Fear of being seen

[Olaf]

I have noticed lately the fear of being seen. It is something I noticed in myself and therefor also can spot in others. It is the idea that it is `scary` to be seen in public, the whole idea of being caught, even think about pick up, the idea that someone sees you doing pick up, almost like you are trying to hide what you do. Why can´t you be an open book? Why can't you draw attention to yourself? Why do you have to hide?  Why do you feel uncomfortable being seen, noticed? Why is it akward? Because you are deep down afraid of being seen. Imagine you fall on the floor, is it embarassing if no one sees you? No. Yet if 100 or 1000 people see it, it is sooo embarassing? But why? Because of this fear of being seen, being generally aswell as authentically seen.

So instead of pushing yourself more, maybe it is good to dive into this fear of being seen. As an experiment draw more attention to yourself and see what comes up. For example dress in a way that draws allot of attention to you, something crazy, colourful, unique whatever. There are many ways to dress to stand out and to draw attention to you, you don't have to walk naked on the street, but something more bold. Why is it bad people are looking at you and your clothes? What bad could happen? Or another exercise could be to be a bit louder, like start talking a bit louder on the street or if you do pick up, start doing pick up almost over the top loud. Not as a strategy to get laid HAHAHAHA, but to dive into that feeling of being seen.

After that exercise, sit with yourself, sit with that fear, and let it go. Put your hand on your heart. Breathe in love and breathe out the fear, shake it loose and tell yourself "it is okay to be seen in my own authenticity"

This is the real inner work, real release work, to be okay with being seen and even love yourself being seen. Aren't you such an amazing person who is worthy to be noticed and seen by others? I think you are and we can't give our gift to the world if we already get afraid by drawing some attention to ourselves. It is not that you have to do these exercises every day, but once or three times already gives you some reference experiences and will help you to let go of a big chunk of this fear. 

[Hojo]

I think because we have an inside private world and an outside world. We try to hide the inside world via the outside world.

Take an example. If you get jealous about something, you dont want people to know so you try to act normal but your body is not reciprocating. Your face get red and you start to shake. You cant 100 percent keep it quite.

Now someone comes up to you and ask are you jealous? You are angry that they are calling out what you are trying to hide. While you know you feel it you dont want others to know because of certain situations. You might not even be part of what your jealous of so the emotion could be not logical to you.

So you are trying to hide and its not working

 An empath will be like ok I can see what this person is going through and won't mention anything. where there are some people who will come up and just say what you dont want them to see.

Its kind of intrusive thats why.

The jealous person is trying to deal with the emotion without involving themselves and the person asking them is forcing involvement on them.

Edited July 26 by Hojo

[Yimpa]

I do not have a fear of being seen. I have a fear of being misunderstood.

[YIDIRYIDIR]

There is a regular amount of fear of being seen, and there is an extreme case that's caused by toxic shame, which was my case. and apparently, it is an advantage. it works like a rubber elastic, the more you are pulled towards the extreme end of the spectrum (fear) the most likely that you'll end up on the other extreme (courage and audacity) if you worked on it. i experienced this personally and observed it on so many individuals.
or like a strange loop, white becomes so white it turns black. fear becomes so intense it becomes audacity. 

[Olaf]

@YIDIRYIDIR yes this is kind of the rock bottom approach, like a homeless person on crack hits rock bottom so deeply that it can give a new motivation, like for example with Grant Cardone who was addicted for a long time and then made billions after he hit rock bottom. 

[oOo]

Fear of being unseen.

Inversion is a useful tool, I use it in motivation combined with future forecasting. I'll go a little into it here.

Often underneath avoiding something one should be doing is a negative emotion of some kind. 

I know for example that I'll be any variation of annoyed, angry, disappointed or regretful if I don't do the training I am meant to. While at the same time, often because my goals are arguably too ambitious to a regular person there's a healthy doubt there that can impede my actual follow through. That variation of a negation emotion is saying I shouldn't follow through with a particular goal for whatever reasons, is able to offset when I mentally rehearse the negative feelings I will experience if I don't do something I need to. 

When it comes to people who fear being seen, like with many other avoidant behaviours the emotional cost is simply not weighed well enough in contrast with a future expectation, result or goal. And I think its important not to view it as a trick but rather an action of self-regulation one is doing (I am not into "tricks" as they're often forms of unhealthy dissociation), a change in attitude through self-realisation. 

Inversion and future forecasting even combined is not an original idea, however I think what often gets neglected is the importance of understanding its compounded use through the filter of self/emotional regulation, rather than through the typical lens of "changing one's mind". An emphasis on persuading oneself over where self-insight better connects with action, delays the natural self-esteem building that this approach emphasises and the maturation of the mind understanding itself through itself rather than the weakening of itself through persuasive tools that rely on the ability to unhealthily dissociate. 

When you are consciously exercising a fear, that is when you're aware you're exercising avoidance behaviours based on a fear you have, like the fear of being seen, if you're able to anchor the mind towards awareness over both that dynamic along with an awareness with the future self, and even the past self (past self and future self are just tags), the more in tune you are with all degrees here, is to the extent that the fear becomes a self-organising principle over a (hidden) self-disabling action. 

The more anyone can do that, that is, become aware of and convert whatever substance of their experience is relevant as a conclusion for why they are not doing something they truly know would be enriching (for at the very least their end goals) into a self-organising principle, you will become unstoppable. You may not end up being seen in the way you want by another, but at least by executing on that self-organising principle, you've become so aware of your experience that it doesn't even matter because you see yourself now very fully. 

Maybe then at least 50 percent of the fear of being seen is cured through the fear of not fully seeing oneself and endeavouring to do this with full personal integrity before acting on a fear that does not serve oneself. Postive and negative emotions of course have positive and negative sides, what matters when it comes to our personal integrity is in determining whether the self-organisation that makes up our conscious experience, has adequately determined what thoughts, emotions and actions, along with their degrees and qualities, are in service to us, and which of those are not, then only servicing strategic actions that benefit the honour of this service. 

Edited August 2 by oOo