Speaker 1: 0:12

Welcome back to the Practical Spirituality Podcast. We are so excited to have you on this journey with us, where we explore all elements of mind, body, emotions and soul through the lens of everyday life.

Speaker 2: 0:29

Hello Kim.

Speaker 1: 0:30

Hello Gareth, how are you?

Speaker 2: 0:32

I'm doing good this morning. How are you doing?

Speaker 1: 0:34

I'm doing okay, pretty good. I've got an interesting topic for us.

Speaker 2: 0:39

I'm intrigued, go on.

Speaker 1: 0:40

Well, I'm speaking to a few of my clients this week and it seems to be a theme People that feel a sense of invisibility. So what I mean by that is they feel invisible, not like they're being ignored, but that even when they are talking, nobody's paying attention to them.

Speaker 2: 1:03

Have you had anybody ever talk to you about that? I think it hits home for myself, never mind other people. I think it's a universal experience at times to feel unseen and unheard and I don't think it's really well. Sometimes it's intentional by others, as we all know. But I think sometimes going through life we can just feel somewhat invisible and it's a pretty hard thing to put your finger on because of course if you call someone out on it, they're not going to really know what you mean or what you're talking about. But yet it's in. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details at times. But I guess everything we talk about on this podcast is an interesting reflection of what it brings up in self when we do sit with that feeling or those particular thoughts, when they're sparked.

Speaker 1: 1:46

Well, I think it's such a range of things. So you know, like if we were trying to define exactly what we're talking about. It's that feeling like you're sitting with people and everybody's having a discussion and you go to put your two cents in and they just keep talking as if you hadn't even spoken. You know, I don't know about anybody else, but I came from a family where it was like that. So, but there's that, and then there is that sense of even when people hear you, it's almost as if they don't care.

Speaker 2: 2:21

Or it doesn't count.

Speaker 1: 2:22

Or it doesn't count, yeah, and if anyone has ever felt that, it's pretty yuck. A lot of people that might feel it, for example, are what we call the lost children. You know, to generalize a whole lot. We're talking about the middle child syndrome because it's usually the middle child that feels unseen and unheard. One of the reasons I wanted to talk about it is, like I said, I've had a few clients this week that have presented with it and it just erodes people's self-seem and self-confidence so much when they feel like their input isn't valuable.

Speaker 2: 3:04

Well, it's hard not to take it personally, yes, especially, as you mentioned earlier, when you're trying to contribute to a conversation, that's when it becomes confusing, because, especially if you're around people that, so to speak, are your best friends or your family or the people that love you the most, but yet you feel invisible and what you're saying is kind of irrelevant at times, so to speak. How does that not become very personal in how you feel about yourself, or even how you think about yourself on a day-in, day-out basis?

Speaker 1: 3:33

Well, it has a huge impact. It impacts your self-confidence, it impacts your self-esteem, it impacts your self-worth because you think, well, nobody wants to hear anything I have to say, or no one even notices that I'm present. I know, as a child and I chuckle about this quite often I used to threaten to run away all the time and I didn't think anybody would even notice because the house was so busy and everybody had their own little things that they were doing, so I didn't really think they would notice if I was there or if I wasn't there. And so what does that do to somebody? When you grow up with that feeling and I know for me, I can speak for myself, I know that when that happened for me I thought, well, it really doesn't matter what I do, because I really didn't believe anybody cared.

Speaker 1: 4:24

Now I know today that that is not true, but back then I didn't know that. And so it's not just coming from a big family or being a middle child you can be thrust in situations where you might be the shy one. You go off to school, maybe you're the youngest in the classroom and everybody has a little bit of an insight, and you feel like you don't. You start building the proof for that. So there's quite a few different ways that this kind of plays out. It's not just from big families.

Speaker 2: 4:57

And I think there's also probably again simplifying it two different ways of experiencing that. There's the feeling invisible, that no one sees you, and there's part of that. That can be true, okay. But then there's the other part of it where you know people are intentionally making you feel invisible as a power play which I think can happen in work or especially with colleagues or bosses or even certain family members that you know that they're doing it intentionally. And then the other one is that you know people aren't doing it intentionally and you just feel invisible in a room, and I think both are equally as bad in different ways, and I think we can tell the difference in those moments when it's a power play versus when it's just I feel invisible right now in this room now I would say we know that in the workplace it's more of a political game that's being played.

