Alignment With Jenn - (52) THE FEAR OF BEING SEEN IS COSTING YOU YOUR DREAMS✨STOP HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

🙌 Want to explore coaching with Jenn? DM the word "PODCAST" on Instagram → @alignmentwithjennYou want more — more income, more impact, more of the life you can feel is yours — but every time it's time to be seen, something in you pulls back, waters you down, or finds a reason to wait. That isn't a discipline problem. It's a survival response.In this episode, Jenn breaks down the fear of being seen at every level it actually lives: the brain that registers judgment as physical danger, the nervous system that freezes you into procrastination and blank-page paralysis, the subconscious rules you wrote as a child, and the "energetic invisibility cloak" that quietly keeps your people from finding you. Then she gives you the exact 3-step method to rewire it — so visibility stops feeling like a threat and starts feeling like your purpose.You'll learn:Why your brain processes being judged as literal, physical pain — and why that means your fear is neurologically real, not dramaticThe real cost of playing small: the unlived life, capped income, the people and rooms you never meet, and the biological toll of hidingHow the freeze response (not laziness) is behind your procrastination, creative block, and "never enough time"The 3-step method to rewire it at the root: reprogram the subconscious, regulate the nervous system, and reinforce with aligned visible action✨ WORK WITH ME: Ready to effortlessly live your dream life? Message me the word "PODCAST" on Instagram to learn more about my deep-dive coaching program, The Infinite Experience.💰 NEW: 7-Day Money Block Detox: "Everything I Touch Turns to Gold" rewires your subconscious mind and nervous system so abundance flows naturally → https://jenn-ditzhazy.mykajabi.com/offers/PE995nM2/checkout

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Alignment with Jen podcast. I am your host, Jen D'SAzy. And today we are going to be talking about one of my absolute favorite topics, which is the fear of being seen, the fear of visibility. This is something that comes up for almost every single business owner or purpose-led human being that I work with, whether it's an author, an actress, a screenwriter, anything like that. The thing about the fear of being seen is that it is such a challenging fear because it's a literally is a fear that prevents you from doing the things that your soul came here to do. So I believe that every single person came here with a specific purpose. And that purpose can be anything. It can be being a mother. It can be being an actress. It can be being a writer. It can be having your own business.

But we all have a specific purpose. And what I've seen in my work with thousands of women is that there becomes a point in a person's life where the old no longer works. maybe it's a nine to five, that's what it was for me. And it just doesn't feel like it is working anymore. And then this desire for something greater begins to awaken. And this can happen at any age, any stage of life. But it's almost like you can't unsee the fact that there's something more that your soul came here to do. I always imagine it of like your soul is like knocking at the door and it's your decision whether or not you open that door. And sadly, I think the majority of people

do not open the door. They do not listen to this call because of the fear of being seen, the fear of judgment of what people are going to think if I start to put my work into the world. Because it's incredibly vulnerable to put something from your heart, something from your soul into the world and face the judgment, face the criticism that could happen from that. And so my goal with this episode is to help you begin to overcome that fear so you can put out into the world the beautiful work that your soul came here to create. I came up with this idea a few years ago, and I love it. It's this idea of the energetic invisibility cloak. So you know in Harry Potter when he puts on his invisibility cloak and you can't see him and he's able to navigate the castle

and all sorts of things and get into so much mischief because no one can see him. The same thing happens when you fear being seen, except for it's not as mischievous. You have this energetic invisibility cloak, meaning that when you fear on a nervous system level, on a subconscious level, that people are going to judge you or something bad is going to happen if you are seen, if you are more visible, then it creates almost like this invisibility cloak over you, this energetic invisibility cloak that makes it hard for your content to be seen, for your writing to be seen, for people to recognize you and notice you and see your gifts. And what I have seen is as you do this work, which I'll share with you in this episode,

you are able to clear that. And it's almost like magic that you will begin to receive more opportunities, more exposure, because suddenly you're more open. You are a more open, a more magnetic channel to share the work that you came here to share. When we have these fears, it's like we're a clogged channel. And our light, our magnetism, our creative ideas cannot flow as easily. So what we want to do is we want to remove that energetic invisibility cloak and be seen, be able to share our gifts with the world.

Because the truth is that there is a cost to not sharing your gifts. There is a cost to not living your purpose. Not just on a soul level that your soul, hello, doesn't get to fulfill the work that it really came here to do. I mean, that's kind of a big deal, right? But it's also this idea, and I've mentioned this in many episodes, of the idea of the unlived life. This is something that Carl Young, the psychologist, talked about tons and tons and tons throughout his work. And it's this idea that we live, an unlived life is a life that is lived almost like where the thermostat isn't fully turned up. The volume isn't fully turned up.

