Is being seen a trigger?

The craving and fear of authenticity

To be seen for who you are, unguarded, spontaneous, and without pretense, can be one of the most intimidating things for a childhood trauma survivor. And yet, it’s something we all crave deeply. If you can’t be seen, you can’t be known, and if you can’t be known, intimacy remains out of reach.

How childhood rejection suppresses the self

My own experiences of being seen in childhood could result in criticism, violence, or really hurtful neglect (silent shaming, cold-shouldering). Being punished for being real is such a confusing situation for a child, because ‘real’ (spontaneous, open, curious) is who they really are, and they’re looking for accurate mirroring that will help them understand how to integrate that with other people and the world.

Instead, kids who are rejected when they show themselves as they really are end up learning that reality, truth and spontaneity, are not welcome. Kids might become like little investigators, trying to solve the mystery of why their parents keep misunderstanding them (it’s mostly not possible for a child to comprehend that it’s their parent, not them who is behaving badly), or they might learn to shut down more and more of themselves, until their parent’s reactivity reduces.

As a child, I learned to mask my emotions, hide my opinions and spontaneous reactions, and I became highly diplomatic, whilst at the same time pushing down a lot of hurt and outrage, which could end up exploding when it got too much.

The missing foundation: Total adoration and safety

When a child is young, they need the experience of being adored and accepted totally. That is how the foundations of their self-worth are built – they learn they are fundamentally good, even if they might do things from time to time that aren’t good. It creates a basis for a healthy sense of self.

When they look up into the eyes of their parent, especially when they are very young, they need to see someone who totally adores them, who sees them as good and who is devoted to their wellbeing.

If instead the eyes of their parents are empty and shut down, or if they are full of anger, contempt or suspicion for their child or the world at large, being seen becomes an overwhelmingly negative experience for the child. Kids just aren’t able to handle that kind of intensity and negative complexity, and must cope with it through an instinctive survival response (fight, flight, freeze, shame or fawn).

Modern triggers: How "being seen" manifests in adult life

In the present we still need to be seen if we’re going to have good reciprocal relationships with others and the world, but situations that present opportunities to be seen can be really triggering.

Some examples might include:

• Celebrating our birthday as an adult or having "Happy Birthday" sung for us.

• Being asked to lead a project at work or do a presentation.

• Close moments with a romantic partner where tender feelings come up (these can be painful or positive feelings!). Crying in front of others can be extremely difficult and feel inappropriate, even when it is, in fact, highly appropriate!

• Needing to express when something feels uncomfortable to us.

• We have an artistic talent, and somebody asks us for example to play something at a gathering, or show our visual artworks.

• Being asked to share your thoughts on a conversation topic that people have strong opinions about.

• Feeling shy when we accomplish something, and people look to us to congratulate us. We can dread winning for this reason – even something like a board game can feel tricky to win because of the fear of how we might be seen for winning. Winning can come with mixed feelings and an expectation that we will be resented by others for achieving and we will lose friends.

The dysfunctional parental lens

These experiences are the result of having parents who saw their children not as children (innocent, loveable beings, in need of guidance and encouragement), but as something negative as a result of their own toxic beliefs.

Toxic parents might see their own children as selfish adults who put demands on them, they might see them as competitors for scarce resources of love and attention, and they may even see them as persecutors, delusionally projecting onto them.

None of these projections from parents makes any sense in the reality of a parent-child dynamic, and all of them create deep wounds that need attentive re-parenting to heal. They all serve to make our inner children deeply afraid of being seen, because they were never seen in a positive light! It should be the simplest thing in the world for a child to be seen as loveable, but a dysfunctional parent can make that experience painfully complicated.

Core trauma beliefs: What the inner child still holds

What might your inner child believe about being seen in the present?

• Giving my real opinion on something is a set up for criticism and conflict.

• I’m not allowed to have thoughts that are too different from those I’m close to.

• I have to work out what other people will find acceptable before it’s safe to express myself.

• I can’t spontaneously express emotion because it might upset someone.

• Taking up space, either physically or the time and attention of others, is an inconvenience to others and should be minimised.

• Sharing things I have done, made or accomplished is an inconvenience to other people, who have better things to do. If I do ever share anything I’ve done (creative projects, work accomplishments, sporting achievements), it should be kept short because it’s not interesting to other people.

Re-parenting through the anxiety

When simply being seen was so complicated and dangerous, it sets us up to struggle with our very right to exist. Not being able to express who we are keeps us in constant isolation from other people and a sense of community and interdependency feels constantly out of reach.

If being seen is too painful or frightening, we struggle with feeling real ourselves. As the Zulu aphorism goes, ‘Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’ – the full meaning of which can be understood as ‘a person is a person because of or through others’. When we can’t be seen we can’t connect to others, and when we can’t connect to others we don’t feel fully real ourselves.

Putting ourselves out there to be seen is naturally an experience that causes nervousness and anxiety, and when that experience was so deeply wrecked in childhood it’s extra difficult. So it’s really normal to find it very hard to approach this. It makes sense to be really stuck around these things, and we will need to cultivate an attitude of deep gentleness, kindness, and patience with ourselves.

A little truth, some love, and a willingness to keep coming back to the conversation as the discomfort comes up to be grieved is so important.

Inner children are like real children, they need repetition and consistency, and to know always that even though the feelings around something like this might be really difficult (they may strongly feel the feelings parents projected onto them as little ones, which can be so, so intense and confusing), they have an inner parent present with them now who believes they are fundamentally good and wants to hold them through the struggle. That’s the kind of safety you should have always had.

As featured in Patrick Teahan's Healing Community.