Feeling Seen, Feeling Heard…

I’ve been in the Psychology business for closing in on four decades. That wasn’t the original plan, but the Yankees already had a center fielder, I sucked at teaching (as it turned out), and it took me too long to take music seriously. So there you go.

I do Psychology. Doing “Psychology” can look like any god’s number of different things. But here’s one of the biggest ones, in my practice anyway.

A lot (and I mean a LOT) of people do not feel seen, do not feel heard. “I count, right? For something? I matter, a little bit, don’t I? Is anybody noticing that I am here? Does anybody want to hear ANYthing I have to say?”

On the extraordinarily low-consciousness level, we see this desire to be seen, to be heard, played out by unempowered, “psychologically unseen” guys reverting to loud-ass cars, and over-revved motorcycles. “Hey, Ma, look at me! I feel like a nobody in this world, but right this minute, I will FORCE you to notice me. I am the loudest motherfucker on Kalakaua Avenue, and everybody in Waikiki WILL see me and hear me!”

Even lower-consciousness and desperate solutions include the mass shooters who WILL be seen, WILL be heard, if only for this one day. “By, God, you Will know who I am!” Yes, there are lots of unskilled and pathological ways to play out the need to feel seen, the need to feel heard. Some suicides and suicidal gestures and attempts are probably to some extent about somebody wanting people to finally “see” the pain I was in, “hear” my cries for help, but nobody would notice, nobody cared.  Do you see me NOW? Do you hear me NOW?

Therapy

But at the more mundane level, people come to therapy. Some for trauma, to be sure, some for problem solving, some for skill-building. But many come to feel seen, to feel heard. They feel as though nobody, or too close to nobody for comfort, gives a shit that they are even on the planet. And often, sadly, they are too close to right.

So once a week they feel seen, they feel heard, they matter, somebody gives a shit, and actually remembers what they said last week, and asks about how specific things are going. Clients often say “Oh, you have a good memory!”, which usually means “I am not used to people listening to me, or caring enough to ask about what I told them last week. This is new…”

Oh, once in a while they look for re-assurance, testing us playfully with “Yeah, but it’s your JOB—you get paid to listen to me!” One person regularly referred to me as their “Paid Best Friend”, or PBF. They kind of want to know that it is not JUST all about the money. They want to know that I actually do care. They’re not accustomed to, and can’t completely trust feeling seen, feeling heard, even “for money.”

For some of my clients, my being a male, and sometimes an older male, is a key added dimension. Males are not stereotypically known for active listening, for being non-judgmental, for holding space. So I  can sort of “fill in” for the father, the partner, the brother, the professor, who never fucking listened or took them seriously, or encouraged them, or told them they were awesome. It’s a “corrective emotional experience”, as Franz Alexander called it.

Finally, somebody is listening. Somebody sees me.

It sounds so basic. It can be unbelievably important.

Not that center field is not…

Dr. James Mick Nolan

505.699.7616 (text me)

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