You're in a shadow calling. You're in a career or a work or a path that doesn't feel quite right to you. You know exactly when I say those words, you know if that's true for you or not, even if you don't want to admit it. And it's living your life as this smaller version of yourself. It's your desires not being fully expressed. It's your fears not being fully overcome. And it creates this shrunken sort of life. A couple episodes ago, I did a conversation around the regrets of the dying. And one of the regrets of the dying is that they didn't have the courage to go after their real dreams. And that was one of the massive regrets that people had on their deathbed. And that's something that happens if you allow these fears to prevent you. And these fears can show up in tons of ways. And I'll share a little

bit more about that. So there's this unlived life, right, that can happen. So it's not fully tapping into your purpose. But I believe that that has financial repercussions. It also has health repercussions. It also has repercussions on your relationships. I'm so passionate about this topic because I think our entire world would be better if everyone had the courage to step into their true purpose. And think of financially, right? I believe that money flocks to people in their purpose. Money is obsessed with people in their purpose. Oh my gosh, my best friend, her little sister is so cool, and she opened up a restaurant. Her and her partner have been chefs for a long time. She opened up a restaurant in San Francisco, which is a pretty risky endeavor. And it is something that I think is

not necessarily a traditional path. Since she's opened this restaurant, she's had a series of these incredible synchronicities that have happened for her. Like right now, she is potentially going to get a really incredible award for this restaurant. She has other things. I can't even share the full extent of what's happening for her. She's received money in unexpected ways for following her purpose, right? She's been able to fund this and grow this in a way. And I believe it's because there's this magnetism that happens when a person is so passionate about something, when a person is so driven by something that money is attracted to that. People want to be around that and people pay for things that they want to be around, right? And that same thing can happen for you as you begin to take these

risks step into your purpose. There's also the loss of opportunities and connections and people that you won't meet because I believe being in your purpose is the most aligned place that you can be. It's literally a part of what your soul came here to do. And so when you are in, in that place, people are attracted to you that are here for your highest path. And so when you're not in that place, right, when you're in your shadow calling like me when I was in my nine to five, I didn't attract as amazing of relationships. I didn't attract as really amazing of opportunities because I was living as a fraction of myself. And the more that I've stepped into my purpose, the more that I feel like I'm a magnet easily for the things that are meant to come to me.

And then I also do believe that when we are living out of alignment, it's detrimental for our physical health as well. And I've shared on the podcast about this before about I used to have really bad exima. I had really bad skin on my face. I had all sorts of gut issues. And I think there was a few things that healed that. But one of the biggest ones was stepping out of things that weren't aligned for me, right? A career that wasn't aligned for me that was stressful and difficult into a path that was far more aligned for me. It didn't happen overnight, but it created this massive change. And now I feel healthier in my mid-30s than I ever did in my 20s on really every single level. And so when you live out of alignment, there's this subconscious piece where energy is being diverted to things that don't

quite feel right. And that's kind of the best that I think I can say it, but I imagine you probably know what I mean. Let's talk about this fear of being seen. So some people call it the fear of visibility, the fear of exposure, the fear of rejection is kind of interwoven into there. But it's basically this idea of, and it can be on a small scale and it can be on a large scale. A small scale could be, I'm so afraid of sharing my writing with my family because what will they think of it? A large scale could be someone who wants to be an actress or a writer or have a big social media following or have a big podcast. Those things require you to put yourself out there. I put myself out there every week with this podcast. Sometimes I get negative comments. I'd say 99% of

them are really good, you know, but there's that discomfort that people have. And sometimes that 1% of negative feedback is enough to hold people back because they think it's going to be more than it is. What the fear of being seen is, in my opinion, and after many conversations on this with many clients, it's really a stack of different fears that kind of all weave together. One is the fear of judgment. Hello, what are people going to think of me? And that is actually a really primal fear that we have because back in the day, right, hundreds of years ago, if we were rejected from the tribe, it was very unsafe. It was very difficult for us to survive on our own. Nowadays, that's not actually the case. You literally could probably never leave your house and Uber eats, build your business online,

and you'd be chilling, you'd be good. And I imagine there's probably people that do that. So we don't need social connection as much to survive, right? I believe we need it to thrive for health, right? There's all these studies on how loneliness is really unhealthy for us. We associate that primal fear of rejection. And what research has actually shown is that when we are rejected, we feel it in the same way. It activates the same pain receptors as when we are physically harmed. That's how painful rejection is for us. And so when we fear rejection, from putting our work out there into the world, then we will resist it, right?

