What is it that makes us feel 'seen'? I don't know how to describe this feeling. Maybe I can describe the opposite first? I remember being in a room with a few people in it. There was somebody leading this room. This was during Covid and the room was an online one. The leader asked literally everybody in the room questions about how they were doing, what was going on with them, etc etc. I don't really care for this sort of small talk because it seems to me nobody is really expecting an honest answer and I cannot do performative answers. But since this was going on I was expecting to be asked too. It never came. I felt small, invisible... like I wasn't even there. Like for some reason I was deemed unworthy of being checked in with. I did not want to go to that online event after that session. But I wondered if it was just a one-off thing. Sometimes it could be that people simply don't realise they missed you in a sequence, particularly online. So I went again. And same thing. Again, and same thing. The funny thing is I started questioning myself as if I was to blame for my own non-recognition in some way. The funnier thing is that I grew quieter and quieter in these sessions until I was completely mute. I might have almost not been there. Something in me got smaller and smaller and smaller each time. The more the leader who basically did most of the talking and addressing acted like I was invisible, the more I started feeling and becoming invisible. I internalised the invisibility. I felt like nobody saw me. I was a phantom intruding where I wasn't welcome. My invisibility overpowered me... I remember pondering quite hard why that person acted this way towards me and I have a feeling it's not that they were deliberately targeting me—they didn't even know me. It's that for whatever reason they just did not notice my presence... I stopped going for those sessions after that. 

Coming from the other side then, to make somebody feel seen would be to do the exact opposite of what this person did. The effect is also exactly the opposite on me. Where you feel noticed, not as a nameless, faceless, random figure who could be interchanged with anybody else, but as you... they see you, recognize you, respond to you, are affected by you in some way...  you are present to them, your voice matters to them, how they make you feel matters to them. I am very fortunate to have been made to feel this... by some very wonderful people.