think about it. But we do it, and usually those imaginary reactions aren't coming from nowhere. Our brains are prediction machines. We use what happened before to try to figure out what's likely to happen next. So if you've spent years around someone who criticized anything different, you're probably going to anticipate criticism. If expressing yourself created conflict in the past, you may expect conflict before it arrives. If standing out made you feel embarrassed, our brain remembers that. It is trying to protect you. The problem is the problem. Protection can become outdated. It can keep responding to an old situation long after your life has changed. And that's how an old reaction can begin to make new decisions. You aren't choosing based on only what is happening today. You're choosing based on what you learned years ago about what felt safe. This is one reason I don't love the advice to simply stop caring about what people think. First, good luck with that. We are human beings. We care. If someone you deeply love misunderstands you, it matters. If somebody you respect judges you unfairly, it can hurt. If a room full of people rejects something you care about, you're going to feel something about that. The goal is not to become emotionally bulletproof. The shift is learning that another person's Reaction can matter without automatically becoming your instruction. That's the difference. You can care about what someone thinks and still disagree with them. You can feel hurt by someone's reaction and still know that your decision was right. You can value somebody's differing opinion without handing them the steering wheel. And I think this becomes especially important as we get older. Somewhere around midlife, a lot of people start looking at themselves differently. You've had enough life behind you to see patterns. There have been a lot of different versions of yourself. You spent years being who you've needed to be in different seasons. The employee, the parent, the partner, the friend, the responsible one, the one everybody knows they can count on. And somewhere in there, you maybe again asking questions you didn't Asked 20 years ago. Does this still fit who I want to become? Do I still believe in this? Is this still the path I want to take? Do I still want this goal? Would I choose this life again if I were choosing it today? Those questions can be incredibly freeing. They can also be uncomfortable because the people around you know the version of you that has existed up until now. They know how you behave and what you like. They know what you tolerate and What role you play? And when you start changing, they have to update their picture of you. That doesn't always happen smoothly. You decide you want something different and somebody says, since when? You express a new boundary and somebody says, You've never had this problem before. You become interested in something that doesn't fit the person they thought they knew. And sometimes their confusion becomes your self-doubt. You start thinking, maybe this isn't me, but what if it is? What if it's simply a part of you that hasn't had much space before? It's one of the things I think we misunderstand about authenticity. Being yourself doesn't mean you uncover one fixed permanent identity and stay that person forever. You're allowed to evolve. You're allowed to discover something new about yourself at 40, 50, 60, 70, or even 80 years old. You're allowed to change your mind. You are allowed to want something that makes no sense to the people who knew you ten years ago. That doesn't mean that the old version of you was fake. It means you're alive. And being alive means you're still becoming. But growth becomes very difficult if every new version of you first has to pass a committee vote. That's when other people's reactions can quietly begin running your life. You feel pulled towards something, but before you can even explore it, you start imagining how you'll explain it. You decide you want to make a change, then immediately picture who won't understand or won't like it. You get excited, then pull the excitement back because you suddenly feel foolish. And eventually You're no longer making decisions based primarily on what's right for your life. You're making them based on what will create the least amount of friction. That can look peaceful from the outside, but it may not feel peaceful on the inside. Because there's a cost to being accepted for a version of yourself you're carefully curating for others. You can be surrounded by people who love you and still feel unseen. Not necessarily because they don't care about you. But because they only know what you've allowed yourself to show. And that creates a very specific kind of loneliness. You're connected, but you don't feel known. You're included, but a part of you still feels outside the room. And the answer is not to suddenly tell everybody everything about yourself. Being seen is not the same thing as being exposed. Privacy and discernment matter. There are things about your life. That are sacred and belong only to you or to people you deeply trust. Authenticity does not require full access. It means the person you present to the world is recognizably you. You're not constantly shaving off pieces of yourself to fit more comfortably in someone else's expectations. And I think that's an important distinction. This isn't about walking into a room saying, here I am, take it or leave it. Sometimes that's not authenticity. Sometimes that just simply being a pain in the butt. We still care about how we affect people. We still listen and apologize when we're wrong. We still grow, we still compromise in