The Importance of Being Seen in Your Emotions

When self-therapy doesn't cut it

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably been your own therapist for a very long time. You’ve found the books, the concepts and the practices, and started your healing process on your own.

You started diving deep within and learnt how to hold yourself in the hardest of times. At the end of the day, if you cannot be there for yourself, who will? All the answers are to be found within. Self-love is the highest kind of love. Right?

I’m going to burst your bubble and say wrong! Well, it is correct, but only to a certain degree.

You see, we are a relational species, which means we depend on other people to feel connected and fulfilled. And I am not talking about the unhealthy type of dependence, but an inter-dependence that simply acknowledges the fact that we need other people.

It is true - any process of self-discovery starts with an exploration of our inner world: our beliefs, feelings, tendencies and ultimately behaviours. We find connections between these and our upbringing, as well as the people that brought us up.

And it is then when we realise that the majority of our wounds are relational, meaning, they were created via or by other people in our lives, with or without intention.

This brings me to a personal story that ties in really well with the broader topic of emotions and how to work with them in a way that doesn’t reinforce the root trauma of not being seen.

The reason we don’t share our difficult emotions with other people is because, as children, we learnt that we weren’t accepted when we expressed them; or no one was there for us when we felt them.

Last week I did a livestream on Substack for the first time. I love expressing myself through speaking and I had cultivated enough nervous system safety to do something that scared me a little. This is what I call a good “out of my comfort zone” situation that is aligned with the state of my nervous system rather than goes against it.

I enjoyed the experience very much! Nevertheless, exposing myself in video, talking about things that matter to me and having people watch that left me feeling extremely unsettled. I call this “the vulnerability hangover”, mixed with a bit of impostor syndrome.

My entire body was flooded with a mix of chemicals that pushed it into a state of fight or flight, leaving me confused and a little embarrassed.

I went on about my day but this feeling would not go away. Cognitively, I understood that I was feeling like that because I had done something hard and I was now exhausted from it. But what I completely missed is that I didn’t share any of it with anyone.

I found myself not only vulnerable from having come out of my comfort, but also experiencing the painful emotion of not being seen in that vulnerability by the people I love.

I was at a choice point, between dealing with these difficult experiences on my own, or involving other people in my process. And I chose the latter.

Because today, I know that denying myself the need for connection and co-regulation means I am perpetuating the very thing that created the wound of disconnection in the first place.

The pain of not being seen in my experience is now bigger than the fear of rejection.

So I reached out to people, I shared, I let myself break in front of them, and through this I reclaimed my need of being seen.

Letting other people know how we feel is as important as letting ourselves feel what we feel.

We were not meant to feel and heal in isolation. The self-help/spirituality community can sell the idea that we are enough for ourselves, but the truth is that we thrive in connection with other people.

If, as children, we didn’t have the unconditional presence and support of an adult when we felt difficult emotions, then what message do we send ourselves today, by denying us the very experiences that we missed?

The good thing is that, as adults, we can become aware of our needs and surround ourselves with people that can meet them. Of course, we can meet a lot of our needs ourselves and we should learn to do that.

But let’s not forget that healing means having the opposite experience.

And if the original experience was one in which we felt unworthy of sharing our authentic self and still be loved for it, then we must do everything in our power to create a different experience for ourselves today.

The next article will also be dedicated to the topic of emotions, specifically on the differences between feeling and processing an emotion.

If you’re new here, you might want to read the below articles that explore the role of our nervous system and how we can build more inner capacity to feel our emotions.

Your Nervous System Holds the Blueprint

Building Inner Capacity & Working with Triggers

I want to thank for your presence, for reading, for being on this journey ♡

And I invite you to share in the comments: What is your experience of letting yourself be seen/or not in your emotions?