Episode 130 - Being Seen in the Relationships that Matter Most
Do you edit parts of yourself out of relationships because you're afraid of how people will react? Do you self-silence when you know what you have to say might not be pleasing to others? There is real discomfort in showing up authentically because it means risking rejection from the people we’re closest to. But the alternative comes with its own pain: the sadness and loneliness of not being seen for who we truly are. Neither type of discomfort is easy to face, but in this episode, I share how you can choose between them and take small, brave steps toward relationships where you can be fully seen. Here’s what I cover:
The two types of discomfort that people pleasing creates in relationships
Why it’s easy to choose authenticity in some relationships but not others—and why that difficulty is completely normal
A personal story about a friendship where I felt the pull between hiding and being seen
Why loving the parts of yourself that used to hide is essential for change
Questions to help you identify where you can choose authenticity in your relationships
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Transcript
00:59
A lot of the episodes that I put out are pretty straightforward. How to do something or how I'm thinking about something that seems, I don't know, pretty straightforward to me.
01:07
Today's episode, less so. It's an ongoing, pretty tender, personal thing that I want to share because the most painful stories I hear from women who I work with in private and group coaching is the story of how not being seen in a relationship is particularly painful.
01:32
And how once you start kind of undoing this work, you realize it's a two-way street, right? It's not just the other person not seeing you. It's the fear that you have about being seen and the ways that that has caused you to hide and edit and perform.
01:50
And it plays out in all of our relationships, work, personal, parent, child, sibling, daughter, all over the place. And I think sometimes it's really easy when you have realized that you have been editing yourself and silencing yourself.
02:11
In some relationships, it's pretty easy to just kind of stand up and do it, either because you know that it will be okay or because you are not really, you are more invested in your own being seen and saying what you want to say than you are in the overall like longevity of that relationship.
02:32
What that means is some relationships, we kind of don't care if they continue on the way they have or if they, you know, continue to be what they have been for us because we're ready to be different and we don't care if the relationship changes.
02:45
But that's often not the case. We often have relationships when we want it to be able to continue and we want to be able to see if we can be more vulnerable and more intimate and more connected. And that's where the conflict can feel really, really tender and really tricky, like it's feeling for me right now in a particular friendship where I have realized the extent to which over the course of what was a over like a 15 year friendship,
03:20
the many ways in which I stayed quiet because I was scared that I would be rejected. And I'm going to give you a little bit of the backstory so that you understand because it's tied up not just with friendship for me, but with my former religious beliefs and Mormonism and leaving those behind, leaving the church.
03:43
And so I just hope that what resonates for you today is the difficulty that is very normal to work through when you are working through essentially the two kinds of discomfort that people pleasing causes in our relationship.
04:02
Because that's the big thing that this episode is going to be about. You can have two different kinds of discomfort in a relationship. Number one, you can be uncomfortable, sad, and feel lonely and feel unsupported because you aren't seen.
04:21
There is a real sadness to the discomfort of not speaking up, of not feeling like you are really known or that you are really listened to, that you are really seen. Sadness and loneliness. It's kind of the way that a lot of women I work with describe it is like, I'm in the room with a lot of people, but I still feel lonely.
04:43
Or I'm surrounded by people and I still don't feel like I'm really connected to them. That's one kind of discomfort. The other kind of discomfort is the discomfort of being seen, of saying the words that you want to say, addressing conflict in an honest, productive way, which means stepping into the fear of possible rejection, the worry that you will be misunderstood or misinterpreted, two types of discomfort.
05:15
And so as I give you a little bit of the context, oh, did I mention politics? Yeah, we're just going to throw that in for good measure too, because this is about what began as probably more motivated by political differences than anything else has turned into, for me, over the last month, as I've been working through this, just a really beautiful self-exploration where I can see the ways in which I contributed to the loneliness and feeling unseen that I felt because I wasn't speaking up about some important things that were happening for me.
05:56
And I can also see how just the time that we are living in and the way the polarization that we are experiencing in our country over politics plays into that. But the reason that I think it's different with this friend is I want to hang on to a relationship with her.
06:13
And she is a good, loving, kind, amazing person. And it's just different, right? When you're not just going to cut someone off, it's different. So let's get into it. A little bit of backstory I think is important.
