welcome everybody to this presentation on what
causes people to feel invisible i'm your host dr donnelly snipes
in this presentation we're going to talk about what invisibility actually
is and what causes it in part two i'm going to discuss tips to stop feeling invisible
so when somebody says i feel invisible what does that mean it means different things to different
people and in order to address it you're going to have to kind of understand what it means for you
does it mean that your thoughts and feelings don't matter are you in relationships and when you tell
people what your thoughts or feelings are they don't care they just do what they want to anyway
does it mean that nobody would notice if you disappeared
maybe you've been out sick for a week and nobody's called and checked on you and you feel like that
must mean that nobody really really even realizes that i'm here or that i'm gone
or does it mean that people ignore parts of you maybe there are certain parts of you that
people accept and certain parts of you that are important to you that people reject or just don't
acknowledge we all have many many different parts to us i'm a mother i'm a continuing
education provider i am a youtuber i am a farmer i am you know i can list a bunch of different rolls
or hats that i that i wear and it's important to recognize that if you have a role that's important
to you that people don't acknowledge that may leave you feeling less than fully accepted
there are a lot of different causes of invisibility we're just gonna talk about the
top three four five seven right here if you grew up or if you are currently in a situation in which
it's not safe to talk or feel maybe you grew up in a household where there was someone with an act of
addiction and one of the mantras of an addicted household is don't talk don't trust don't feel
or maybe you're in an environment in which there is somebody who has borderline personality
disorder or some other mental health issue that makes it unsafe for you to assert your thoughts
your opinions or your needs that can cause you to start to feel invisible because it feels like
you're not getting your needs met you're not being acknowledged your input is not being acknowledged
so this is not being acknowledged in this situation is because it's unsafe another
situation that can cause invisibility is growing up or actively being in a situation
in which caregivers or significant others are emotionally unavailable it may not be
that they don't want to pay attention to your feelings your thoughts your wants your needs
that kind of stuff they may be so overwhelmed with their own stuff that they can't or they may have
narcissistic traits and they are choosing not to but it may not be about you it may be more about
their dysfunction or their mental health issues or even their physical
health issues sometimes people can be in the same room and completely emotionally distant
and it is important to recognize that if you're in one of those situations especially as a child
children think dichotomously so a lot of times if their caregivers aren't paying attention to them
or if they are communicating you know hey i need you and the caregivers just like i i just can't
you know go play go be quiet whatever then the child may learn or develop a schema that says my
thoughts and wants and needs are not important so that's not abusive that's not actively abusing the
child but that's very neglectful so it's failing to meet the needs of the child or the person
another cause of invisibility is just a lack of assertiveness assertiveness is not a skill
we are born with it's something that we have to learn we learn assertiveness through our secure
attachments through our early relationships through modeling and if you don't have a
model for assertiveness you may never learn it assertiveness means my thoughts wants and needs
are equally as valid as your thoughts wants and knees not more so not less so a lot of people who
feel invisible feel like their thoughts wants and needs are less important than other people's
so they won't communicate them or if they do commute communicate them they communicate them
tentatively like well kind of maybe if you don't mind i think this might be there's lots of hedging
and it's very sheepish in its presentation and this could be just they don't have the
skills to be assertive they're not sure how to do it in a way that wouldn't be
offensive some people may have assertiveness skills that aren't finely tuned or they may
not use their assertiveness skills because they're afraid of rejection think about situations where
you have asserted your thoughts your wants your needs your opinions and people have disagreed okay
some people don't disagree appropriately if you will and it may feel very aggressive it
may feel scary in the workplace for example you may assert your opinions you may assert your
thoughts about something and it gets shot down by your supervisors or your supervisors supervisors
if your opinions and your thoughts wants and needs are regularly shot down guess what you're probably
going to quit asserting them it's like well what's the point so you develop something called learned
helplessness and that's when you just feel like nothing you do matters you're invisible expecting
and being expected to mind read is another cause of invisibility and this is one
that i harp on a lot because unfortunately it is so incredibly prevalent in our culture but
it's so incredibly dysfunctional you can't read other people's minds and they can't read yours if
you have a need if you have an opinion you can't expect people to guess what it is and especially
if you expect them to guess right 100 of the time our society is very caught up we are very
caught up as a society in ourselves we're caught in our own thoughts we're caught in our own heads
think about how often you've been walking down the hall and you've been thinking about something
