Tips for Being More Visible

Being visible is difficult for many people and can be especially difficult for survivors (as I discussed here). In this post, I discuss a few mindset shifts that will help your quest to be more visible—whether you’re working on opening up to family and friends or trying to be more public with your creativity or work. These are some tips I’ve found to be helpful to myself and countless clients.

Start small

• Start opening up to people close to you, who you know support you. 
• Take one small step to show yourself more publicly. Set and achieve a goal of delivering one presentation, writing one post, or making one goal. And then, do it again.

Connect to your mission

• What are you doing this for? What is the point of being visible? Is it to live more freely? Is it for a mission bigger than you? Is it to help protect or uphold justice? Hold these reasons close so that you can get out of your ego and align with a deeper mission. 

Remember: It gets easier 

• I heard Channel Miller (author of Know My Name) say that you will do things in the future that are unimaginable to you now. I agree so much with this and have experienced it myself. Perhaps in the beginning, disclosing your trauma to the person closest to you feels unimaginably hard. But you do it. And then, as the months and years go by, you find yourself speaking about that same trauma on stages in front of hundreds of people, or speaking about it on a podcast, or publishing a book about it. It gets unquestionably, unbelievably, easier. What feels hard now will feel easy in the future if you keep walking down the path of continued alignment and opening yourself up.

Reflect on the progress you’ve already made

• Think about all the progress you’ve already made! Look at how far you’ve come! Feel the pride, soak it in. Living in truth, speaking from truth, and being seen is hard. And you’re doing it.  

Realize that all true connection comes from vulnerability 

• If you’re a trauma survivor, visibility has likely been paired with deep pain, both during the abuse and likely at certain moments of disclosure. Maybe you weren’t believed. Maybe you were rejected. Maybe you lost someone you loved. This  makes it hard to believe that being visible could be paired with something different, something beautiful. But it can and it is. All true connection and love comes from being seen. Try to hold onto that. Let it give you courage. 

Recognize that it’s scary 

• It’s ok to feel afraid. It’s not meant to be easy, and the fear isn’t telling you you’re doing something wrong. It’s part of the process. Try to welcome it instead of letting it stop you. Take it with you, and keep going forward.  

You can’t be truly loved without being seen

• You deny yourself the chance to be loved fully if you stay in hiding, or don’t show your true self. You deserve love! You deserve to be seen. 
• Living from one part of yourself instead of your full self doesn’t give you the life you deserve, which is an authentic, full, true one. In how you live, how you love, and all the juicy goodness that comes from the   

You aren’t the fullest expression of yourself if you’re hiding

• You deserve to be the freest, most authentic version of yourself. You are not meant to live life in reaction to someone else’s actions. You are not meant to stay in hiding. You are meant to be your biggest, boldest, brightest self. 

It’s okay if this is hard! It’s about taking it step by step, remembering that it’s worth it, and trusting that it gets easier. With more openness and vulnerability, life has the power to become more and more beautiful. Thanks for being on this journey with me. Xoxo