Do You Feel Invisible?
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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.
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. But I'm just here to make sure that you're okay in a mental health sense, that you're okay because it's quite a trauma you went through and some dark thoughts. So she sat with me for three hours. Wow. Two in the morning to five in the morning. Wow. And we talked about everything, life, the big picture, her brother with David Letterman's show, because that's where she got the T-shirt. And I thought, this is the essence, you know, what an ideal world it would be if medical people had the time and the resources to be able to sit there and say, I'm now giving patient care in terms of the person.
You know, I wanted to hug her at the time because I just thought, how does somebody get me that in tune with what somebody needed at just that time?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:23
2
What does it mean to feel invisible?
0:23–8:01
3
How does feeling like we don't matter affect our mental health?
8:01–12:18
4
How can simple gestures help others feel valued?
12:18–14:33
5
What are the psychological needs associated with mattering?
14:33–23:16
6
What practical steps can we take to cultivate a sense of mattering?
23:16–32:37
7
How does nature contribute to healing and mental well-being?
32:37–41:07
8
What extreme actions can result from feeling invisible?
41:07–1:27:41