I’ve sat behind the computer for a while, pondering this post. This is the core message of my life – to be witnessed, to be understood, to be seen, fully, without filters – and I am not quite sure how to properly frame this message. And that encapsulates the issue: I want to be seen, understood, and known; I just don’t know how to make that happen.

I was never really into the Black Mirror series on Netflix, but there was one episode I watched in which the characters had cameras in their eyes, so their whole lives were recorded. I wish that there was a way for people to see into my heart, my soul, my mind; a way for people to see my intentions, my motives; a way for people to feel, see, and understand my pain, my trauma, my history; a way for people to truly, really see me, without me saying anything or doing anything. I want someone who truly understands and gets it, just like that. I want there to be some science, some way, for people to just know what you mean, know that you mean no harm even in the middle of an argument, know that you have no ill intentions, no malice, and that you are simply in pain, yearning to be understood, to be heard.

Dr. Gabor Mate (I know I quote him a lot), said the biggest need that people have, apart from shelter, food, and physically being held when they’re small, is to be seen and understood; and the essence of trauma is not being seen and understood. And I came across this video only a couple of weeks ago, and I was like – that is it, that’s it for me. That is the core, central wound and need for me.  

Some people send memes to friends as a form of entertainment or maybe encouragement, but most of the memes I send or share, if they are about mental health, are intended to serve as windows into my mind, my lived experience. When I share articles, links, videos, it is my desperate way of opening the door to my life, my world, to be seen, to be witnessed. I use the word desperate because that is how it feels for me – I am desperate to be seen.

To clarify, this is not a need for popularity, virality or fame. It is not a matter of being seen by many; it is not about numbers. It is a need to be seen and understood as a person, at my core, by those close to me, around me, those I interact with, those who look at me, deal with me, talk to me, those I have any form of relationship with, those I do life with.

If I think about it a little bit further, I think I want my motives, my intentions, my heart, to be clear, to be known, no ambiguity. I think people make so many assumptions about me – some think I am combative, I can’t let things go, I want to be right, or that I am cold, isolated, too much, too sensitive, don’t play well with others, and so forth. And being misunderstood hurts me to my core. I just want to be understood, but my brain, my emotions, my way of thinking, acting and behaving sometimes get in the way of my heart, motives and intentions, and everything gets messed up. And that is why I wish there were a person who could look beyond the exterior, beyond the words, beyond the actions, straight into my heart and my mind, and just know what is driving me, what I am trying to say, what is happening with me?

When the breakup text dropped in 2024, and my nervous system collapsed, I badly wanted him to know the pain he had caused, the full extent of it. I wanted God to somehow enter his mind and give him a vision of my anguish, my pain, my heart. And I would pray to God for that relentlessly, not necessarily for reconciliation, but to be seen, to be witnessed, to be understood by him, for empathy and compassion. And so I would pour out to a substitute close to him, in hopes that my pain would be transmitted from the friend to the ex. And even now, I still want him to somehow know, in a true literal sense, feel it somehow, the depth of the pain I feel, not to guess it, but to know it, for certain. I also believe deeply that the breakup happened because I was misunderstood. My insecurities, my mental illnesses, my life, my context, were all misunderstood, and he didn’t have the patience or the capacity to see me, to truly understand, and so he walked. And for a long time afterwards, I wanted two things – I wanted him to know the pain of his actions, but I also wanted him to know me, truly know me and what he had walked away from, and know that my actions were simply a woman who loved deeply, hurt even more, and was wrecked by insecurity, a need for validation, and a fear of abandonment.  I wrote him a letter following the break up, titled, ‘I See You’ – and in this letter, me, the one who was discarded, I expressed that I understood him, that I saw him, and accepted that he just didn’t have the capacity to handle all that I brought, and that I understood his life, his context, that made it impossible for him to add my troubles. I wanted badly to give to him what he couldn’t give to me. I wanted him to know that I understood.

And it’s not just with heartbreak that this occurs for me, in most interactions, I walk away in anguish and confusion, overthinking – did I make myself clear, do they understand, what else can I say? And so I tend to overexplain, send paragraphs, and seemingly argue because I just want to be understood. And this doesn’t mean I make no room for understanding others. I absolutely do. I want to engage, but people steer clear of engagement and call most forms of discussion "argument" or "conflict".

For the most part, I am not looking for pity, and I don’t know how to break down these words any further – it’s a simple, yet desperate need to be seen, understood and witnessed fully and deeply. Not necessarily to be given a pass if I am wrong, but for my motives, my intentions, my pain, my context, to be seen and understood.

I wish that were something we could do for each other. I didn’t realise that feeling, that need to be witnessed and seen and validated, was at the core of trauma. I just know it is my core wound. Some people want their intentions to be hidden. I want everything in my heart to be as clear and as bright as day.

Now, let me tell you a little bit more about the psychology behind this because I must also educate, right? I didn’t get that the need to be witnessed was a core attachment and trauma need until I watched the Dr Gabor Mate video a couple of weeks ago, and then I had to look into it a bit more, because it absolutely captured my heart.

The need to be witnessed comes from a rupture in early attachment where your internal experience was not mirrored, validated, or protected — and therefore never fully “registered” in another human nervous system. Human beings regulate themselves through being known. When no one accurately reflects you back, your nervous system stays on alert, scanning endlessly: “Do you see me now?” “Did I come across?” “Did you understand what I meant?”

In my case, my need to be witnessed is not a preference. It is a survival response. My nervous system adapts by saying: “If I explain better, louder, longer, more clearly — maybe this time I will exist.” That is why some people may even consider me to be combative or argumentative. I am desperate to be seen, to exist; my nervous system is screaming.

This is why I do all that I do: overexplain, send long messages (including long voice notes), try to transmit my pain through third parties, and crave certainty that someone truly knows what I meant. That is not manipulation. That is a nervous system trying to complete an unfinished process.

A while ago, I sent an email to someone that I needed something from. In this email, I took my time to explain that my health had deteriorated, and I even attached the doctor’s reports, my EEG, to justify the request and the timing. The person responded a couple of days later, did not acknowledge anything about my health, and simply spoke about logistics. It broke my heart. It broke me so deeply. It set me back for weeks. The pain still lingers.

Because I have quite a bit of BPD, I go through what is referred to as intense mentalization (thinking about thinking). My repeated theme is “I want people to know my intentions. I want no ambiguity.” Apparently, this is textbook hyper-mentalization, not manipulation.

Back to the heartbreak. According to psychology, my breakup was not just a breakup. It was: abandonment, misrecognition, erasure of effort, collapse of the hope of being finally seen.

And so I wanted the person who hurt me to feel what I felt. That is not vengeance. That is a longing for moral repair. In trauma psychology, this is called: the need for the perpetrator (or abandoner) to witness the harm. When that doesn’t happen, the trauma stays “open”.

The next step for me is to practice “safe witnessing”, – which means choosing safer witnesses, tolerating that some people cannot see me, internalising my own witness, and building relationships where mirroring is reciprocal.

And slowly, very slowly, my nervous system will learn: “I exist even if they don’t get it.”

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