I like to give this example, and if you can watch the video on this part, if you're on Spotify or YouTube, you can see the video. I think of your desires, your soul desires, as this force that's like going in one direction. You can imagine it as like a rocket ship. Then I think of your fears as this counter force.

And it's almost as if I like took my hand and I stopped that rocket ship from moving. If your fears are stronger than your desires, guess who's going to win? Your fears are going to win. And this is why so many people stay in that weird, nebulous middle ground of never really making real progress on their dreams and their goals because of these fears that come up. And a big old category is what we're talking about today. There's a fear of rejection. There's the imposter syndrome of, I don't feel like I know enough. What are people going to think of me? What if they tell me I'm wrong? What if I don't do it right?

All of these sub-fears within there. And then there's the perfectionism, which all honestly, every single one of these we could do a whole episode on. But perfectionism, I think, is personally the bane of my existence because I deal with it with so many of my clients. And it's stopped so many people from doing things. And it's such a brilliant excuse, right? Oh, I just have such high standards for myself that I don't, you know, I don't want to release anything that isn't exceptional. I'm sorry, but that's fear that you're hiding behind because nothing's ever going to be perfect. Nothing's ever going to be exceptional. And there's this principle in, it's more in like the tech space, but it's this idea of the minimum viable product. And it's that when they release an app or a new

product, they will release the minimum viable product. Why do they do that? Because they can get feedback. They don't wait until it's perfect. I heard oftentimes in the entrepreneurship classes that I took, if you release a product when it's like fully, fully done, you've already missed it. You've already missed the potential for that product. And that the same is true for your work. You don't want to be in this place where you're like, it has to be perfect because it's very unlikely you're ever going to release it. And that perfectionism is what's really holding you back. Another big part of this fear of being seen is past experiences. And those can be your personal experiences, right? Like I remember one time, I used to struggle to learn to read. And so whenever the teacher would call on me, I was like

in third grade and I was still really struggling to learn to read. So I would say, stutter and I would make mistakes and all sorts of things like that. And the teacher would call on me and I would get so nervous. And that fear was something I had to overcome those memories because I was so afraid of that judgment from those experiences. So it can be your past experiences, but it can also be we have mirror neurons, right? When we see something happening with somebody else, we apply it to ourselves. Our subconscious mind basically is exceptionally self-centered and it thinks everything that you are experiencing is about you. And so if you say, see someone in the media, right, who is being super harshly judged, especially in an area where

you're interested in being, or you see somebody that is just getting like dragged through the ringer. This was really popular, I think, in the media in the early 2000s, like I think of like Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie and all of these women who were very young women and they were treated horribly by the media. Those experiences can affect you because you don't want that to happen. And you may never consciously realize it, but you're taking that in and it's informing your subconscious blueprint on how comfortable do I feel putting myself out there. How safe does it feel? And then if it doesn't feel safe, we put on that invisibility cloak. So I want to talk a little bit about the brain and the science behind what happens with this fear of being seen. So one big piece of it is what I

mentioned before, that social pain is processed the same as physical pain. We will do a lot to avoid physical pain and we will do probably even more to avoid social pain because it's so difficult. And when we want to put our work out there in the world, typically social pain is the pain that we're going to often experience. So the other thing I want to mention is this idea of the spotlight effect. And this is a well researched psychological concept. And it's this idea that we wildly overestimate how much people are thinking about us and the negative nature of what they're thinking about us. So we think, oh my gosh, they're thinking, I stink. They're thinking I'm awful. They're thinking all of these things that are bad about me. When in reality, A, they're not really

even thinking about you. They're so busy thinking about themselves. Think about the percentage of the day that you think about yourself versus other people. I would imagine it's probably mostly about you. Same with everybody else. Second, we overestimate how negative it's going to be. When I started posting on Instagram, which if you want to see like a journey, you can scroll to the video on my Instagram account and see my old videos because like I've grown a lot. I sell a lot of growth, but I've grown a lot. And I was so scared that people would leave mean comments on my post. And even to this day, which it's been three years that I've been posting content for this business, I still really haven't gotten any comments that I was like, oh my God,

that was so terrible and painful. Like most of them I'm just like, this is kind of funny. this person seems like they have stuff to work through, right? It's not about me. It doesn't stick to me. And so it's extremely rare, but yet that stops so many people from doing it. The other thing I want to mention is that we can rewire this. We can change this perception because think about it. There's people out there who don't have this fear. Lady Gaga, right? She's chilling on stage with people. She's chilling with all of that media attention. Same with like Taylor Swift. She's okay with it, right? They're thriving in that space. So there's examples of people thriving with that exposure and you can do that too. And that's what we're going to talk about now.

