Do you go through life feeling like no one sees the real you? You may be surrounded by people at work, home and socially and still feel entirely invisible.
I regularly see clients in my counselling practice who are smart and talented but feel unseen in their lives. They are great employees, caring family members, and kind, thoughtful friends who all too often they don’t receive anything like the same attention they give to others.
Instead, they feel unnoticed at work, like an outsider in their family, and that they don’t get the same support from friends and partners they give out.
The roots of your invisibility
People don’t feel unseen overnight. The pattern typically begins early on. Often, it’s the result of having parents or siblings who took up more space. Did you learn at an early age to play quietly in the corner by yourself whilst your brother(s) or sister(s) needed or demanded more attention from your parents? Or perhaps, one of your parents had a lot of needs which meant caring for you was not a priority.
I have also found that the child who became, inadvertently, the family scapegoat often becomes an unseen adult. If your family alienate you for who you are, despite your best intentions, it can set the tone for how you feel in future settings. It feels safer to withdraw, look after yourself, and avoid relying on others.
The great employee hiding in plain sight
Do you feel overlooked at work? That work dominates your life, you put in an enormous of time and energy, and you’re usually the one people come to when things need to get done.
I work with talented, loyal, and dedicated individuals who are great employees but feel unseen by their employers. Often their dedication means they feel as much responsibility for their company as the owners. But they share frustration about colleagues who make more noise and get more support and attention. They crave more input from their managers and discuss annoyance at how they are overlooked for opportunities.
Do you operate behind a cloak of perfection?
Perfectionists can make great escape artists. Perfection can become a coping mechanism for people who didn’t feel seen by their family or friends. On paper it looks like a good strategy – let’s ensure I do everything right, then I won’t be ridiculed and there’s less chance of me being rejected.
But an issue with perfectionism is that it can become an incredibly insular world. The need to do everything right creates a fear of letting anyone know about the self-criticism and effort that goes on behind the scenes. There’s a fear of letting your guard slip, and maintaining control can mean you hide your personality too.
Why no one knows what your needs are
The paradox for someone who feels unseen is that usually the people around them don’t know what they need.
Being unseen can be self-perpetuating. The more competent you become, the more you do for others, the less you are noticed. Your talent becomes so externally motivated that you make things look effortless. You make it look like you have everything under control and are confident and capable.
Others may not offer you help and support because they think you don’t need it. Or they may have become reliant on your steadfastness because you make their life easier.
And you may have become so good at hiding that you’re unable to ask for what you need. Standing up to be counted and asking for attention might feel incredibly uncomfortable, simply impossible. It might even be the case that your own needs might be so far out of your awareness, you don’t know what they are.
Learning to understand how to see yourself
When you feel unseen, it can become easy to blame this on other people. But the reality is that other people can’t give you what you need, if you can’t give it to yourself first.
So, the starting point needs to be with you rather than others. It’s about identifying when you started to hide and what you’ve been doing to stay hidden in plain sight. People who hide are usually quite self-critical so learning to be kind to yourself about how these coping mechanisms developed is an important foundation.
Exercises like identifying your values, being able to name your emotions, and getting in touch with the aspects of your personality you like can be valuable. It’s about learning to trust your own judgement and strengthening your internal compass. Starting from the internal helps you to be more comfortable with who you are and that energy starts to create subtle shifts in your environment.
And of course, finding ways to start asking others for help and to be treated how you’d like to be.
Emerging from hiding
Learning to feel seen may take some time, and it starts with you rather than the people around you.
It begins with understanding when you first started to hide and treating that part of you with kindness. From there, small shifts can grow – knowing your values, trusting your own judgement, and finding ways to let a little more of yourself be visible. There’s no rush, you can take it all at your own pace.