Speaker 1: 5:43

um, and those are the moments. We definitely don't want to be taking it personally, but if we've already run a history of it, it snowballs into that personal belief system that we have, which makes it really yucky, and so some people even it gets so bad that some people can't find their voice, becomes a real struggle to say anything because they've just given up. So if that's one of those things that happens and this is what we're talking about why exactly do we feel this way?

Speaker 2: 6:14

As you were saying earlier, it can go back to childhood. It can go back to where you were placed within the family. It can go back to even, of course, your relationships in school. But even say, in a relationship, in a marriage, if you're just starting to feel invisible in your with your partner, they don't do the things they used to do or that they you feel you don't feel appreciated anymore in the marriage.

Speaker 2: 6:36

I just think there's so many different levels in which we can begin to feel invisible. I think it shows in different ways as we go through life, but what it reflects is in sometimes is the confidence or the relationship that we actually have with ourselves and maybe the tough reality at times of how we ourselves contribute to having ourselves be invisible at times, because it can be a comfort zone, especially if we have been running that or just that's all. We've known our reality for so long and we've never been taught or shown how to change it. So there's a part of it where, of course, it can be. Especially if you're the youngest on both sides of the family and everyone's older and everyone is always going to see you as the baby, then in that circumstance it can be hard for it to be any other way, because, especially if you're engaging with these people for the rest of your life, so there's some narratives that of course come from external that continue to contribute to that.

Speaker 2: 7:29

But then there's other ways in which, if we don't have confidence in self, we don't want to speak up or, as you said, if we're shy, that can also contribute to it not changing as we go through life and not having a confidence in ourselves are also saying what's the point? You know, what's the point of? I think life is an interesting way of having us feel invisible at certain times, because that naturally will bring up question marks about ourselves, bring up negative emotions that we need to build a relationship with or learn how to process that. So I think, depending on the person you're talking to and why we feel invisible in the way we do, can tell us a lot about where the growth is needed within our lives, and that's why I think it's a very layered or interesting topic, but I still think it's a universal thing. We've all felt at some stage of just feeling unseen, unheard and invisible in the room.

Speaker 1: 8:21

And you know it really contributes to what we talked about last week the story in our head. You know how we run a narrative and if we're running that narrative, I know as a child, all I wanted was to be heard. I wanted to be seen and I wanted to be heard. Ask anybody today how I feel about that. I think it's almost just the opposite. But it's interesting because I had to go through that whole period of so desperately wanting to be seen and to be heard and to be valued and what I have to say to be valued. And I do know today there's a lot of people that do valued and what I have to say to be valued. And I do know today there's a lot of people that do value everything that I have to say, because that's what I do for a living I help people, and so therefore, there is a lot of valuable information through the wisdom that I've gained and my background.

Speaker 1: 9:08

Having said that, once I got to the point where people actually were seeing me and listening to me, it's like all of a sudden okay, been there, done that, I'm done. Is that enough now? And so it's a double-edged sword. And I said that example because I think what we don't realize and you alluded to it in what you just said before it is so multi-layered and it has to be. And, for example, in my life there were so many spiritual lessons and growth that I needed to learn because of the impact, the negative impact of not being seen and heard had on me that I still, today, have come up and still working through. So it's.

Speaker 1: 9:56

I think that is the part to understand, that it's. It is multilayered and it happens at different times for different reasons, but it is. Finally, you know, if you're here and you're listening to us, it's probably time that you start questioning what that's about for you and how you what, what does it mean for you and how you're going to move through that, because it can have a lot of negative consequences, like it really impacts relationships. If you've been in a relationship with someone that said you say, hey, where do you want to go for dinner? I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, whatever, whatever you know it's because usually that particular person doesn't feel like their opinion is going to matter anyway, so they back out of it. Yet then they think that nobody cares about what they think, even when someone is directly asking them that.