Before I get into that, I actually want to mention one other piece and I want to mention how this works within the nervous system because a lot of our fear of being seen is very based in our subconscious, which I'll talk about in our nervous system, which if you've heard me talk about this, they're really one and the same. You have different responses of your nervous system. There's fight, flight, or freeze or fawn that happen when we are in fear. And then ideally, we're not in that sympathetic state. We're in the parasympathetic state, which is our creative space. It's when we feel like socializing. It's when we feel creative,

when we feel like ideas are flowing. It's when we're relaxed. That's when we receive our ideas, right? I call it the receivership mode. What happens is when we have these underlying fears, it's hard for us to not be in that fight or flight space or that freeze space because we fear what other people are going to think. And oftentimes what I've seen with my clients is that most of time the fear of being seen shows up with the freeze response. So I want to talk about how this might show up so you can identify how it might be at play for you. One way is through what I call like being blank in the brain. And it's this idea that you may sit down to write or you may sit down to create something, some piece of work or build a part of your business and you just feel like you have no

ideas. Like you're staring at a blank page and you're like, I don't even know where to start when in reality you probably actually do. You probably could. do one or two or three or even 10 steps. But we get into that space where we think we don't know what to do or we procrastinate it. We sit down and we're like, okay, well, I just should probably move the laundry first. And then maybe I should like make some tea because that's going to make this more enjoyable. And then, you know, I should probably like pet my dog because he looks so cute. Right. This is me personally doing this. Understanding that that is one way, it's avoiding of a fear. That's what the freeze response is. It's an avoidance mechanism because there's something underlying

that you may not be consciously aware of. Never having enough time for your goals. When people tell me, you know, I think I'll ask people like, what do you think is the biggest thing that needs to change for you to reach X goal? And people will be like, oh, you know, I just need more time, honestly. It's never time. It is a lack of resourcefulness. It is a fear underneath the surface.

Time, we all have time for what we want. We all have equal amounts of time, right? You have the same amount of time in the day. as Elon Musk. Elon Musk has been able to create all sorts of things, right? He's now a trillionaire with the same amount of time. So he's just using his time differently. He's just infinitely resourceful. Tony always says it's not about a lack of resources. It's about a lack of resourcefulness. Time is never the issue. But if you're saying you don't have time, it's because you're subconsciously fearing it and probably prioritizing other things above what you really want. Look at your calendar.

and say, is this reflecting the life I want to create how I'm spending my time? If not, you know where to start. So feeling creatively blocked. Something I highly recommend for anyone who is pursuing anything that I'm talking about in this episode is the book, The Artist's Way. It's an amazing way to tap into your creativity, tap into your intuition, tap into those deeper aspects of yourself, and feel like you're able to channel more wisdom. You're able to channel more clarity. Another way this can show up is I need one more certification or I need one more course or I need one more coach before I can start. The thing is, you can do all of those things while simultaneously starting. It's not an either or situation. And so I encourage you to really get honest with yourself. A lot of this is about just being honest.

do I actually need this course first? I spent so many years like getting all these nutrition certifications before I started my nutrition health coaching business, which then like completely flopped because I didn't have the right mindset. I had all these certifications. It didn't matter that I had more certifications. I didn't have the right mindset. And so noticing how are you procrastinating? My work isn't quite good enough yet, right? I talked about this earlier. this perfectionism. Oh, I'm just going to edit it one more time before I release it. Somebody told me recently, she was like, yeah, I'll create all this content and then I'll save it and be ready to post it. But then when I go to post it, I see it's not perfect and it could be a lot better,

so I just don't post it. So she's literally making the content and just not posting it. That is not using your time effectively, you know, and so noticing these underlying fears and as we rewire these underlying fears that we don't even oftentimes know are happening. We just know the symptom of what we're experiencing. Everything will change. That invisibility cloak will come off. I've done this many times, this work on the fear of being seen because I think every new level, it requires a new expansion of this ability to be seen. Every time I've had a big jump in my social media, it's because of this. I have a friend and she was telling me how she used to get like heart palpitations when her reels would start to do well, like get 50,000 views or something like that.

She's like, I'd be so scared I wouldn't want to post for days after that. So I had her do some of my rewiring sessions, and she has been able to grow. She was at 3,000 now. She's at 15,000 followers because she doesn't have that energetic invisibility cloak. That's a symptom of that energetic invisibility cloak of, I don't really want you to see me. I don't really want the negative feedback. So like, I'm going to kind of stay back here. You show up as a watered down version of yourself.

you may endlessly plan or you may never stick to a plan. You may be jumping from here to here to here to here. That's avoidance, right? You have to get very honest with yourself. And then feeling you can't say what you really want to say. And I think one of the biggest reasons that this is frightening, this fear is because it's very vulnerable and vulnerability is uncomfortable. Right. But if you've ever followed any of Bray Brown's work, she talks about how you can't have a wholehearted, complete life. if you aren't willing to be vulnerable. And I have this quote here that I want to share with you. Rather than sitting on the sidelines and hurling judgment and advice, we must dare to show up and let ourselves be seen.

