are we ever truly known?

I’ll start with a reminder that these writings are musings. I truly don’t have a hell of a clue what the answer to that question is, but I’m getting the vibe that it might hurt my feelings.

I’ve opened my books to new therapy clients in Kentucky, but I’ve been hesitant (read: dreading, procrastinating, cleaning the grout in my bathroom to avoid) to market my practice. I’m not typically an avoidant person, and I literally talk to people for a living (happily!), so it wasn’t clear to me on first thought why I have been putting off the networking side of private practice for a year and a half.

I’m so lucky to have the freedom to be myself in the therapy room. I don’t mean that the sessions are about me; I mean that I don’t have to code-switch to be an effective therapeutic partner to my clients. I don’t feel drained after a session and I genuinely look forward to meeting with all of my clients. I get to show up as me, down to my clothing, air-dried hair, humor, and sometimes even a sleeping golden retriever in the background. Over weeks and months of regular sessions with clients, I feel that their perception of me matches pretty damn close to how I want to represent myself as a therapist and person.

With most careers that don’t require confidentiality and strict ethics about dual relationships, it’s easy to build a reputation for your skill and expand your networks organically; that’s my jam. I’m constantly referring my friends for hairdressing, construction contracting, yoga, and fresh produce at the farmer’s market. I’m their customer myself. But therapy doesn’t work that way. Much to the disappointment to several of my close friends, I can’t be their therapist. And much to the disappointment of me, frankly, I can’t be friends with my clients (I have really cool clients).

So putting myself out there as a therapist, especially after making the switch to online therapy only, feels like I’m saying “I promise I’m really good at my job, but I can’t give you the name of anyone who could vouch for me….” I could go to the organized networking events around town, but I’m worried they’re going to feel like an MLM convention with a bunch of Hey Boss Babe gals. No shade to those girlies, but that wave caught me as a recent college grad and I’m glad to have it behind me. I don’t yet have a clear path to being known in the professional world—conveying that I’m Not a Regular Therapist, I’m a Cool Therapist, but like in a very Ethical-But-Relational, Calls-Bullshit-On-Oppressive-Systems way, not an I’m-Going-To-Spend-This-Whole-Session-Talking-About-Me-Instead-Of-You-The-Client way (you would be absolutely floored to know how serious and common a problem this is, RIP).

Anyway, I’m being a Brave Big Girl and making the calls so people know I exist, but it got me thinking about how many of us never feel really known. Or maybe we feel varying levels of known in different parts of their lives. My sister thinks that we can’t really ever be fully known because we all have different perceptions of the world that can’t possibly be duplicated in another person. So even if we feel respected and loved and cherished by someone, they don’t have the ability to know us the way we know ourselves. I think my sister is really smart and this makes sense to me, but I’m hesitant to say I believe it, mostly because I don’t want it to be true.

As a social worker-turned-therapist and Ennegram 8, I’ve always thought being known or “seen” is important—no, essential, required, non-negotiable—to feeling fulfilled and peaceful. I see this in my clients too; we often want our partners or friends to know what we need without saying it, and we don’t like to feel misunderstood. Some of us go out of our way, over-explaining and overfunctioning in effort to not feel misunderstood. I’ve even heard, repeatedly, from my trans clients and friends that it almost feels like they don’t even exist if they don’t feel correctly perceived, gender-wise and otherwise.

So what do we do if we aren’t among people who understand us? Or even more difficult to swallow: what do we do if it’s not even anyone’s fault that they don’t know us because it’s actually impossible and never going to change? (Gulp.) Initially I guess we have to work on finding out what we personally believe about this, and then processing to accept what we think it true. But then, shit, I think we have to actually spend time understanding and knowing ourselves, and on top of that, learning to appreciate that our understanding of ourselves is actually so rare and unique and really really important. Like, honoring that our relationship with ourselves, and the things we know and understand about ourselves might actually be the only occurrence of that understanding. Is this rocking anyone else’s brain the way it is mine? Being known by others in a way that’s chronically different from how I see myself is something I have to keep working though (again, I’m an Ennegram 8 and a Taurus), but thinking that I have the special pleasure of being my own know-er (?) feels pretty magical too.

It bears saying that this comes with a lot of time spent in our minds with our own thoughts, which doesn’t always feel magical or even safe sometimes. We’re also changing all the time, so the job is never fully done. Every new experience, heartache, fact, sight, relationship, responsibility, loss, wrinkle, injury, etc. changes the lens through which we view the world and our place in it.

Again, these are just musings. I don’t have a directive but my personal takeaways are these:

we are magical,

being known, in any sense, is one of the most beautiful parts of being human,

our minds and bodies are the headquarters where self-knowing is developed, and

we ought to take care of them.

I free-wrote these thoughts with my own fingers from my own brain and will never use AI to communicate on this platform. Inspired to say as much by my new-ish friend Kaleigh, who owns and runs the badass bookstore Set + Setting in Louisville, KY.