Speaker 2: 10:49

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:56

Yeah, yeah. So one of the key areas that I find that this happens a lot to people, gareth, is when there have been, when there's been, emotional neglect and so many people don't understand what that means. Because we have, you know, we have a mom and a dad, and they're in the house, we've got food on the table, we've got, you know, a good bed to sleep in, we're going to school, everything seems fine, but those emotional needs aren't met. That sets up a whole string of things that happen for people inside, especially that narrative that we've often talked about, because even though our physical needs are getting met, often those emotional needs aren't getting met, and that's when the shutting down starts to happen. And as that starts to happen, people then just kind of snowball into these experiences, and every experience just adds more weight to those internal beliefs that they already have about themselves and how unworthy or not seen, not heard, not deserving of being heard, and so that can become a real issue for people to start to step out of it. Or the middle child common example that is nobody's fault, but it's what we start to believe about it.

Speaker 1: 12:08

Then the experiences that we have that start to lead to the growth that we actually need to have and I know that's one of the things that she would say to me is you know, this is where our spiritual, emotional, physical growth starts to come in, because these circumstances have been set up At the time. It doesn't feel like it. You know, and I can tell you quite honestly, I was married to my ex-husband for almost 20 years and when I was trying to understand what the contract I had with him was, in the end, as you guys have heard me say, I came to that conclusion that I was in a contract with him or he was in a contract with me, until I learned to find my voice and stand and when, you know, I could yell before we ended up splitting up. But what I mean by find my voice is me valuing what I have to say.

Speaker 2: 13:00

But I think this is what's actually interesting about what you're saying, especially when it comes to the whole spiritual contract. Part of it right, it's that I know, as you mentioned. It's say, if we use an example of middle child syndrome right, of how they experience the world, but if you talk to any eldest of their house, they felt invisible in a lot of ways because the middle children and the youngest got all the attention. Then if you talk to the youngest, they're used to the oldest or parts of the middle children getting attention. So it's funny when you talk to any individual about their perspective, those ways in which they felt or experienced that they didn't get enough attention compared to x, everyone has their evidence or their map of the world or and that's what's interesting with the universal experience of that I would agree.

Speaker 1: 13:47

I would agree. It's a. It's always a slightly different variation, but if we have that lesson to to learn, it's going to show up one way or another, no matter what we do.

Speaker 2: 13:57

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 13:58

So it's pretty interesting and I guess breaking that cycle of believing that you're invisible or that you're not valuable is one of the biggest spiritual challenges somebody will face as they're going through their growth, because you get so convinced that I don't count.

Speaker 2: 14:19

Yeah, that's definitely an interesting challenge to go through in life, but I think it's funny when you become aware of it, start questioning it and then try to put it into action, like most things we talk about in this podcast, can you begin to build your own relationship with it?

Speaker 2: 14:31

Because, as we were talking about, of course, I'm the youngest in my household and naturally, when Michael came into my life, I started spending time around individuals who were older than myself.

Speaker 2: 14:40

So what made that an interesting dynamic is what I noticed is that, even though I was away from family and if I was out in public with these friends who might have been 20 years older than me, if we were all having lunch or dinner, what I started to notice is that, even in those environments of waiters coming over taking our order, I was always invisible because I wasn't the oldest or even it was equal to the people at the table, because naturally, people prioritize the oldest at the table or people who seem older when it comes to taking orders or even who pays.

Speaker 2: 15:10

It's like they and I'm not saying that as a bad thing, I'm just saying that is the societies that we live in, or how they prioritize importance or power or whatever you want to, whatever wording you want to put that, to the assumptions that people make, but it took me a while to actually realize that a lot of the time it's actually not personal to me. These people don't know me. They don't know where my roots, where I come from, my background, nothing like that, and how being so, I had to work with what parts of me are not okay with being visible. And in those moments in the past, how did my behaviors or patterns change to try to prove to someone I didn't even know that I was worthy of being seen?