This is vulnerability. And I love that. I think that's so powerful. It's true. It's vulnerable. I think there's nothing more exciting than somebody going after their dreams. Whether they succeed or fail, I am impressed by that person because I know what it takes and I know how much you have to really own it and trust yourself to do that.

So let's talk about how do we actually overcome this fear. And I'm going to give you kind of like the three pieces to this puzzle. So the first one, if you've listened to my podcast, you're not going to be shocked by this, is rewiring this at the subconscious level because these fears operate below our awareness. They are the fears that are creating the actions. They're creating the procrastination. They're creating the not post-reasing. They're creating the not having any ideas about what to write about.

And so when you clear those fears and you make it safe, it's like you remove this resistance that has been living in your mind. And so that's the first step that we want to do. When I do this with my clients, I use a variety of different tools. So I know when I say rewire the subconscious, people don't always know what that means, right? They think, is it affirmations? Is it scripting? Is it visualization?

I believe that those are the last step of the rewiring process. Same with subliminals. Same with anything you're really going to get on YouTube. Same with those pieces. I believe that first we have to identify how it's showing up, right? The symptom in your reality, any memories associated with it, because those are the root. Then we need to neutralize that fear, that emotional charge within the mind. Because if something doesn't have an emotion attached to it, it's meaningless.

If I say purple cow, you're probably not feeling anything unless you have like history of trauma with a purple cow because it doesn't mean anything to you. So we want to make sure that we are neutralizing that emotion so it doesn't matter. I do that with my clients through a variety of different tools. I use about 10 different tools. So it could be hypnosis, RRT, EFT, NLP. I use energy healing, all these pieces because what I find is each tool is excellent at a different angle. all access the mine in different ways. So I find when we use more of them, it gets a better result. And my clients can drop these fears much more quickly than it would take with one method over many months.

That's kind of a nuts and bolts of how you would go about this rewiring process, how I've found it to be the most effective. And if you want support with that, you can message me the word podcast on Instagram. My Instagram is at alignment with Jen. or you can email it to me. I'll put my email in the show notes of this and I will share a five minute video about my program and you can see if that's right for you. So that's the first piece. The second piece of this and this is associated with the first right. This will be a natural byproduct of rewiring your mind. It is also creating safety around being seen. And we do that through breathing, right, calming our nervous system, allowing ourselves to do it in small ways that feel safe. I don't really

believe in like overwhelming your nervous system and being like, okay, you know, I'm suddenly going to just like go speak in front of a thousand people, even though I'm terrified of being seen. And this was going to give me a panic attack beforehand. Personally, I think that can work for some people. I think it's nice if we do it in a softer way, right? A more feminine approach. And that can be through small exposures to these things that you're afraid of. And this is kind of part of the third piece of it. It's creating that evidence for your mind that it's safe to be seen. Our mind is learning always through evidence, evidence of what's going on in our reality. When we are able to create new evidence, be seen, right? Post a reel. And maybe you do some breathing exercises. Maybe you do a little bit of

tapping to calm your nervous system while you're posting it to feel a little bit safer and just kind of practice a little bit of exposure and you'll do it and you'll check it and you'll be like, okay, that's a little cringe maybe, but I didn't die. I'm good and the mind starts to see, right? Evidence is a very important part of the rewiring process. We want to clear the fear and the emotion at the root and then create evidence and aligned behaviors. The more that you can align your behaviors with that woman who's comfortable being seen, the more that you are going to be able to really truly create these changes. And you will notice, that over time you just are really comfortable with it. You feel comfortable sharing yourself.

You feel comfortable being yourself. And I really think at the root, the reason I love working with people and the fear of being seen is it's really a fear of being your authentic self. If we were to really summarize it, it's a fear of if I am my authentic self, my most expressed self, somebody might reject me. And when we can overcome that fear, every area of your life changes, your income changes, your relationships change, right? We're able to actually voice our needs to our partner. We're able to really show up for ourselves fully with our friendships, our business changes, our purpose changes, how we show up for our children changes. All of these pieces change. So those are the big, big kind of categories of that. Again, send me that word podcast on Instagram if you

want help going through this process. But I hope that this was super helpful for you. And I will see you. in the next episode.