relationships because relationships require compromise. Being yourself does not mean becoming completely unwilling to adjust. It means knowing the difference between compromise and self abandonment. Compromise says both of us matter here. Self-abandonment says, I'll shrink a little bit so this stays comfortable. And if you've spent years doing the second one, it may feel completely normal. So how do you begin changing it? I don't think you need another three-step framework for this. I think you start with your awareness. Notice the places you begin editing yourself before anyone has even reacted. Noticing that moment is huge. There's a gap between what you feel or want and what you finally say or do. Pay attention to what happens inside that gap. Did new information genuinely change your mind? Did you realize your choice would negatively affect someone you care about? Or did you simply imagine someone disapproving and immediately pull back? Then get specific about The reaction you're afraid of because people judge me is enormous. Who are the people? What do you really believe they're going to say? And if they do say it, what will happen next? That question can be surprisingly powerful. Not because every fear is ridiculous. Sometimes the thing you're worried about can happen. Someone may judge you. Someone may misunderstand. Someone may decide they like the old version of you better. But then what? You'll feel disappointed, you'll have a difficult conversation, you'll learn something about their relationship. You decide whether their concern has merit. You adjust if you need to, or you keep going if you don't. In other words, you deal with reality when reality arrives. You don't have to live through every process. Possible reaction in advance. That is exhausting. Most of the time the imaginary version is worse because your mind has unlimited time and budget for the production. It can create a whole movie, lighting, dialogue, supporting characters, a soundtrack. Meanwhile, the other person may barely react. We waste a lot of energy. Protecting ourselves from scenes that never happen. And even if the reaction does happen, you may discover something important. You can handle it. That to me is where the real confidence comes from. Not from believing no one will judge you, not from believing everybody will understand, from knowing that if they don't, you can stay connected to yourself through it. You can listen without immediately assuming they know you better than you do. You can consider feedback without treating every opinion as truth. You can allow someone to be uncomfortable without rushing to change yourself so they feel better. That's self-trust. And that brings me back to the whole idea behind this show. Being in the driver's seat. Because you have mirrors in a car for a reason. You need them. They tell you what's happening around you. You need awareness of other drivers. You need to know what's behind you. But you cannot drive the car while staring in the rear view mirror. And I think sometimes we do exactly that with other people's opinions. We make a move and then immediately look around. What did they think? Did they approve? Did I make someone uncomfortable? Should I explain myself? Should I change direction? There's nothing wrong with checking the mirrors. Feedback and people we love matter, but you can't keep checking every mirror to see whether someone approves of where you're going. At some point you have to look through the windshield and drive. The road is in front of you. Your life is in front of you. And you are the person responsible for living it. Not someone who prefers the version of you from 15 years ago, not someone who made completely different choices and now believes you should make the same ones. Not the imaginary critic sitting in your head having conversations that may never happen. So where in your life are you editing yourself because you are worried about how someone else might react? Not because you received new information that changed your mind or you realize that your decision might genuinely hurt someone. But because you imagined the judgment or the confusion or the disapproval and decided it would be easier to pull back. And what might change if you trusted yourself enough to let people have their reaction without making it mean you should become someone else. Because being seen isn't about becoming louder or getting more attention. It's about allowing who you are on the inside to have a place in the life you're living on the outside. Some people will understand you beautifully. Others won't. Some people will love the person you're becoming. Others may need time to catch up. You don't belong in every room. But you do need to stop abandoning yourself every time you're afraid you might not. You cannot control what people do with what they see. You can decide whether their possible reaction gets to determine how much of your own life you participate in. So check the mirrors when you need to, then put your eyes back on the road and drive. I would love to hear what this brought up for you. Where in your life do you notice yourself editing who you are because you're worried about what someone else might think? Share in the comments. You might find there are a lot of other people doing the same thing. Be sure to subscribe to in the driver's seat for more conversations about patterns shaping our lives, the choices available to us, and what it looks like to intentionally create a life that you truly love. I also have links in the description for free resources for you. I appreciate you being here. Until next time, remember you are always in the driver's seat of your life.