Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. So says the protagonist in Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel, Invisible Man. Readers never learn the character's name, but they are invited to experience his life.
Chapter 2: What does it mean to feel invisible?
Walking down the street in Harlem, passers-by look right through him. Diligently working at a paint factory, his efforts go unnoticed. He joins a political organization, but he is treated as a pawn, a tool to advance the agendas of others. Ralph Ellison's novel was about the dehumanizing effects of racism, but the feeling of invisibility affects many people.
I recently met an older woman at one of the stops on a Hidden Brain live tour I've been doing across the United States. 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.
I woke up one day after having some pain, and my wife said, you don't look good. Your skin is turning yellow. And we phoned the hospital. They said, come in right away. And I had a problem with bile duct issues where they figured, though, that if they addressed whatever blockage there was, that I would get better. Instead, I didn't get better.
I started to get, went deep yellow in terms of jaundice and eventually orange. And I'm talking pumpkin orange at one point. Ended up losing 40 pounds, had four different procedures where they thought they must have just missed something. And then eventually the one doctor who I ended up on his operating table who I'd never met, he figured it out. I call him my doctor house like the TV show.
Because he figured out there was only one variable that was left, and that was the IV that was going into me. Somehow I had a weird interaction that actually had put me in liver failure for almost three weeks, being hooked up to IV.
And when they took me off the IV or they replaced that with something else, then I started to get better to the point I was able, after three full weeks in the hospital, being able to go home. So on the very last day, um, I'm there at night and a nurse comes in wearing a late night with David Letterman t-shirt and she goes, you don't know me, but I know you and I know what you've been through.
And she says, your file is like three feet thick with all the tests that have been run on you. And you had a very close call. She goes, so I'm just here. I know you're medically okay now and you're putting back the weight and you're restoring some color.
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Chapter 3: How does feeling like we don't matter affect our mental health?
He says they paint a chilling picture of social isolation and alienation.
You see a lot of issues with self-worth, a feeling of a sense of being bullied and being ignored and ridiculed. A strong feeling that arouses both depression and anger is a sense of being humiliated. So often you'll see this, and there are multiple accounts.
There are differences between the two boys in terms of their personalities, but this was a theme of, you know, I'm not getting the respect I deserve. I need to get some respect, and I'll do something you'll never forget.
Typically, Gorton says, most of us seek to make our mark on the world by achieving something of value, by doing good deeds. Influencers might try to create a video that goes viral. Athletes might try to break some long-held record. Entrepreneurs might try to build a successful business. But if those means to achieve recognition are closed off to us, some of us turn to more drastic measures.
Typically, it's the case of some form of mistreatment or being ignored or being made to feel invisible that arouses these feelings of needing to be significant. And you can do that through positive ways of interacting with people, but you can also affiliate with people who are less than desirable and engage in antisocial behavior that will impact others. And
This need to matter will become expressed when it's frustrated, ideally in socially acceptable ways, but often in terms of delinquency, gang activity, and so on. And I try to remind myself when things happen that are really troubling that everybody has a need to matter and that this will get expressed one way or the other.
In August 2005, a huge storm hit the Gulf Coast of the United States. Hurricane Katrina, of course, caused devastating flooding and widespread destruction across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. In the aftermath of the disaster, people had many basic needs. They needed shelter, they needed food, but they also needed to feel like they weren't abandoned.
Talk about this idea that after a mass disaster, a huge problem, as a collective, we can feel like we need to matter.
Yes. And I think a key time for that sense of mattering is when you really do need people to step up and show you some comfort and some support. And the example of Hurricane Katrina and the events in New Orleans and the accounts that people have of feeling abandoned really stuck with me because in fact, I was at a conference not too long before that.
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Chapter 4: How can simple gestures help others feel valued?
would know that at a basic level, we need to know that we matter, especially when we've been made to feel like we don't matter.
And unfortunately, some people are really needing a lot to know that they matter because they've got such a life of being marginalized and ignored and invisible that even when somebody's initially reaching out, they might say, well, you know, that's just more of the same, not realizing that somebody has a sincere interest in their well-being.
Above and beyond what we need to survive in a biological sense, human beings need to feel valued and special. When we are in trouble or in pain, in particular, it's important to feel that we are not alone, that what happens to us matters to other people. When we come back, the urge to feel seen and heard and cared about, and the consequences of feeling like we are not.
