What Does It Mean To Be Truly Seen?

By: Tamara Gestetner

I never set out to be known for my silences.

But the feedback I hear most from listeners of Talk2Tamara is not about the topics we cover or the guests I book. It’s not about production quality or episode length. What people tell me over and over is that this is the first podcast they actually love listening to. Because I ask questions that come from somewhere real. And because when my guest answers, I let them finish.

That’s it. That is the thing people notice.

And every time I hear it, something in me gets very quiet. Because I know exactly why I listen the way I do. It did not come from a podcasting course or a media training. It came from growing up in a world where I was not always sure anyone was really listening to me either.

I was a kid who felt different. Not in a way I could easily explain or that anyone around me would have necessarily noticed. I showed up. I participated. I did what was expected. But underneath all of that, there was this persistent, low hum of a feeling that the version of me everyone was responding to was not quite the whole version. That I had learned somewhere along the way: to edit myself down to something more manageable. More acceptable. More right.

We are raised with expectations, what I call “shoulds.” What you should want. How you should act. Who you should become. In tight-knit communities especially, the map is drawn before you even arrive. The roles are cast. The expectations are loving, genuinely loving, but they are also loud. And when the world around you is that loud, the quiet voice inside of you, the one that says “But what about what I want?” Or “I’m not sure this is really me.” That voice learns to keep itself down.

It’s not anyone’s fault. The people who raised us were passing down the only map they had. The shoulds were their way of keeping us safe, handing us a blueprint for a life that would hold together. I understand that now in a way I couldn’t when I was young. But understanding something and being untouched by it are two different things.

The cost of growing up in the shoulds is that you can spend a very long time not knowing what you actually feel. Not because you are broken but because you never had much practice being asked. You learn to sense what the room needs from you and you deliver it. You become very good at being what everyone else is comfortable with. And you walk around with this quiet ache that you can’t always name, the ache of being liked but not fully known.

I carried that for years. In friendships, in relationships, in rooms where I was performing competence and warmth while some smaller, truer part of me sat in the corner wondering if anyone would ever think to ask how I was actually doing. Not the surface answer. The real one.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe was known for something that has stayed with me since the first time I heard it. When someone came to see him, they received something almost impossible to describe. His complete and total attention. Not the polite attention most of us offer, where our eyes are on the person but our minds are already composing a response. Real attention. The kind where the person in front of you can feel that they are in that moment the only person in the world.

People would leave those encounters changed. Not always because of what was said. Sometimes very little was said. But because they had experienced something so rare it cracked them open. They had been seen. Fully. Without agenda. Without the other person needing anything back.

I think about that a lot. How transformative it is to be on the receiving end of that kind of presence. And how almost no one ever offers it.

We live in a world that is very loud and fast and deeply, chronically distracted. Even in our closest relationships, we are often only half there. Our phones are nearby. Our thoughts are elsewhere. We are listening with one ear while the other ear is tuned to our own interior monologue, waiting for the opening where we can jump in, relate, redirect, advise, fix.

And we do it with love. That’s the thing. We do it because we want to connect. Because we want to help. Because we want to show the person that we understand, that something similar happened to us, that we have something useful to offer. But in quickly reaching for connection, we sometimes accidentally steal the floor. We take their story and make it about us. We offer a solution before they have finished explaining the problem. We talk over the tender parts without meaning to.

And the person in front of us, without always being able to articulate it, walks away feeling a little bit unseen. Definitely unheard.

I have been that person. Many times. I know the specific exhaustion of trying to explain something real to someone who keeps finishing your sentences with the wrong ending. I know what it’s like to share something vulnerable and have the conversation pivot within seconds to the other person’s related experience. I know the loneliness of being in a room full of people who care about you, yet you still feel like no one is quite reaching you.

That loneliness is more common than we admit. And it starts early.

When I sit down with a guest on a podcast, I am not performing neutrality. I have opinions. I have reactions. I have moments where I want to jump in with my own perspective or share something from my own life. But I hold it. Because I made a decision early on that this space was not about me. My guests come to tell their story. My job is to ask the questions that help them tell it as fully and honestly as possible, and then get out of the way.

What I did not expect was how much that would mean to people. Not just to the guests but to the listeners. That the simple act of not centering myself, of staying genuinely curious, of letting the silence breathe a little instead of rushing to fill it, would be the thing that made people feel something.

But maybe I should have expected it. Because it is the thing I always needed too.

I think I became someone who creates space for others to be heard because I spent years not feeling heard myself. Not dramatically. Not in a way that would make for an obvious origin story. Just quietly. The way a lot of us are quietly, persistently, almost imperceptibly unseen in the very families and communities that love us most.

I want to ask you something and I want you to sit with it for a moment before you answer.

When was the last time you felt truly seen?

Not appreciated. Not praised. Not taken care of. Seen. The real version of you, the one underneath the role you play and the face you put on and the version of yourself you have decided is safe to show the world.

When was the last time someone asked you a question and then waited—actually waited—for the full answer? When was the last time you said something honest and the person across from you did not immediately try to fix it or match it or change the subject?

And when was the last time you offered that to someone else?

We cannot undo the childhoods we had. We cannot go back and ask our parents to put down the shoulds for a moment and just ask us what we wanted. We cannot rewrite the years we spent editing ourselves into something more acceptable. But we can decide, starting now, who we want to be in the conversations we are part of.

Full presence is not a small thing. In a world this distracted, choosing to show up for another person, to put down your own agenda for a few minutes and just be genuinely, unhurriedly curious about their inner life, is one of the most loving things you can do.

It might also be the most healing thing anyone has ever done for you.

The Rebbe understood something that I think most of us are only beginning to learn. That being truly seen by another person is not a luxury. It’s not something reserved for therapy sessions or confessionals or the rare friendship that goes deep. It’s a basic human need. And we are all, every one of us, quietly starving for it.

You have the power to feed that hunger in the people around you. Not with grand gestures. Just by listening. Really listening. Letting them finish. Staying curious instead of rushing to respond. Offering the radical gift of your full, unhurried attention.

That is what I try to do every time I sit down at a microphone. And if the feedback I keep getting is any indication, the world is hungry for exactly that.

Maybe it always was. 

Tamara Gestetner, LMFT, is a psychotherapist and certified mediator based in Cedarhurst who helps individuals and couples navigate relationships, career questions, and the challenges people face in everyday life. She is also the host of the podcast Talk2Tamara. Readers are welcome to submit questions or topics they would like addressed in future columns. Tamara can be reached at TamaraGestetner.com, [email protected], or 646-239-5686.