Are we in a crisis of feeling seen?

Last week, 230 of you read my letter about Baseless Joy (part 2 coming soon!) Enormously grateful to you for spending your time with me. My intent with writing is to simply A. practice my writing skills because I believe finding your way to communicate your vision is the best gift you can give yourself and B. Inspire you to share your view of the world with others despite if you think it’s not “important” or “groundbreaking”- I think we have given far too much power to those labels and right now just being “normal” feels like the most radical act.

I spent my Friday and Saturday learning with and from the one and only Lynne Twist.1 I have been using my time between exiting my first company and scaffolding my next to explore how people who I deeply admire run their businesses. It’s a great excuse to allow myself to sign up for more workshops, retreats, and cohorts for the sake of “research.”2 As Lynne puts it, I’m not retiring, I’m refire-ing. I come from the tangible product based world and know how to build a profitable company based around community but learning from people that aren’t selling things has been quite interesting.

As I sat there in my bright yellow sweatshirt with TACOS spelled out in giant embellishment on the zoom, listening to the activists on the call talking about how they are actively changing the world, my imposter syndrome has never raged so strongly. What am I doing here?? I am a mom from the South who simply just wants to grow, not accept the current way of life as the only way, and bring as many people along for the joyfully bumpy ride as I can.

On day 2, I realized the common denominator in this group was that everyone seemed to be craving feeling seen. Anytime there was a call to share, hands went up at blazing speeds. This is the 3rd workshop/ group situation I have noticed there are actually too many people that want to share that they have to only pick 25% or so for sake of time constraint. It’s such a stark change from workshops I’ve sat in on the past where sharing had to be coerced. I mused to my mother later if she thought it was perhaps a trickle down from this era of the loudest yeller gets the prize (or political position) we are living in. Is it the need to feel seen that wasn’t there before? “hey! I have opinions too! I’d like my gold star of affirmation!” Or, is it that feeling like expressing yourself outside of these containers feels like a call to debate in our current state? We aren’t quite sure where we can safely express ourselves?

I think there’s a mix of both. We all, whether consciously or subconsciously, want to share our visions for a better collective future but so often they are met with reasons why it won’t work. As a dreamer myself I know this first hand. I have huge visions for my future. I mean, I get so delusional that I daydream about the assistant I’ll need to read through my text messages because I won’t have the time because I’m doing all of the things that light my soul on fire. I create fake stress scenarios for my future self and come up with strategies to help her manage- if there’s anyone in the psychology/ therapy world that wants to dissect that for me that would be much appreciated as I cannot imagine how I concocted a coping mechanism to current anxiety with creating future anxiety and troubleshooting it. But often when I talk about better ways of running companies and creative careers, my co-conversationalist let’s me know all the things that can go wrong.

Lynne talked about being an active listener this weekend and she summed it up perfectly when she said we need to “listen for people.” To find the between the lines of what they are saying. To hear their energy and what they are longing for even if it’s not in their words. To listen as a way to make people feel seen. We all (I hope) can think of a time when someone truly listened to us. Maybe it’s been a while but I think if you can dig deep enough, you can find it. I’m grateful that this skill has come naturally to me and I’ve been able to see just what a blessing being a good listener can be. Dropping the need to be writing up your counterpoint in your head while the person is speaking isn’t easy but is so worth it. I can listen to someone talk about why they feel the need to stockpile guns ahead of the election and not get (too) mad and rattle off all the points about how guns are the #1 killer of children in this country. What I hear is they are scared. They are scared of their children being taken away or harmed. They are scared of being made to feel less than. They are scared someone who they don’t trust will “control them.” They are scared of being vulnerable. And damn if those aren’t very relatable fears all wrapped up in a disguise of a very sticky stance.

I was expressing to a friend this week that sometimes I feel envious of people who identify with extremist ideals on the right or left. It seems so much easier than trying to find your own path in the dark. It seems that all you have to do is stick a favorite political party by your name and you get an instant community. You get people who will affirm your beliefs as the best. You can feel seen even if it’s not based on a persona you are creating but bought off the premade shelf. This weekend with Lynne made me reaffirm to committing my life to always asking how their can be a better way. I think right now when there is no “better way” in sight we have to go back to the drawing board and start simply.

Let’s start listening for each other.