Shamil Alizada, UBC SOWK Alumni
In my Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) classes at UBC, one phrase comes up so often it starts to blur into background noise: “Make people feel seen.” It’s well-intentioned. Used casually, though, it can slide into a slogan.
The issue is not dignity or relational practice. The issue is what happens when “being seen” becomes a script that replaces accuracy, boundaries, and follow-through. At that point, social work starts rewarding performance.
A blunt question sits underneath all of this: why aren’t the basics enough? Do not hurt people. Do not humiliate them. Do not make the world harder than it already is. That’s a moral baseline most of us can agree on.
But social work is not only about avoiding harm. It is also about power in ordinary moments, especially inside institutions that can deny services, label people, or reduce a life to a file. In that context, recognition is not a luxury. It can be the difference between someone feeling like a person and feeling like a problem to be processed.
So yes, “being seen” points to something real. The problem is how easily it becomes theatre.
Why the Phrase Annoyed Me
In practice labs, group discussions, and even policy conversations, the language of validation and recognition is everywhere. Sometimes it’s taught with care and specificity. Sometimes it’s treated like a moral test: if someone does not feel seen, something ethically wrong must have happened.
That framing inflates the task. It quietly turns into: you are responsible for another person’s internal experience. Students start self-monitoring. They chase the right tone. They reach for the correct line. You can sound empathic while missing the point entirely.
It also narrows what “good” looks like. Warmth looks different across cultures, personalities, and neurotypes. Some people communicate care through softness. Others communicate care through steadiness, precision, and reliability. When one style becomes the gold standard, people learn to perform the style instead of doing the work.
A profession built on relationships should be able to tell the difference between care and presentation.
Why I Couldn’t Just Dismiss It
Even when the phrase feels overused, it points to a social fact that is hard to deny: modern systems can make people invisible.
Hospitals, ministries, universities, and housing systems are machines. They do not know you; they process you. People get translated into checkboxes. A complicated life gets flattened into a word like “non-compliant,” as if that single label explains everything. Grief becomes the “presenting concern,” then disappears into a form.
This is where the hunger to be “seen” starts to make sense, not as a demand for emotional intimacy, but as a demand not to be handled roughly.
It’s tempting to reach for an easy contrast and say community fixes what institutions break. That story is too clean. Close-knit settings can offer belonging, and they can also punish difference. Institutions can offer rights, and they can also produce anonymity. Either way, people can end up unseen. Social work sits inside that tension, not above it.
That’s why the phrase keeps returning. It names something we cannot afford to ignore: dignity under conditions of power.
Where “Being Seen” Goes Wrong
The phrase tends to slide into two mistakes.
First, recognition becomes performance. In some classroom discussions, the “best” student becomes the one who uses the gentlest language, signals the most care, and stays the most correct. Attention shifts away from the person being helped and toward the helper’s moral presentation. The work starts serving the identity of the helper.
Second, emotional sensitivity starts functioning like moral authority. Feelings matter. Trauma-informed practice teaches us to take them seriously. Sometimes “I feel hurt” is a clear signal of harm or oppression, and the ethical response is accountability.
But when “I feel hurt” automatically becomes “you did wrong,” without context, interpretation, or conversation, the culture gets brittle. People become cautious and scripted. Disagreement starts to feel dangerous. Not because disagreement is always harmful, but because it risks being read as harm.
A better framing is this: feelings are data, not verdicts. They deserve care and seriousness. They also require context. Our job is to check meaning, respond ethically, repair when needed, and stay accountable for conduct.
The Question Underneath the Slogan
When people say they want to be “seen,” what are they actually asking for?
Often, it’s not constant validation. Often, it’s protection from being handled carelessly. Not being mocked. Not being rushed. Not being reduced to a label. Not being managed with a polished tone and a quiet indifference.
In other words, the phrase reaches for something concrete, but repeated too loosely, it becomes abstract. The slogan survives, and the substance thins out.
That’s why it can feel both true and irritating at the same time.
Ending Where I Started
“Don’t kill each other” is the baseline. It’s necessary. It’s also not sufficient for a society built on anonymity and institutional power. People do not only fear death. They fear being treated as if they do not count.
Still, I’m not convinced the answer is endless sensitivity or emotional choreography. Some of the kindest people I’ve met are not especially “warm” in the classroom sense. They are careful with language, clear about limits, and reliable. They do not turn another person’s pain into a performance, and they do not disappear when the situation gets messy.
So maybe the real question is not whether we should “make people feel seen.” Maybe the question is what we mean by it, and what we train ourselves to do when we repeat it.
Are we learning practices that protect dignity under pressure, or are we learning a professional style?
Are we using “being seen” to resist how institutions flatten people, or to signal our own goodness?
And if recognition is real, what does it look like when there is no time, no energy, and no room for performance?
