You Don't Have a Fear of Being Seen

Prefer to watch? The video's below. Prefer to read? Keep going — this one's for you either way.

Once upon a time, I told a story about a meeting at work where everybody was going around doing introductions — and they forgot I was in the room. There were maybe five of us, max seven. Seven people, and somehow they forgot one was still sitting there.

I'm laughing about it now, but it was a true story. I wasn't mad at anyone. I was disappointed in myself, because I was off mute the whole time, telling myself "okay, I'll go next" — and then just... waiting. And waiting. Until the second-to-last person spoke, and I told myself again, "okay, I'll go next." And then the person running the meeting said, "Okay, that's everyone." And I just sat there thinking, "Oh. Okay. Yay. I don't have to awkwardly introduce myself after all."

Why I convinced myself it was okay

After the meeting ended, I asked myself: are you serious right now? How is it okay to not even give your awkward hello, your basic "welcome to the team"? I sat with that, and realized I'd been trying to convince myself I hadn't really wanted to say anything anyway — that I was almost relieved I didn't have to come off mute. If you work remote, staying quiet in a meeting isn't the end of the world. So I told myself if I didn't have to speak, I just wouldn't. I'd let everyone else do their little chitchat and get back to work. I let myself believe that was fine, for a little while.

The second meeting — I almost let it happen again

Then a new team member joined, and it happened again. Everyone was introducing themselves, and the meeting lead said, "Okay, well that's everybody in this department" — the department I was in. And I thought, no, I'm here. But I didn't say anything. I just let it play out again, telling myself I'd already been skipped over once, so why did it even matter.

I do have a voice

But as it kept going, something shifted. I thought: no, I do have a voice. I get to do my introduction. I am part of this team. I'm a valued member. I'm good at my job. Why wouldn't I want to introduce myself and let people know I'm here? I let a few more people go, and then the meeting lead called my name and asked if I wanted to go next or let the last person go first. I said sure, and I introduced myself.

Afterward, I was genuinely proud of myself — not just for speaking up, but for catching the moment while it was happening and reminding myself, right then, that I am a valued member of this team. Whether I intended to stay at that job forever or leave the next week didn't matter. In that moment, I was part of the team.

Fear of being seen vs. fear of belonging

That's when I started asking myself a different question: was I actually afraid of being seen, or did I just not feel like I belonged? Because in that first meeting, even with people I met with all day, every day, I almost felt like I didn't belong there. In the second meeting, I reminded myself that I did — that I was a valued part of it. It wasn't really about being seen at all. It was about belonging.

That reframe reaches back further than one meeting. I've told myself for too many years that I wasn't going to go on YouTube — that I was afraid of being seen, that I didn't want anyone looking at me. I thought back to being in school plays, doing activities where people would notice me, and feeling afraid. But it wasn't really "I'm afraid of everyone seeing me." It was "do I belong here, in this play, in this presentation?"

How this reframed YouTube for me

That distinction changed how I see this whole YouTube thing. I used to watch videos of other girls online and think: I don't look like them. My hair isn't like theirs. My eye color, my lifestyle, my money, my family, my childhood — none of it matched. And I told myself I didn't want to be seen, because I felt like the complete opposite of them.

Now I'm reframing it: I do belong on camera. Not in a conceited way — in the sense that I'm doing this for people who look like me, who've always felt like they didn't belong, who've always felt afraid of being seen when really what they were missing was a sense of belonging. These are the women I'm excited to be in community with, not people I need to hide from.

The line that changed it

I heard someone else say it once: you don't have a fear of being seen, you have a fear of belonging. That stopped me. I'd never thought about it that way, even though I'd felt that exact thing my whole life — even growing up in Jamaica, joking with my mom that I must have been adopted because I didn't look like everyone else. She'd get so annoyed and launch straight into the full labor story. It's funny now. I'm sure it wasn't funny to her then.

It's still hard for me to get on camera and talk for ten minutes straight. But it's getting easier, because it's less about me now and more about letting other people know it's okay to sit and ramble too — because everyone we see now with the big mics and the huge followings started out rambling, unless they're a celebrity who had a platform built before they were even born. I'm talking about regular people who feel like they'll get in trouble for being seen, or who feel like building any kind of community means going through this awkward, uncomfortable process of being visible first. It's not as bad as I thought it would be.

You belong in the room you decided to be in

You don't have a fear of being seen. You have a fear of belonging. And once you actually come to terms with the fact that you do belong — that being in the room means you belong in the room — that changes things. If you decide you don't want to be there anymore, that's your choice to make. But don't do what I did, and sit quietly while people say "okay, that's everyone" and move on with their day, forgetting you were ever there. You belong in the room, because you're the one who decided to be in it.

👉Your turn: think of a room you've quietly disappeared in. Was it fear of being seen, or fear of not belonging? Share it in the comments.