Feeling Seen Quotes

“It doesn’t take much to come into your own; all it takes is someone’s gaze. It’s not totally accurate to say that I felt seen. It was more that: Beheld by her, I learned how to become myself. Her interest actualized me.”
― Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

“For all his secrecy and fear of being seen, he was touched that we had observed him so closely, and with such love. He loved that we knew him. This is one reason people need to believe in God -- because we want someone to know us, truly, all the way through, even the worst of us.”
― Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing

“We remember the people who saw us when we couldn't really see ourselves.”
― Julie Lythcott-Haims, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult

“She sucked in a breath at that look, because it made her understand what it was to be a butterfly with a pin thrust through its heart, displayed in such a way so that no flaw or feature, no matter how ugly or beautiful, could ever be hidden from view.”
― Nenia Campbell, Little Deaths

“She sucked in a breath at that look, because it made her understand what it felt like to be a butterfly with a pin thrust through its heart, displayed in such a way so that no flaw or feature, no matter how ugly or beautiful, could ever be hidden from view.”
― Nenia Campbell, Little Deaths

“I took in his face. He was neither White nor Native, something outside the two major circles who moved in that space. He was the first person I was sure had seen me as just a person during that whole trip.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“I think all of us need to do a better job of seeing the humanity of people on the other side of the aisle. Because I think what happens in this country right now is: The left says to the right, “What do you know about pain, white straight man? My pain is real, as an L.G.B.T.Q. person.” And the right says to the left, “What do you know about pain, college-educated, cosmopolitan élite? My pain is real, in a post-industrial community ravaged by the opioid crisis.” And I know that, when I am upset, the worst thing that someone can say to me, even if it is said with the best of intentions, is “It’s not as bad as you think.” Any therapist will tell you that the first step to healing is to have your pain seen and validated. And I think all of us have to do a better job of recognizing that people don’t have to be right in our mind for what they’re facing to be wrong. And people don’t have to be right in our minds for us to try to right that wrong. That comes down to sort of a core recognition that every single person is more than just one thing about them. And every single person is more than even beliefs that might personally hurt many other people.”
― Sarah McBride