and haven't even noticed the people you passed or you've been driving somewhere and been caught up
in your thoughts and haven't even noticed really you know the people that you were driving by or
even the houses on the side of the road or whatever this is very common in our society and
when we expect that people are going to anticipate our every need that means we're expecting them not
to be caught up in their own mind but to be make putting us in the center of their world
and their universe and thinking trying to guess and trying to accurately guess about what we need
some people may do that but it is really hard even if you try to guess you know
think about when you're caring for an infant that can't articulate its needs
it's really hard to guess right a hundred percent of the time and as adults or even adolescents
we start expecting our peers other adolescents other adults to be able to articulate their
thoughts wants and needs so we don't have to guess expecting people to read your mind is going
to leave you feeling invisible because they're so caught up in their own thoughts and stuff they're
probably not going to it's not about you it's about them it's about what they're thinking about
and being expected to mind read is also another problem because you're probably even if you are
focused on somebody you're probably going to have difficulty reading other people's minds
discrimination this was the only word i could really find but it goes to that
thing that i was talking about earlier if people don't accept a certain part of you
they overlook it or they look past it that's not accepting me for me that is
expect expect that sorry accepting part of me not all of me and that can cause a person to feel
partially invisible and i want you to think about some of those science fiction movies
that have referred to invisibility and sometimes part of the person is visible
and other parts are invisible but they don't feel whole and unless we are accepted
for all of us we're not going to feel whole a lack of self-awareness can lead to invisibility and
what do i mean by this if you don't know what your thoughts wants and needs are if you're not
self-aware if you're not mindful of what needs you need to have met then how do you expect anybody
else to be aware of those if you're not aware of your thoughts wants and needs you can't
communicate your thoughts wants and needs if you can't communicate them you can't expect people to
meet them therefore you may feel unloved or invisible but not be able to really explain
why what you want to have happen differently and not be able to articulate it to other people
so you end up feeling invisible because people don't know how to help you feel visible
and finally physical or mental illness causing withdrawal if you have had a physical or mental
illness that has caused you to turn down invitations to go out in invitations to
exercise invitations to dinner invitations to movies whatever then at a certain point people
are going to quit asking if they've asked you and asked you and asked you and you've never said
yes they're going to quit asking if they always have to call you and you never reach out to them
they may not think to call you you know they may need a little bit of prodding so
some places will call this coming out of hiding but what i want you to recognize
is you have basically if you've turned down their invitations even with a great reason
if you've repeatedly done it basically you've punished them they're reaching out every time
they've done it you've said no so they're like well you know what's the point in calling what's
the point in asking so it'll be important for you to start initiating again to get back
into the forefront of their mind and let them know that hey i'm ready and able to do things
feeling invisible can be caused by a variety of things however humans are wired for connection
we have oxytocin it's a bonding chemical there's a reason for that to begin to feel less invisible
you need to be able to feel safe to think feel and express your thoughts wants and needs
you need to be able to connect with others who are willing and able to listen so they're willing to
listen but they're also not so caught up in their own stuff and overwhelmed with their own pain
that they are able to listen you need to develop assertiveness skills so you can put out put that
out there what you want what your thoughts are what your needs are so people can respond to them
you wouldn't go into a restaurant and sit down and expect the waitress to or waiter to bring you
exactly what you would wanted to eat for lunch without telling them well same sort of thing
people aren't able to read your mind so assertiveness skills are very helpful
at assisting you in communicating to others your thoughts wants and needs
as well as being able to tolerate it if they have differences of opinion
it's also important and enhance self-esteem and self-awareness because sometimes people
are going to disagree or sometimes they're not going to want to meet your
needs or or whatever and a good strong self-esteem helps you endure that helps you recognize that
okay that's all right not everybody's going to like me not everybody's going to want to do all
the same things i do and that's okay being able to provide self-validation and not rely on everybody
else to tell you you're okay is important and as i said earlier you must generally start initiating
connection if you've been invisible if you haven't been assertive then you may need to
start you know dipping your toe into that pool and seeing what it feels like to be assertive
and initiate connection see what it feels like to actually express an opinion how does that go
in part two i'm going to talk about 12 tips
to stop feeling invisible so this kind of hit the highlights of why people might feel invisible
in part two we're going to talk about more things that you can do to stop feeling invisible