06:30
Up until 2016, I had probably voted a straight Republican ticket, probably without even considering voting a different way. I would say that I grew up politically and religiously very conservative, except for I grew up in Central California, which is run by farmers who do hard work and migrant workers, immigrants who come to this country to work for them.
07:02
And the summers that I worked in fruit packing sheds and the ways that the migrant population was just part of my world at school and at church contributed to a sense that was actually taught in my religious upbringing that immigrants and people who are visitors and people who come into a place where they are vulnerable are to be taken care of, are to be welcomed, are to be treated with respect, that God is no respecter of persons.
07:37
And that was really something that got in there deep with me. And so I grew up with the idea that you really can't be a Democrat and be a good member of the Mormon church. That's not explicitly taught, but it is very well understood.
07:57
And so up until that point as well, I was also homeschooling my kids. And I mean, I was a conservative Christian mom, even though a lot of Christians wouldn't say that Mormons are Christians. That's how I felt.
08:11
And so when I was homeschooling, I met and became friends with a really wonderful group of women who were also homeschooling their kids. We did a lot of this together. And it was really important to me to have a community.
08:29
And I really wanted to be friends with these women. I thought they were smart and amazing. And I was really happy to be included in this community. And I can see now that one of my modes of operation or in kind of ensuring that friends didn't leave me was by becoming indispensable.
08:53
And so I put a lot of energy and work into our activities. And I think that this is true, you know, I wasn't the only one doing it. I don't want to make it sound that way. But it was always fueled a little bit for me by wanting to belong, needing to belong so that I felt okay, so that my kids had a community, and the worry that I would be rejected at some point.
09:19
That kind of undercurrent I now see really clearly. And it fueled a lot of the way that I behave, obviously. And so up until about 2016, totally conservative Christian mom. When my husband left the church, this group had some different reactions.
09:40
They noticed in religious groups like Mormonism, being on the inside means you look and behave a certain way and being on the outside means you don't. And so when Dan was leaving the church, I got a lot of questions and I was suspect.
09:56
And I was so suspect that one of the moms actually pulled me aside to interview me about where my faith stood so that she could feel comfortable letting me into her home and participating in teaching her kids.
10:11
And that was one of the most traumatic and jarring experiences of my life. I felt like I was literally fighting for my life in that moment. I had a huge nervous system reaction and went into fawn overdrive then and for the next, you know, several, the next time period.
10:32
I don't remember exactly how long it was that we, it was definitely more than a year though. So I went into a big, like years long fawn response, trying to convince them that I was still okay, right?
10:47
That even though Dan was leaving and he had his issues with the church, that I was still good. Because at that point, my sense of being good was very wrapped up in my sense of being a good Mormon, my sense of being a good member of my church.
11:01
And so if you can think about those moments when you had an interaction where it felt like you were fighting for your life, it might not have been, obviously, it's not going to be the same as mine, but that's so interesting to look back on and just ask yourself, what was I in danger of losing?
11:18
Or what did I think was at stake to have such a big reaction? Because I remember clearly exactly where we were, exactly where we were sitting, exactly how I felt and what she said. And it very clearly sent the message that I was suspect.
11:31
And so although I'm going to talk about the friendship of just one person, not this particular mom, all of that is kind of bound up in there. And I think when we want to look at our own fawn response, oftentimes we're going to see that it's connected to a lot of different things that show up in different relationships.
11:56
And what I mean by that is, you know, let's say that it was Sally who interviewed me and Jenny, who I'm going to talk about today. In fact, I'll just call her Jenny. Sally's interaction showed up in my friendship with Jenny.
12:07
And I think that that is really common and makes so much sense. So all of that was happening. 2016 rolls around and I could not support Donald Trump. And somehow a local news station got a hold of my name because I was Mormon, I am Latina, and I was not going to vote for Trump.
12:32
And they thought that was interesting and wanted to do an interview. And somehow that interview got pushed up to a national, I think it was NBC, Friday night, you know, news platform where it was released.
12:48
And my interview was short, but it was my reasons why I didn't feel like as a Mormon, I could vote for someone who was so willing to be derogatory about immigrants and about people who were vulnerable.
13:04
And that really just kind of touches a part of my personality as well. I'm an Enneagram aide, if that makes any sense to you. And that just means that I have a lot of like a super, super tender spot and a lot of loyalty toward people who I perceive to be vulnerable.
