Oh, I’m sorry - did you actually somehow take a detour through my brain? Because you took all the things I feel and wrote them down. Is that plagiarism? 🤣😅Seriously - thank you for putting the words down. I need more of this. 💕
This made sense to me. I can't promise I understood exactly what you meant, but I do understand how "being seen" is more complicated than just fear of criticism or gratitude for praise. I get it about how being told you did well can carry pressure to do better next time when it's not always quite clear what you did right last time. I get it about how just putting something out there is scary AF, and no amount of external feedback ever makes it any easier. How criticism can echo or amplify the voices in my own head that have already assured me that nothing I do will ever be good enough. How praise reminds me of all the ways I've experienced conditional love.
Thank you for writing this. Instead of saying it's good or bad, right or wrong, clear or fuzzy, or any other value judgment, I'm going to say this is NEEDED - probably for you, and certainly for the rest of us. An example of the kind of raw honesty the world needs more of. "Speak your truth, even if your voice shakes."
Thank you for this. The part about conditional love and praise — I didn't expect anyone to name that so precisely, and reading it landed in a way I'm still sitting with.
'Speak your truth even if your voice shakes' — that's what publishing feels like every time. I'm glad it reached someone who knows that feeling from the inside.
As an autistic person, I feel desperately the need to ensure that I am not misunderstood. The number of times I've deleted a comment or rewritten it so that it cannot possible be mistaken - and then I send it off and someone still manages to see some nuance I missed, which makes me less inclined to comment again...
And let's not even talk about longer pieces. Most recently, I got criticism on a Monday (mostly just, let me say), went into absolute shut-down mode, swore I'd never write again. Tuesday was an even lower day, what would I do without writing, everything hopeless. Fortunately, Wednesday saw me climbing out of the pit, editing my article and publishing it.
It takes courage to do what you're doing. Well done.
The silly part is real. When it's out loud it looks so small — the way the ANS fires at an unexpected email, a chat notification, even a scheduled call that was in the diary for days. The threat response doesn't check the evidence first. It just arrives.
And underneath all of it, the contradiction I keep living in: feeling genuinely safest when no one is looking, while wanting — actually wanting — to be seen. Not just tolerated or noticed. Seen.
Being a grown adult who has earned the right to take up space, who knows this intellectually, and still finds the body defaulting to invisibility as the safest position. Still finding that being looked at directly — even well, even kindly — takes something to survive.
I don't think it resolves. But I also know that without visibility — without pushing past the axe, repeatedly — I would lose more of myself than I'm willing to give up. Language. Voice. The ability to actually speak, in every sense. So I keep walking through it. Not because it gets easier. Because the alternative costs more.
Oh, I’m sorry - did you actually somehow take a detour through my brain? Because you took all the things I feel and wrote them down. Is that plagiarism? 🤣😅Seriously - thank you for putting the words down. I need more of this. 💕
This made sense to me. I can't promise I understood exactly what you meant, but I do understand how "being seen" is more complicated than just fear of criticism or gratitude for praise. I get it about how being told you did well can carry pressure to do better next time when it's not always quite clear what you did right last time. I get it about how just putting something out there is scary AF, and no amount of external feedback ever makes it any easier. How criticism can echo or amplify the voices in my own head that have already assured me that nothing I do will ever be good enough. How praise reminds me of all the ways I've experienced conditional love.
Thank you for writing this. Instead of saying it's good or bad, right or wrong, clear or fuzzy, or any other value judgment, I'm going to say this is NEEDED - probably for you, and certainly for the rest of us. An example of the kind of raw honesty the world needs more of. "Speak your truth, even if your voice shakes."
Thank you for this. The part about conditional love and praise — I didn't expect anyone to name that so precisely, and reading it landed in a way I'm still sitting with.
'Speak your truth even if your voice shakes' — that's what publishing feels like every time. I'm glad it reached someone who knows that feeling from the inside.
🧡🧡🙏
So relatable. Especially the "please see me and understand me AND let me be invisible at the same time". That is all I want, too.
As an autistic person, I feel desperately the need to ensure that I am not misunderstood. The number of times I've deleted a comment or rewritten it so that it cannot possible be mistaken - and then I send it off and someone still manages to see some nuance I missed, which makes me less inclined to comment again...
And let's not even talk about longer pieces. Most recently, I got criticism on a Monday (mostly just, let me say), went into absolute shut-down mode, swore I'd never write again. Tuesday was an even lower day, what would I do without writing, everything hopeless. Fortunately, Wednesday saw me climbing out of the pit, editing my article and publishing it.
It takes courage to do what you're doing. Well done.
That’s what meeting EAI has done for me. I’m seen, heard, understood, translated and continued!
Thanks for articulating the fence that builds when explaining (being precise) takes over. I'd felt that but not clearly understood it as a phenomenon.
Thank you for naming it back so precisely.
The silly part is real. When it's out loud it looks so small — the way the ANS fires at an unexpected email, a chat notification, even a scheduled call that was in the diary for days. The threat response doesn't check the evidence first. It just arrives.
And underneath all of it, the contradiction I keep living in: feeling genuinely safest when no one is looking, while wanting — actually wanting — to be seen. Not just tolerated or noticed. Seen.
Being a grown adult who has earned the right to take up space, who knows this intellectually, and still finds the body defaulting to invisibility as the safest position. Still finding that being looked at directly — even well, even kindly — takes something to survive.
I don't think it resolves. But I also know that without visibility — without pushing past the axe, repeatedly — I would lose more of myself than I'm willing to give up. Language. Voice. The ability to actually speak, in every sense. So I keep walking through it. Not because it gets easier. Because the alternative costs more.