The Myth of Visibility

We’re told that fear of being seen holds us back. In truth, forcing visibility can become self-abandonment. What matters is alignment, and allowing visibility to unfold in its own time.

This piece is the beginning of a multi-part exploration into visibility: what it means, why it feels so charged, and how we can meet it in ways that honor our timing and capacity. I’m starting with the cultural story that visibility is the same as potential, and the gaps I began to notice in that narrative.

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For much of my life, I believed that living into my full potential meant being more visible. If I could let myself be seen, if I could step out of the shadows, then everything would finally align. I heard this promise repeated in so many marketing messages: “Your fear of being seen is holding you back from your dreams. Growth happens when you push through the discomfort.” And honestly? Part of me wanted to believe the story. There was something appealing about its simplicity, and the promise of clear steps: push past the fear and everything will fall into place.

The truth is, I have carried a fear of being seen for as long as I can remember. When I was faced with speaking in groups of more than three or four people I didn’t know well, I would freeze. My heart would beat out of my chest. My mind would go blank. Sometimes I would even leave my body. The person I was, and all the wisdom and knowledge I carried, would disappear in those moments. I learned to stay quiet. Or, if I had to speak, I would rush through as quickly as possible just to get it over with.

That fear showed up in writing too. I’ve been journaling since I was nine years old, and for years I felt the longing to write more publicly. Yet the thought of sharing my words with others felt overwhelming. While speaking in groups made me freeze up, the idea of publishing my writing felt dangerous. It has only been this past year that I’ve been able to write consistently in public, and even now I can still feel my nervous system activate each time I begin a new piece.

There was also a turning point much earlier, around the time I met my biological father for the first time at age thirty. Until then I had grown up in an environment where emotions and creativity were dampened. Meeting him shifted something. He was a jazz musician and a Lomi Lomi healing practitioner, and in him I saw a mirror of my own sensitivity and creativity. For the first time, I understood that my intuition and empathy were not holding me back, and realized they were gifts. That moment planted a seed in me: that being a sensitive empath could be a source of strength, and that one day my creativity might be shared with others. I didn’t know it then, but that seed would eventually lead me to discover that I could teach and write in ways that honored my sensitivity.

After years of being a 1:1 somatic practitioner, I began to sense that life was leading me toward more visibility. What began to shift was the way others mirrored me. In workshops and classes, people told me how much they learned from what I shared. Their reflections opened the possibility that I had wisdom worth offering more widely. I found myself drawn to teacher trainings that allowed me to stretch myself—slowly, gently. I practiced leading groups and used somatic and mindfulness tools that helped me return to myself whenever I felt I was shutting down or disconnecting from myself. These experiences helped me build nervous system capacity to be more grounded, present, and alive in the moments when I was most visible. But over time I realized something important: visibility and alignment aren’t the same thing.

The dominant culture tells us that being seen is the proof of our value. Algorithms reward reach. Metrics become measures of worth. Narratives everywhere mirror this by promising that our potential will finally be realized once we break through fear and allow ourselves to be visible. But what if there’s another story waiting underneath?

What I began to notice is that even when I stepped into visibility in ways that helped me grow, it didn’t necessarily make me feel more fulfilled. Sometimes I felt flat or drained instead of alive. The story I had believed—that visibility itself was proof of potential—didn’t hold up. What mattered more than being seen was how connected I felt to myself in the process.

That was the turning point for me. I realized that when I prioritize visibility over alignment, it feels like performing a version of myself instead of expressing. It creates a gap between what we share and what our body is able to hold. And when that happens, visibility isn’t empowering at all. It becomes another form of self-abandonment.

Visibility feels charged because it touches so many layers at once. On the surface, it looks like a simple act of sharing yourself more openly. Yet underneath, our bodies may be carrying memories and imprints that make visibility feel like a threat.

There is the nervous system layer, where the heart races and breath shortens as if exposure equals danger. There are inherited and ancestral layers, where staying small may have once meant survival. And there is the cultural layer, where visibility has been equated with value and success. Together, these layers stir up activation that can be difficult to resolve through quick fixes like mindset hacks or formulas.

So rather than striving for visibility, I began to experiment with letting it emerge. Sometimes that meant sharing an essay with just a small circle, without trying to promote it widely. Other times it meant teaching a class when my system had the capacity to hold it, or keeping the group small enough so that my system could stay present. Visibility started to feel more like an expression, a choice I was making about how I wanted to show up in the world, and less like a role I was playing.

What I’ve come to see so far: your nervous system has its own timing. Your work has its own pacing. You do not have to force visibility to live your full potential. What if “not yet” isn’t fear at all, but wisdom? Sometimes the most aligned and courageous choice is to honor the “not yet.”

Becoming more comfortable being seen was part of my journey, but I’ve learned that comfort alone isn’t the whole story. Maybe the deeper question is, “What’s trying to emerge through me that feels authentic and alive?” Visibility, I’ve discovered, isn’t something to chase but something to allow, when the timing is right, when our systems feel ready, when what we have to offer feels genuinely ripe.

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In the next essay in this series, I’ll explore how to discern the difference between fear and alignment. How do you know when you are holding yourself back, and when you are honoring the wisdom of your own timing?

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