13:20
And that was reinforced by the church gospel that I heard growing up. That's what Jesus did. And so to me, it just felt absolutely like duh that we were not going to vote for a man who was so obviously against, you know, that part of the gospel.
13:39
And so I give the interview and within a couple of days, I get several messages from members of my congregation about how my vote is against the gospel, about how what I'm focusing on is the wrong thing, quote unquote, to be focused on, about how I am essentially unrighteous for the sentiments that I have.
14:09
And I can't say I was surprised, right? I was not surprised, but I also just thought, wow, I've never had this before, this kind of schism in belief here. And I realized it was just joining a lot of other, you know, schisms because I had a child come out as gay and I began to just collect all of this information about how it was so uncomfortable for me to be at church.
14:36
I didn't share any of this with this group or with any of these friends, even Jenny. And I think you need to know some things about Jenny. I get instantly emotional when I think about how much I love her and what an incredible person she is.
14:55
There was a point in time when I was going through some really difficult health challenges and Jenny came with me to doctor's appointments. She left her kids at home and came with me because I was finding all of the information to be so overwhelming that she would come and take notes for me and then walk me through the notes after the appointment to make sure I was getting all of the information that I needed,
15:22
the medications and all that. And so that's the kind of person that Jenny is. And she and I, in particular, had a really loving, connected relationship insofar as we could at the time, even with all of my hiding.
15:37
And we had so many just beautiful moments of supporting each other in her kitchen, in my kitchen. I loved her kids like they were mine and she loves my kids like they're hers. And we had so, so many amazing interactions together.
15:51
And so you need to know that because I think it's part of one of the things that I see happening is in terms of polarization is everybody gets lumped together and then we lose our curiosity about individual people and what they might be feeling and what might be hurting them, which then fuels their actions.
16:14
I stopped homeschooling in 2018 and it was such a relief. I didn't really appreciate, even until looking back at everything over the last couple months, how relieved I felt that my kids didn't want to homeschool anymore.
16:32
I left it up to them. They all went back to school. And it was because I didn't have to hide anymore. I didn't have to pretend. I was having so many issues with the church by then and so much discomfort.
16:45
I was very much in my long process of leaving. And I knew that if I was honest about that, I would be rejected. So then 2020 rolls around. And in 2019, 2020, that's when I left. And I felt the same kind of relief leaving the church that I did.
17:05
So that's the backdrop for the first part of this. And because we were friends, I actually emailed this group and I let them know that I was leaving the church. I wanted them to hear it from me. And Jenny was the only one who came to my house, not really to ask me questions about it.
17:28
She wasn't curious necessarily about why, and I had spelled a lot of that out in the letter, but she just wanted me to know that she still loved me, that she still wanted to be friends. And that was really meaningful to me, because to this day, no one from my congregation has visited me or even reached out to me, actually, to ask me why I left, to be curious about it.
17:52
I understand why. There's the feeling that it's like a disease that they could catch too. And because I was in it, I can understand it and I can have some empathy for it. But it really meant a lot that Jenny came over.
18:05
And so every August, I would get an invitation to a group birthday lunch. And it was something we had done while I was participating in the group and homeschooling. And they continued to invite me after I left.
18:22
And it wasn't possible, you know, for the COVID years. But then after I went to one lunch, and while it was nice to catch up, I just found myself thinking, what am I doing here? Why am I trying to put time and energy and effort into maintaining these friendships when we're just like on two really diverging paths?
18:46
And so I left just kind of unsettled and thinking like, I don't, I don't know that I really want to put this effort in. And then the election rolled around. And I saw on so many of their pages and just pages of former Mormon friends, the support for Trump again.
19:05
And I just, I knew what was driving that because I had been that. And I also, it just became so clear to me how differently we thought about the world and people in the world. And so it just became another big source of information for me.
19:26
And as I'm trying to have this conversation from a place of like holding multiple things as true at once or multiple experiences as possible, you're going to notice it doesn't sound very straightforward.
19:40
I don't have a neat and tidy ending for you. But I think that's because we're in a moment in our country, you know, the United States, or sometimes throughout the world, where we're becoming increasingly polarized and it's harder to have, you know, the type of happy endings that we might want.