Speaker 2: 15:47

Do you get what I mean Because we find ourselves starting to behave differently to try to prove otherwise. But then I actually came to an acceptance of it's okay being invisible, and I think that's part of the journey. That people don't also talk about is then, why is it so bad being invisible at times versus trying to prove to the world why you should be seen as we go through it?

Speaker 1: 16:09

and I think, as you're saying, that when we're trying to prove to the world that we need to be seen as we go through it, and I think, as you're saying, that when we're trying to prove to the world that we need to be seen, we're pushing our visibility further and further away.

Speaker 2: 16:18

They don't tell you that detail.

Speaker 1: 16:19

I know no one tells you that detail, do they? And I think that is the whole trick about a lot of this thing in life is realizing that the more you want something without understanding why you want it or understanding what its purpose is in your life, the further you're going to push it away.

Speaker 2: 16:39

I think that's going to hit a lot of people. I know we've all heard it in our own ways before, but the more we choose something as if we think it's the answer, it couldn't be further from the truth.

Speaker 1: 16:48

And it takes so long to wake up to that and actually see it. That's what pisses me off about the whole thing, because I go. Why couldn't they just kind of, you know, one of those side notes when you're like in your teens?

Speaker 2: 17:01

Oh, by the way, you wouldn't have listened to that note anyway. Let's be honest.

Speaker 1: 17:08

Well, and the truth is, because we're in so much pain, we don't, we really don't, because the pain is too great to actually hear it. There are so many things as I've tried to explain to other people. You know, I mentor a few people and they say you know, this information is so good, it's so new. And I go, yeah, no, it's just new to you today yeah, it.

Speaker 1: 17:30

It's not new, it's been there. We just weren't ready to hear it, we weren't ready to assimilate it, we were not ready to process it, and that's okay too. It's just recognizing that when you get to that point, when you get to that point where you are seeking, seeking, seeking and there's a sense of desperation, that is your clue to stop, yeah, just to stop and go. So here's what I would say to people about feeling invisible when are you not seeing you, and how can you turn around and start paying attention to you?

Speaker 2: 18:05

I just know that that answer is not going to be good enough for some people.

Speaker 1: 18:07

They're just going to say what I want to be seeing, gonna say well, start seeing yourself first. That's what I have to say.

Speaker 2: 18:17

Yeah let's take a step back from this week's episode and share with everyone what we've been up to behind the scenes we're really excited to be able to finally offer the gareth michael community to each of you.

Speaker 1: 18:31

The community offers a range of benefits, including access to our live events, weekly podcast episodes, articles, self-checking questions, as well as a community of individuals you can connect with and interact with along the way. It's designed to offer you support, guidance and a safe space on a day-to-day basis. We'd love to have you join our global community of like-minded individuals. That website address, again, is wwwgarethmichaelcom. Now let's get back to that episode, shall we?

Speaker 2: 19:07

But again, it's true in what you're saying, because the steps towards visibility is beginning to see yourself in ways in which you feel invisible towards self, or the ways that you're ignoring your own needs, and I think it's that the more that the world sees us, the more that actually gives us ammunition to continue to ignore ourselves.

Speaker 2: 19:26

And mind, body, emotions are the things we need to be looking at. Emotions are the things we need to be looking at. So sometimes it's like, why is life isolating us in this way, to have to sit with ourselves, to deal with these thoughts, to deal with these emotions, to deal with our physical needs? So, until we actually look at that, why would life add to more people seeing us which, to be honest, when more people are involved in the scene, that adds to more drama in our lives, which continues to take away from ourselves. So, if we don't have the skill sets to be able to deal with people, because we don't really understand how to be able to deal with ourselves and what our own system is bringing up in us, Exactly, and the saddest part is sometimes when we have that desperate need to be seen and we get caught up in all that drama because we're trying so hard to be seen.

Speaker 1: 20:09

That drama actually takes us further away from what we want and it is in sitting in that invisibility and really kind of getting to know well, who am I really? I cannot tell you, gareth, how many people I ask what is it going to be like when you're on the other side of this and there's not a clue and they haven't even contemplated that. So if you could be seen, what do you want to be seen as? What do you want to be seen for? What do you want to be as you're being seen? What does that mean to you? Because a lot of times we don't even know that those questions are frightening.