You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Gordon Flett is a psychologist at York University in Canada. He studies the psychological conditions that people need in order to thrive. Gordon, early in your own life, you were fortunate enough to have many experiences of feeling like you were seen and heard and valued.
But I understand that being around your grandmother in particular made you feel like a mini celebrity. Tell me that story.
Yes, yes. Me as well as my sister Karen, who since has passed. But I was the firstborn grandchild, so that automatically comes with a specialness. And I would spend summers and various days down at my grandparents' place, which was not too far from where we lived.
And we would go down on weekdays to visit both grandmothers at the cafeteria up the road, which was run by my one grandmother, the one who lived there.
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Chapter 5: What are the psychological needs associated with mattering?
And my other grandmother as well. So when my sister and I would go, it was literally like, where's the red carpet? It was the only thing that was missing. Here they come. And on top of all the attention, which is critical to the sense of mattering, is people showing an interest in you, lighting up when you come in, a sense of attention to you, getting their full attention.
On top of that, we could order anything we wanted because it was my grandmother's cafeteria. So for me, that was usually macaroni and cheese and chocolate milk and And, you know, but that's not why we wanted to go there the most. It was just that incredible.
And, you know, all the people that worked for my grandmother as well, including my other grandmother, you know, it was really like, as you said, being like a celebrity. And so when I came into this field, I started to think, well, you know, I've been fortunate. And it took me a very long time to realize other kids weren't so fortunate, but we were.
So when you went to this cafeteria guard, it wasn't just your grandmothers who were rolling out the red carpet. It sounds like it was everyone who was there.
Yeah, yeah. There was a staff of about six or seven people, but also people who worked there were getting their lunch. And Mike came out and said, oh, we told everybody you were coming. And it's like, you know, and, you know, ideally you have at least one person like that.
You know, Uri Bronfenbrenner, the famous social scientist who was involved for many years trying to make things better in the U.S. and elsewhere, he said every kid needs at least one special person who makes that kid feel good. like they can do no wrong essentially as their champion. I think we also need that as adults too.
We need somebody in our life who sees something special in us and who really believes in us in a way that maybe other people have overlooked.
So many years after those memorable experiences at that cafeteria, you were sitting in a library reading a textbook as part of your graduate studies in psychology, and you came across this term that was new to you. What was this term? Give me the context, Gord.
Sure. Well, we're talking about the term mattering. And I'm reading this chapter in this book by Morris Rosenberg, who originated the term and the focus on mattering. And in about five pages of an overall chapter, he said this might be the most important element of the self-concept, particularly for people of certain ages, adolescents in particular, with all the identity issues and the need for
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Chapter 6: What practical steps can we take to cultivate a sense of mattering?
You perceive me now as being standoffish. And now I have even more evidence that I don't matter to you.
Yeah, and it can go on to the point where somebody can feel so isolated and alone. This is a big thing about that mindset and that interaction pattern is that there are some people who then say, I don't matter to anyone. And, you know, in fact, they do, but this is what they've convinced themselves of.
So that's why it's critical that one caring person at least shows them that they do matter so they at least don't go into the I don't matter to anyone mode and can start to look at things in a more differentiated way.
What's the relationship between not mattering and depression and substance abuse?
Yes, there is extensive research on the depression side and a little bit of research so far in terms of substance abuse. We just published a new meta-analysis showing that anti-mattering across about 20 studies or so is strongly associated with depression, even more so than the positive feeling of mattering being linked with less depression. There are a few studies now linking
not mattering with addictive tendencies, including social media addiction. And there I would look at it as these are people who have likely internalized the feeling of not mattering so that they've got into the sort of the what the hell, I'll do whatever I want because I don't have much happening and I don't see a positive future. So I'll do whatever that is and not worry about the consequences.
So the most extensive research so far has been focused on two themes, the link between the feeling of not mattering and depression, and the link between the feeling of not mattering and loneliness.
Every time I read the statistics on suicide, Gord, I'm really taken aback. Some 50,000 people die by suicide in the United States every year. I'm sure the number is high in Canada as well. And of course, worldwide, I think the statistics suggest that more than 700,000 people a year kill themselves.
