Shankar Vedantam

She told me that when she walks through a mall nowadays, people look right through her.

It's as if she isn't there.

In a 2023 advisory, former U.S.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said that social isolation and feelings of invisibility profoundly affect workers in many fields.

In a conversation on Hidden Brain, he called loneliness an epidemic that is having profound implications for depression, heart disease, and public health.

This week on Hidden Brain and in a companion story on Hidden Brain Plus, the human need to be significant and what happens when this deep yearning isn't met.

Also, how to help others be seen and be seen ourselves.

As a species, humans have certain non-negotiable needs.

We need air, we need water, we need food.

Beyond these basics, however, we also have psychological needs.

We need to feel like our existence matters, that we are valued.

Psychologist Gordon Flett remembers a moment like this in his own life.

It started when his wife noticed something about his complexion.

At York University in Canada, Gordon, who goes by Gord, studies the physical and psychological conditions that can help people flourish.

He says interactions like the one he had with his nurse remind us that we matter, and mattering is a feeling that is vital to our well-being.

Gord also researches what happens when we feel we don't matter.

He remembers a time more than two decades ago when two students at a high school in Colorado felt like they were invisible.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had families and a few friends, but they were obsessed with the notion that they didn't matter to the people who held the most power in their social world, the popular kids at school.

Dylan's journals show a kid who felt like a ghost, wandering through the halls and feeling completely overlooked and ignored.

On the other hand, Eric felt he was actually better than everyone else, and it made him furious that no one recognized his greatness.