Fear Of Being Seen Part III: Healing & Conclusion

Coming to the final realizations (for now), and finding your own next steps forward.

I’ve been wrestling with writing this conclusion for awhile.

Because the hard truth, the pill we both have to swallow is: I can’t tell you where to go from here.

I’ll share a few clues I’ve picked up while going through the process of uncovering my own fear of being seen, what it means and where it came from. But if you’ve been on this journey with me, then this is the part where you have to take this torch and run forward into your own darkness.

After all, your fear is unique to you,

With it’s own rules and confinements. It’s own needs.

And most importantly: it’s own medicine.

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The Fear Of Being Seen Journey (so far):

• Fear of being seen is caused by a belief that sharing my wants, desires, and needs is dangerous. (In my case, sharing those vulnerable parts of myself made me selfish and thus bad, and would be punished by way of rejection or humiliation). It doesn’t necessitate that you are shy or quiet - in fact it might be quite the opposite. Jake and I both found that we are outgoing and performative as a way of hiding what we are afraid to be seen.

• The first step is understand what it is I’m afraid to let be seen by others. (Dreams and goals, perceived flaws or imperfections, etc)

• Next, I must acknowledge that what I’m afraid of has already happened in the past. Thus, I’m afraid because I am trying to avoid it happening again. I must realize I have already survived it, and honor the parts of me that came out still loving and compassionate despite having endured it.

• In understanding where the fear came from, I can look at how my current behaviors and actions to avoid this fear actually magnetize similar circumstances to me. In essence: the very actions I take to avoid it are the very things that call what I don’t want toward me.

• Finally, I can now write new rules, including: boundaries, beliefs, expectations, and my own personal code of conduct, to stop the vicious cycle and take myself down a new path.

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As I’ve been writing this and working through this whole process, I keep thinking back to myself a decade ago. Living in South Pasadena, having just left New York City (the place I’d dreamed of living since I was a little girl. The place I thought I was my happiest, the place I thought I belonged.)

I was deeply depressed, but also incredibly and terrifyingly committed. I’d just ended a very successful blog I’d created for readers in that post-trauma, post-’my world just fell apart’ phase because in my depression I didn’t know how to serve my audience anymore.

There was a part of me walking, living, moving through life asleep.

Of every season and version of myself I’ve ever been, that version was the most afraid to be seen. She was scared to have needs, scared to have a preference on anything. She lived to take care of others. She was a waitress, she served others for a living, for God’s sake. She was a people pleaser and a pushover and a codependent.

Her Life Went Like This:

• She prioritized everyone else before herself.

• Everyone else’s needs had to be met before she could even hope to have her own needs addressed - and by then, she was too exhausted to even bring her needs up.

• Those she put first were so accustomed to her selflessness, they came to expect it.

• Her needs were never addressed. Never recognized. Never filled, not even by herself. Thus the vicious cycle went for decades.

• The more the cycle continued, the more it reinforced her beliefs: she was unimportant, didn’t matter to others, and no one was looking out for her. Asking for more would break the status quo, and prove her to be selfish and uncaring. Exactly opposite to the reason she was loved currently (her selflessness).
  

She was terrified for her dreams, desires, needs, and true self to be seen.

A self that didn’t want to be put last. That didn’t want to take care of everyone else at the expense of herself. But to say so was her greatest fear.

Is that you, too, dear reader?

Are you living the same taunting cycle? The same painful repeat episode, day after day?

Are you ready for more? From yourself, and your life?

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Healing Our Fear Of Being Seen:

Follow The Breadcrumbs

Back then, while sleepwalking through my own life, there was a part of me beyond the fears that secretly, silently was on the hunt for something bigger. A better version of myself, a bigger life for myself. I was terrified to say so. I was scared to tell anyone - my partner at the time, my family, my friends - that I wanted a bigger, more beautiful life. That I wanted to make a bigger impact. That I wanted to be known, and stand for something huge.

So in private, I started following the little bread crumbs, the little fireflies of light that I could make out from that dark place I was living. A place where I felt like I didn’t matter, no one saw me, and there was nothing I could do about it because I simply wasn’t important enough or valuable enough to get the help I’d need to make change.

The first place I found was YouTube. An unlikely source. Silly, even. While my partner was at work each evening, I’d stay at home alone, watching influencers live the life and treat themselves the way I wanted to. As if the cup they drank their morning coffee out of was very important. As if the were worthy and capable of buying the best skincare. As if the fact that they put on makeup, and how they put it on, really mattered. As if they knew themselves and their bodies well enough to know what to eat, and how to work out.

They treated themselves as worthy, and they weren’t afraid to demonstrate that worthiness to the world - on camera, even. Talk about a fearlessness in being seen: everything about their lives and their beliefs were seen by millions of strangers.

After a few weeks, still watching in secret and feeling a little embarrassed to be following these 20-something influencers, I started buying products they’d suggest. Which was a big step, because spending money on myself and trite things like makeup felt very foolish. As though if someone found out, they’d call me selfish and stupid.

I started caring more about myself. I started watching their channels while giving myself a facial and a manicure. I even started - gasp - my own instagram, and taking pictures of myself.

These were my first glimpses into sharing myself more publicly. The real me. Not on camera, but in my day-to-day life.

And now, a decade later, I’m doing it again. This time knowing: following those little clues and hints will be totally worth it.

Knowing: no one can see me till I see myself.

• Knowing: Being seen does not equal danger, no matter how much my ego or my past try to convince me that it does.

• Knowing: that no matter what happens, I’ll survive, just like I always have. And it’s better to survive whatever I fear than to live an unlived life. To waste my one precious chance to break free by spending my life in a cage of possible danger.

For me, right now the healing looks like somatic practices to help my body feel safe while I share my work here on Substack. Making sure I feel in alignment before I post, and that my posts are chasing down validation of people that don’t deserve my light in the first place. Now I understand thos people are actually scared of my light, which is why they must make me feel afraid to share it.

Those somatic practices look like: meditations (I am recording my own, complete with a place I feel most safe and seen, and time spent with my inner child). Sweating in my sauna, sitting in the discomfort of a cold shower and breathing myself back to calm. Rest and sleep. Conquering my fear of not working out hard enough and just having a light workout instead.

And healing right now looks like practicing bravery. Sharing my heart here openly, wildly, truthfully. Not trying to make posts I think you’ll like, but instead just sharing what’s in my soul. And trusting that if you align, you’ll find your way to me.

So, my loves, I have no blueprint for you from here. But I do promise to continue my commitment to being seen and overcoming this fear, and doing it out loud so you can learn from it and hopefully find your own way through, too.

Here are this week’s journal prompts, I hope you love them.

Journal Prompts

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