It's Christmas. I'm seven years old. The unceasing cacophony of laughter around the dinner table subsides for a brief moment. I speak up and say something. Nobody reacts. Someone coughs. Then the silence is broken when somebody else cracks a witticism, and the uproar of laughter echoes around the house again, as joke after joke lets loose.
As I'm watching, observing, closely monitoring who says what, and what gets a reaction, subconsciously something dawns on me. When the next pause in the conversation arrives, this time I say something silly—and my family laughs! My uncle says, "Good one!" My grandfather shakes his head while smiling. My father nods approvingly. Then the moment passes, and I feel seen and loved.
Dinner after dinner, holiday after holiday, I intuit that love is what I'm seeking, and the currency to obtain it is jokes. Say something witty, and I get to feel seen and loved. Say something emotional or needy, and I get ignored.
Repeat this for twenty years, and you get a man who is an excellent charmer, storyteller, and comedian—truly refined in his craft of entertaining others. He learned that attention only comes when he's putting on a show, dazzling others with his intellect and wit. But, underneath it all, is a boy who just wants to feel seen and loved. Underneath it all, is a boy who's scared that if he were to let the mask down, that no one would love him.
I learned that it's easier to be liked, than it is to be loved.
It's strange, at age 27, to realize that what I've always perceived as one of my greatest strengths—my ability to capture and maintain attention from others—is also one of my biggest insecurities.
I wanted to explore this further, so I took to experimenting on myself.
In recent conversations, I decided to stop performing, to stop filling every pause with a joke, to stop saying smart things to impress people. Somatically, anxiety showed up immediately, squeezing my chest. Anxiety is often a marker for feeling unsafe.
But why am I feeling unsafe?
I contemplated this question for days, until I remembered what it was like growing up: family dinners and holidays where I learned that the only way to feel seen and loved was to be entertaining. If I'm not entertaining, then I'm nothing.
I know, from psychological research, that there’s often a negative emotion, like anxiety, underneath strong urges, pushing us to act a certain way. There are two common ways to deal with that neuroticism:
Do nothing and continue to endure low-grade chronic anxiety.
Confront the insecurity and feel intense anxiety through multiple uncomfortable exposures, until eventually your nervous system habituates and you can relax.
I took the second option. While I desperately want to be in control of every social situation, I started letting breathing room exist in conversations. My anxiety quickly spiked, urging me to fill the space, but I repeatedly refused to react and instead just sat through the discomfort. And then, something interesting happened…
People began opening up to me. The extra space gave them time to think, reflect on what they were saying, and then add more if they wanted to. As people began trusting me and letting me into their inner worlds, I slowly started letting people into my inner world. Rather than desperately needing to be liked by compulsively entertaining people, I started feeling more genuinely connected to them and curious about their experiences.
Something in my chest expanded.
In conversations, I began feeling seen and loved—not for my entertainment value, but because I was willing to take my mask off, be vulnerable, and let the people in my life see the little boy in me who just wants to be loved.
It's Christmas. I'm seven years old. The unceasing cacophony of laughter around the dinner table subsides for a brief moment. I speak up and say something. Nobody reacts. Someone coughs. Then the silence is broken when somebody else cracks a witticism, and the uproar of laughter echoes around the house again, as joke after joke lets loose.
As I'm watching, observing, closely monitoring who says what, and what gets a reaction, subconsciously something dawns on me. When the next pause in the conversation arrives, this time I say something silly—and my family laughs! My uncle says, "Good one!" My grandfather shakes his head while smiling. My father nods approvingly. Then the moment passes, and I feel seen and loved.
Dinner after dinner, holiday after holiday, I intuit that love is what I'm seeking, and the currency to obtain it is jokes. Say something witty, and I get to feel seen and loved. Say something emotional or needy, and I get ignored.
Repeat this for twenty years, and you get a man who is an excellent charmer, storyteller, and comedian—truly refined in his craft of entertaining others. He learned that attention only comes when he's putting on a show, dazzling others with his intellect and wit. But, underneath it all, is a boy who just wants to feel seen and loved. Underneath it all, is a boy who's scared that if he were to let the mask down, that no one would love him.
I learned that it's easier to be liked, than it is to be loved.
It's strange, at age 27, to realize that what I've always perceived as one of my greatest strengths—my ability to capture and maintain attention from others—is also one of my biggest insecurities.
I wanted to explore this further, so I took to experimenting on myself.
In recent conversations, I decided to stop performing, to stop filling every pause with a joke, to stop saying smart things to impress people. Somatically, anxiety showed up immediately, squeezing my chest. Anxiety is often a marker for feeling unsafe.
But why am I feeling unsafe?
I contemplated this question for days, until I remembered what it was like growing up: family dinners and holidays where I learned that the only way to feel seen and loved was to be entertaining. If I'm not entertaining, then I'm nothing.
I know, from psychological research, that there’s often a negative emotion, like anxiety, underneath strong urges, pushing us to act a certain way. There are two common ways to deal with that neuroticism:
I took the second option. While I desperately want to be in control of every social situation, I started letting breathing room exist in conversations. My anxiety quickly spiked, urging me to fill the space, but I repeatedly refused to react and instead just sat through the discomfort. And then, something interesting happened…
People began opening up to me. The extra space gave them time to think, reflect on what they were saying, and then add more if they wanted to. As people began trusting me and letting me into their inner worlds, I slowly started letting people into my inner world. Rather than desperately needing to be liked by compulsively entertaining people, I started feeling more genuinely connected to them and curious about their experiences.
Something in my chest expanded.
In conversations, I began feeling seen and loved—not for my entertainment value, but because I was willing to take my mask off, be vulnerable, and let the people in my life see the little boy in me who just wants to be loved.