Speaker 2: 20:54

I'm triggered as you ask those questions. Maybe I'll just stay invisible, Kim.

Speaker 1: 21:04

I don't know why that's so frightening.

Speaker 2: 21:05

Come on. Too many deep questions. It's too early in the morning. Too many deep questions it's too early in the morning.

Speaker 2: 21:15

It's a deep topic, though yeah but you know what I'm saying because absolutely yeah, even in sitting on that invisibility and questioning why it's there. What's it trying to teach us? That it's not often personal when it comes from the external world, but I think in doing that, it allows you to be more present with the people who do see you, because I think so much time, if we're trying to get that approval, trying to be seen, trying to be heard, it takes us away from the people that actually see us for who we are and appreciate us and love us for what we bring to the table and it's taken. I think it takes a long time on this journey to appreciate that at its core, because we're building a world where we need external validation all the time and we feel like money gives us power and money makes us always be seen.

Speaker 2: 21:59

And if I just had this, this and this, then I'd be appreciating love and adored and celebrated and it takes a long time for life to be like nope for that for you to actually believe that at its core Because I think we can tell ourselves that, but that doesn't mean that that emotionally clicks with us to be present and appreciative of what we actually have today with the people around us who actually see us, but then how to navigate the people who don't, and also be really truly okay with that.

Speaker 1: 22:29

I can't agree more with that because you, you know, during this journey, when my kids were little and I was really working on myself, I did a seminar with a guy named Dr John Demartini and he brought up a really good point. He made us pick one situation where we felt really bad about something. But the main question he asked at the same time was at that time that bad person was saying or doing whatever to you, how many people around you were doing the opposite, which is such a great point, because I had to sit there with that big question mark on my face going what do you mean? Nobody, he's like really nobody.

Speaker 1: 23:18

And the weirdest thing about it was it was we had my incident that I had picked. We had invited people over for dinner, it was Thanksgiving dinner and my ex had been saying something to me, and so he said well, at that moment when he was saying something negative to you, how many people were saying positive things to you? Well, I almost. I just didn't want to answer the damn question Because it was like oh, because so many people in my life were telling me at that time how good I was at so many different things, and while I wanted to acknowledge that it was the fact that this one person, this one person, couldn't see what was valuable about me, and that's where I got fixated, which is what so many people do.

Speaker 2: 24:00

But, as you said, that goes back to the conversation we were having last week on the narratives that we need to believe about ourselves and narratives that the world is, so to speak, telling us as part of this journey that the world is, so to speak, telling us as part of this journey.

Speaker 2: 24:14

And that's why it's like why do any of us become so fixated on the negative, to the point of we actually can't even see any of the positives in our lives? But it's most definitely present in there, but it's the part of us can't see it and parts of us don't want to see it.

Speaker 1: 24:26

Well, I can tell you, at that seminar I didn't want to see it, because as soon as he asked it I was like now I'm just going to feel like an ungrateful little you know what spoiled brat. So, but it is the truth of what happens to us when we're running a narrative or a program like this. Happens to us when we're running a narrative or a program like this, and, of course, it still took me a little while to start to work out, like I'm really grateful for when I started to realize oh wait, a minute, I've got to stop looking outward. It's time to look inward. Because if we are starting to talk about those steps to becoming visible, it is when you start becoming visible to yourself and recognizing what your own needs are, what builds you up, what makes you feel good. It's then that we start to become visible, because we're actually tuning into ourselves. That doesn't happen overnight, by the way, just by the course.

Speaker 2: 25:22

But also part of, I think, the learning is that if you know that people or individuals are ignoring you, there's a part in our own wisdom or growth that we have to decide to let them and move on, because I think there's nothing more that we realize in this life as you go through life and you're constantly trying to change someone's view on you. It doesn't work like that, mm-mm, mm-mm.

