On feeling invisible.......

Helplessly I watched as my computer screen coughed up random digits and then just went black.

Now what? What was it this time? I tried to turn it on. No luck. I unplugged it, then tried to turn it on...no, nothing. The worst of it was that it happened as I was in the process of doing a back-up.

What about all my photos? Was years of photos gone for ever?

Panicked, I phoned my computer whizz.  

The diagnosis was dire, but my guy was going to see if he could retrieve as much as he possible off the hard drive.

Off he went with my computer and left was a big empty space where the computer used to be.

I felt lost, because I spent most of my free time fooling around with editing photos in Photoshop.

On telling my son how lost I felt at not being able to use the computer, he looked at me and said: "Paint, paint instead."

"Paint? I don't know how to paint." 

"Do it anyway" he told me.

So I did, and much to my surprise, I loved it.  

More amazing still, people wanted to buy my paintings.

On this blog I have posted many of my paintings, inks, sketches etc. but last night I thought perhaps some of my photos could be used as well.  So, first thing this morning I dug through one of my boxes of CD's and found a few of my Photoshopped images.

The above image is one of those.

I know, a long preamble, so let me get to the topic of this post: on feeling invisible.

In conversation with people who are brave enough to say out loud that they feel lonely, often along with feeling lonely they say comes feeling invisible.

Whether we like it or not, belonging is a basic human need, although it varies from person to person just how much of it we may need. (Watching a serious documentary on what happens to inmates who spend huge amounts of time in solitary confinement made it clear to me just how important it is for us to connect, interact, and belong.)

But strangely, it seems it is quite possible to belong to a family, a group of friends, an organisation, an interest group, a class, etc.etc. and yet still feel invisible.

Stranger still perhaps, is that many mothers often seem to go through periods of time when they feel invisible. (One may ponder, with kids around, why would a mother feel invisible?) 

 Sara, a mother of three children: "It's like I am this invisible entity who cooks, cleans, picks up kids from school, drop kids at school, packs lunches for everyone, holds the hair back when someone is sick and vomits, puts band-aids on scrubbed knees, irons clothes, you name it, I do it, only ......I wonder sometimes .... do they really need me or just a housekeeper?"

Pastor Smith, the head pastor of a large church: "I know it may seem strange to you, but you have no idea how lonely it can be to be a pastor."  When Pastor Smith told me this, I didn't quite know how to respond, so I said nothing, I just listened. For over an hour he allowed himself to open his heart and let it all out, to just be Adam Smith, the man. Getting ready to leave, he stretched out his hand and said: "Thanks, for listening, even a pastor needs a good friend."  I was bewildered as to why Pastor Smith decided to open up to me but I treasured his trust and hoped that maybe he felt that somehow I saw him, Adam Smith, which allowed him to be fully visible rather than his job description.

For some of us, feeling lonely and or invisible can be a temporary state of mind, but for some of us it can be a constant struggle.  Some research shows that a lack of validation in childhood can contribute to us feeling invisible, as in the way our parents treated us as children may become the way we treat ourselves as adults. If a child comes to a parent with a problem and is told over and over that the parent is "too busy", the child may take that to mean that he/she is not relevant to the parent and that he/she needs to handle it (whatever it may be) on his/her own, which the child may interpret as "my feelings don't matter".

 Later, this may result in that as an adult feelings are pushed down and aside as to not bother anyone. Connection with others may be sought, yet somehow something always seems to be missing, 

Some say that there are perhaps different kinds of feeling invisible: when we speak and no one seems to hear us, being at social or family gatherings and no one seems to notice us, when we express our opinions and no one takes them seriously, to mention a few.

Sometimes we may not even be aware of that we are struggling with feeling invisible, and notice only that we have a small ball of sadness in the pit of our stomachs that we can't seem to get rid of.

After I had had my second panic attack, my doctor recommended that I see a psychologist. 

I took the recommendation and it changed my life. During my forth visit, the psychologist looked at me and asked: "Why are you making yourself invisible?"

Huh? What do you mean? I asked. 

"You are hiding your feelings and intelligence, you are trying to make your true self invisible," answered the psychologist.

I was stumped.

"Think about it until we see each other again," I was told.

I thought about it, light-bulbs went off all over the place, and my understanding of who I am was irrevocably changed.

What I learnt was that in order to become truly visible to others I had to become visible to myself first. Uncomfortable as it was, it began with me asking myself some difficult questions:

As a child was I listened to?  Did something happen when I was a child that made me decide that it was safer to hide my feelings than to express them?  Am I an introvert?  If I want to become more visible, what can I change about me?

 Caring for ourselves by accepting and valuing ourselves is a helpful thing to do, but so is remembering that how we experience something, we always do through our very subjective and individual interpretations of those experiences.

"If we want to become visible to others, we must begin by first becoming visible to ourselves."

(Citizen Z)