Is there a connection between a feeling of not mattering and extreme actions like attempting or contemplating suicide?
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Chapter 7: How does nature contribute to healing and mental well-being?
I can also imagine then if people are measuring themselves up to these impossible yardsticks, that a lot of what they're doing then is comparing themselves to other people.
Yes, there's an incredible amount of comparison that goes on, and it's really destructive. There's no way to win the comparison game, especially now when people are putting crafted images of perfect lives online that are not actually real.
But I do remember in terms of social comparison, the best example I can give of somebody who was a perfectionist who compared too much was the late, great Brian Wilson, who just recently passed away, who suffered from extreme mental health problems that became well-known to everyone today. And he was comparing himself to the Beatles and driving himself to the point of right over the edge.
And at one point he said that he couldn't keep up with the Beatles. The Beach Boys, of course, were remarkable in their own right, but he needed to try and keep up with the Beatles in the heydays of Beatlemania. Yet this is Brian Wilson who becomes famous and has entertained people around the world and will continue to even as his legacy. But he was torturing himself through these comparisons and
You know, the lesson to people listening will be there's no way to win the comparison game, even if you're somebody as famous as Brian Wilson, because you can always find a way.
Yeah, I mean, there's always going to be someone who has done something more than you, better than you, faster than you, is richer than you. You know, how do you get out of that?
Yeah, I've heard Olympic champions talk about how they're frustrated because if they'd only not made a mistake, including some of our own Canadian champions, nobody would have beat that record for a longer time. Yet, you know, you did it. You won the gold medal.
Donovan Bailey talked about the mistake he made coming out of the blocks as he set the world record and won the gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics. And later he's thinking about the mistake that he made because he could have gone faster and then his record would have been protected longer.
Talk about how this feeling of anti-mattering is related to how we can become trapped in these cycles of rumination. In some ways, you're hinting at this already. Someone has accomplished something extraordinary. You know, winning a gold medal at the Olympics, breaking a world record is caught up in their own heads with what they haven't done instead of what they have done.
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Chapter 8: What extreme actions can result from feeling invisible?
So it might be easy for him to think himself a failure. And he would be wrong, because I think he's achieved a success far beyond riches and fame. Look around you. There is not a life in this room that you have not touched. And each one of us is a better person because of you. We are your symphony, Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your opus. And we are the music of your life.
What do you hear in that clip, Gord? What's going on? Mattering is so subjective where people can very easily lose sight of having an impact on others that they don't realize. This is quite common with teachers where they don't realize, they get frustrated, maybe focused on the one student who doesn't seem to be getting it rather than all the ones who are getting it.
and a key thing is that mattering is subjective that it's our appraisals of how we think you know do we matter to others are others holding us in esteem that's why it's very important to show somebody they matter in a way so it's not subjective and in the clip of course the famous clip of that student is the governor who's come back now to be part of the band to play
Mr. Holland's opus that he never got to have. And, you know, I said, how wonderful it would be for everybody who's facing a job transition, whether it's retirement or whatever, to have people come and just express their appreciation and just tell a very quick story. So I mentioned this at a conference just back in the fall of last year.
And in the question period, a teacher put up her hand, an educator, and she said, this notion of not being able to see what effect you've had on others. She goes, I was recently contacted by a parole officer of a former student who said that the student provided her name as somebody to contact to essentially a character reference.
And she said, I remember the student as being someone who I thought I just didn't get through to. But when asked, he said that he's giving her name because she is the only one who saw him for what he was, who really gave him a sense of being valued and cared about. Yet she, until that point, had not realized that she actually had that kind of an impact on the young man.
So we're often not a good judge of how much impact we have of others, which makes me That sense of not mattering or not sure if you're mattering, very insidious and potentially destructive. And I've seen cases where I say, you know, it's too bad the person never realized how much regard others had for him or her or they.
One of the things that has come up in this conversation that I think is worth flagging here is that, you know, mattering might be more a matter of quality rather than quantity. And what I mean by that is you don't need necessarily, you know, 5 billion people to think that you're great. for you to have your psychological needs met. You might need one person. You might need two people.
And this speaks to the story you just told me. This guy is in trouble. He's basically speaking to a parole officer, and he's referring the parole officer to someone who was in his very distant past because that's the person his mind gravitates toward.
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