20:00
So stick with me. I think there's some valuable things to learn here. So in the months after the election, I, like many, many people, just experienced heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak as the vulnerable groups that I am connected to and associated with, immigrants, queer communities, just experienced the onslaught of hate and reduction in their rights and dignity to exist as people.
20:35
And I had a dream that I don't have dreams very often. So this is why this kind of stands out to me. I had a dream that I was standing in a, it was all in black and white. I can kind of see it now. There's this massive crowd of just black and white faces and I'm in the crowd.
20:52
And then on a raised platform in kind of the center of the crowd, you can see a bunch of politicians and they're in, you know, suits and ties and they're looking out at the crowd and pointing to different things.
21:08
And then I look around and I can see that everyone in the crowd is holding up a sign. And on the sign, we have all written the things that we are afraid of. And the politicians are pointing to the signs and saying, oh, we can do something with that.
21:23
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good one. Write that one down. We could definitely take advantage of that. And the difference in what the politicians were trying to do, use our fear to amass power. And the feeling of being in the crowd, of like being so afraid of all these things really stayed with me.
21:46
I know that there are bad actors. I know that there are people who are just propelled by nothing but amassing power and they don't care about people. I don't believe that that's what the majority of people are like.
22:00
And that was clear to me in that dream. And so all of that is kind of on my mind, the heartbreak, the kind of gut punches day after day of what it looks like to see, you know, my rights as a woman, my family's rights, my loved ones' rights, my immigrant community's rights be stripped away.
22:19
And August comes around. And I get a text from Jenny wanting to get together and celebrate my birthday. And my assumption was that it would be like we had done before in the group. And so my initial text back to her was that I didn't want to spend time and energy building friendships with a group that was so divergent from the way that I believed.
22:47
And Jenny actually misunderstood me and she thought I didn't want to be friends with her anymore. But it actually gave me a pretty amazing opportunity to look just at my friendship with her and say, do I still want to be friends?
23:01
And if so, why? I think one of the most compelling things we can do as humans is stop and look at our reasons for why we are taking action and just check in and just see if it's something that we still feel good about.
23:17
A lot of being a human is having automated processes and just doing things on repeat or habitually. And that can be really good. And I think it also can suck up a lot of time and energy unless we stop and take a look.
23:30
And so she responded outlining why she voted for Trump and her reasons. And it was mostly around abortion rights, which is a big deal in conservative Christian communities. And I get it. I could totally understand it because I had been that.
23:52
And unborn babies is a vulnerable group, right? And also, I think my view had expanded to care about those babies after they're born and what happens to them. And how are we supporting moms? And how are we making sure that people have basic needs met?
24:10
And so I just, I could see both sides. So what it gave me the opportunity to do was to communicate with her, not about the differences in the reasons for why we voted for who we voted, but about my hiding and about the fact that for years and years, I had edited and performed what I thought she and the other women in that group wanted me to see.
24:45
And I had really just managed the discomfort of keeping them comfortable, right? It was the slow burn of disconnection and resentment and fear that I had lived with throughout that whole time. And what I wanted to explore with her was the discomfort of being seen, of sharing more of who I am and risking the rejection on her part, but knowing that the discomfort of authenticity was what I had to step into.
25:28
I could no longer be in a friendship where I was hiding. I could no longer participate in conversations around things that mattered so much to me where I stayed silent. And I had to know if that was something that she was open to.
25:47
And so I wrote her a letter. I sent the letter out in my email to the people who subscribe to that. If you want to see it, DM me, I'll send it to you. Because I really wrote it from a place of two things.
26:00
Number one, love for her and an understanding of why she voted the way she voted with a clear delineation for now who I am and the things that matter to me and how I was no longer willing to participate in friendships where all of me could not show up.
26:24
Because if there's one thing I have learned over the course of the last couple of years, it's that conflict is either going to show you to a place in your relationship that is more vulnerable and more connected and more intimate and more loving and more understanding, or it's going to show you that that's not possible.
26:43
And that is really important information to have because then you get to decide where your energy goes. And so I had to choose the discomfort of authenticity. So I want to ask you something. Where in your life are you managing discomfort by making yourself smaller?