Speaker 1: 25:45

We have no control over anybody else's view on you. It doesn't work like that. We have no control over anybody else's view of us. That is what is so mind boggling about the fact that we work so hard at trying to do exactly that for most of our life. That should be like class 101 in high school.

Speaker 2: 26:03

We shouldn't dive into why they don't teach us this. That's right. No, let's not dive into that, but it is true.

Speaker 1: 26:12

It's incredible that we spend so much of our time and our energy trying to get other people to think a certain way, when we have no control over what they're thinking.

Speaker 2: 26:23

If we're going back to the once again, the spiritual approach of it. But when we do feel invisible in these different ways, I think it's important to start to question okay, why is this a part of my journey? Where is the growth in this? For me, and like most things, it forces us back to self in some way to be able to recognize where our needs are not being met and the different ways in which we start developing a relationship with ourselves. In those different ways, and, like most things in this journey, we do eventually, kim, have to get to a place of acceptance with any of these areas, sorry to say, of the things that we struggle with, because they are there to teach us something. So, therefore, if we're struggling with this as an example, then the journey is what is it trying to teach us about ourselves?

Speaker 2: 27:09

because, more often than not, if it's outside of our control, it probably will be a constant thing that continues to appear in our lives in different ways so it is constantly trying to teach us something, and maybe we switch the narrative in some ways to be like, maybe it's okay being invisible, maybe it's actually protecting us from a lot, I can still engage with the world, but if the world doesn't see me, there's actually a lot of pros to that and not cons, as long as I understand why it's that way and how it can actually work for me.

Speaker 2: 27:36

So I take a lot of comfort in it. Now that the people who are meant to see me do see me, and then the people who I want to see me, I need a question why do I need them or want them to see me, and what does that say about me? So there's growth and you can still go out there and live in the world. You're not hiding from the world, but as you engage with it and the triggers that come up along the way, it really is directing you or guiding you in this path of the questions that you still have about self. So that's what I think about anything that we're struggling with. It tells us more about ourselves more than it ever does about the world around us.

Speaker 1: 28:09

I agree with that completely and I think if there's any way that we can help people understand that this topic, like we talk about with so many topics, is so multi-layered that it's not a matter of going out there and going, oh you know what, I'm just going to start speaking up more, or I'm going to, you know, have a more positive mindset and that's going to change things. It's great to have those things, but we have to be able to integrate it, believe it and, you know, accept what it has come to teach us. And that is the process that takes those little steps by little steps by little steps. As so many people have heard me say. It just takes that time to get there. But when you get to that place where you're questioning and you're starting to understand it, you start to see that need to be seen and fall away because you will be seen, or you won't really care whether you're seen or not, because you feel whole within yourself.

Speaker 2: 29:13

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 29:13

So, in closing, I think what we're trying to say, gareth, is, if you are feeling unseen or unheard by family and friends or even workplace people, maybe the first step is taking that focus off, trying to get seen by those people, and start to turn that focus inward. And as we do that and we start to change the narrative why we want to look at that and start to question it then we can start to understand ourself and life in a different way. And as we start to and it's not going to happen overnight, but it's a great a different way, and as we start to and it's not going to happen overnight, but it's a great place to start, and once you start, it's a journey that you're going to truthfully be so grateful for, because once you're seeing you, once you're hearing you, once you're loving you, life starts to change in every area of your life and nobody else's narrative has to change, because we can't change their narrative.

Speaker 2: 30:07

And it is amazing when you get to a place in life where you can enjoy being seen and unseen.

Speaker 1: 30:11

Yes, Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, then you might want to check out our online community. We built it to offer you the comfort of having a supportive community by your side, no matter where life takes you. Connect with like-minded individuals through our app. Navigate each step of the journey together with us by joining our Gareth Michael community. Here are a few of the things you're going to get. You'll get exclusive real-time access to live recording and events. Advanced access to each new episode. The opportunity to ask questions directly of Gareth and I. Input into what topics we cover in the show. Access to exclusive content not available anywhere else. To learn more about our community, please go to wwwgarethmichaelcom. Thanks again, and I hope you guys are having a lovely week.