27:06
What parts of you are you editing out of relationships because you're afraid of how people will react? What sentences are you not saying? How are you self-silencing when there's something that you know might not be received as pleasing to other people?
27:26
So those are the opportunities that you have, I think, to just take a closer look and figure you out first. Why am I reacting this way? Why am I showing up this way? What do I think I'm going to lose?
27:40
And then giving those parts of you so much love. We tend to go to criticism and we tend to kind of lionize or valorize this like growth that is always like us becoming our best self. I like to start with first loving the parts of me that behaved in ways that I no longer want to so that I can change it from love.
28:09
And so I see the way that I did those things in this particular friendship and in this group. And I can have so much tenderness. It makes so much sense that I behave that way. And I have so much compassion for the me who was so scared of rejection that I was jumping through all kinds of hoops, whether they knew it or not, because that's on me, right?
28:34
That's my side of this relationship. And so as I wrote and shared the letter, I owned my part. I told her about the ways in which I had made myself smaller and why that I was so afraid of losing her and losing, you know, the community for myself and for my kids.
28:53
And also made clear, again, that clear delineation that I could not continue to exist in friendships where I wasn't seen and where all of me could not be welcome and validated. And I'm talking specifically about the friendships that I want to keep long term.
29:12
Side note, all of you is not going to be seen and appreciated in all your relationships. That's just not how it works, right? And it's not always a good idea, right? At work, you might have a different level of privacy than you do in your friendships.
29:25
That is very appropriate. And I'm not, again, this is not a generalization. This is about relationships that matter to you, that you want to keep, where you are trying to figure out, can I show myself more of you?
29:38
Can I show up with all of me? And how will you receive me? Brene Brown, I heard her say this on a podcast I listened to. She said, a brave life is having 15 difficult conversations a day. And that is what I am trying to do.
29:56
It makes me a little sick to think about 15 a day. But I do know that this conversation matters for me in this moment for a couple of really important reasons. Number one, I want to choose the discomfort of showing up for myself, of not abandoning myself and being seen in the relationships that matter the most to me.
30:21
I also want to have the nuance that people are complex and that different things cause us fear and sorrow. And that while we can disagree about those things, I want to continue to see people. And Jenny is just so easy to see because she's such an amazing person.
30:44
It really gave me a beautiful example in just in her. I also want to trust that being honest about who I am and what I value is infinitely better for all relationships whenever I feel like that's appropriate than continuing to make myself smaller to avoid conflict.
31:06
Again, I'm not saying that everybody should do this, that everybody should have these conversations because you're going to have to decide, number one, what your reasons are, if you feel like it's safe to do so.
31:17
It's a very personal decision. And I feel like your only job is to get to know you better if you are finding yourself in relationships where there are tricky conversations to be had. And I hope that if you are currently experiencing the pain and loneliness of making yourself smaller, you just hold on to this.
31:38
There is a way to show up, taking small, doable steps that don't feel as risky or high stakes to build up this skill. It is what I have been doing. I could not have had this conversation probably even a year ago.
31:54
I don't know, but that seems right to me. It's been a lot of having little hard conversations to get to this one. What I'm saying is this. If you are constantly editing yourself to keep your relationships comfortable, you're not actually in a relationship.
32:12
You're in a performance. Do we need performances sometimes? Yes, we do. You just get to decide when and where those happen. And so if you are ready for authentic relationships, they require space for both people's whole selves to show up, including the parts that are hard to understand or the parts that we disagree on.
32:39
So I want to leave you with this. You get to choose between those two types of discomfort. You can manage conflict by hiding parts of yourself and feel that slow burn of disconnection. Or you can build skills and confidence to risk rejection by showing up fully and to deal with what is of such an acute fear of potential loss.
33:01
I know that. I feel it even as we are working through this. Neither is easy. But one leads to relationships where you can be fully known and loved and where you can find more relationships like that because now you know what to do and how to set them up from the beginning.
33:20
And the other doesn't. So some final questions. Where might you be managing discomfort by making yourself smaller? What might it look like to share that discomfort instead of just managing it all internally?
33:38
And which relationships in your life might have some space for that? These are the brave conversations that need to be had. And I would love to support you. This is what I do one-on-one and in groups.
33:51
If that feels meaningful to you, please reach out. Thank you for being here and for listening. I really appreciate it.
