Holding Your Shape in the Absence of Being Held

This piece isn’t written from a clinical position. It’s more of a reflection on a pattern I see often - in culture, in relationships, and sometimes in the consulting room. Less analysis than atmosphere.

There is a growing phenomenon quietly shaping the inner lives of women, especially those who express themselves creatively or vulnerably in public spaces. It’s not overt misogyny or objectification in its traditional form. It’s subtler, often mistaken for respect or appreciation.

It is aestheticisation - and it is everywhere. To be aestheticised is to be turned into an image. A feeling. A symbol of something meaningful, powerful, or moving - but not a person to be engaged with. Your sadness is beautiful. Your power is magnetic. Your honesty is inspiring. But the person behind it? She is not being related to. Unmet.

Social media, especially Instagram, has industrialised this process. It has taught an entire generation of women and girls to aestheticise themselves in order to be seen at all. Messiness is welcome - as long as it’s curated. Grief is allowed - if it’s softly lit. Even rage is permissible - provided it’s well-captioned and algorithmically legible. This is not connection but performance.

On platforms designed around imagery, engagement, and performance, we learn quickly that being admired is safer than being real. We share our vulnerability, but in digestible fragments. We become fluent in the language of curated intimacy - poetic captions, filtered tears, resonant truths that feel personal but are abstracted just enough to be palatable.

We are taught to observe ourselves being observed. The gaze is internalised. And we start relating to our own emotional lives as material - something to package, post, and manage. The result? A generation of women being praised for their openness but rarely met in it. Seen but not held. Witnessed but not joined.

This dynamic doesn’t stay online - it seeps into relationships. What’s engaged with is often an idea: an ideal, a curated presence, a projected light - not the full, complex reality of a person.

There may be admiration, even reverence. But when it comes to reciprocity - to grounded, mutual presence - the connection often collapses. It collapses because there’s nothing real holding it. There’s no substance beneath the gaze - no attempt to meet the person behind the image.

The contact isn't with you - it's with their idea of you. And you can’t build anything on that. You can only fall through it. We are turned into an experience. An encounter. A story.

You feel it in the nervous system - a particular kind of loneliness that comes from being only admired. It’s the ache of being both seen and erased at once. Your depths are applauded, but no one swims with you. You’re flattered, then confused. Admired, then alone. It’s the emotional equivalent of being studied instead of loved.

Clinically, this can reflect idealising transference or narcissistic detachment. But beyond psychodynamics, it speaks to a broader failure of relational capacity. Mutuality has been replaced with myth. Presence with performance. And women are left questioning whether they are real in the eyes of others. There’s a kind of erasure that happens when you’re fully present - and still not seen.

That experience can be disorienting. But it’s also a signal. A disappointing piece of information. A reminder that something in the dynamic has pulled you out of yourself. And in that moment, you can return.

The experience of having to hold your ground against repeated mis-recognition is maddening. It takes real internal clarity to stay with what you know, even when someone else insists they’re seeing you - and they’re not. If you’re lucky enough to be with someone conscious enough to recognise their own projections, there can be relief. There’s the rare, holy moment when the projector sees it too - and something real becomes possible. But if they don’t see it - and they often won’t - then what you’re left with is information. Disappointing, disorienting, and often arriving while they’re still telling you it’s all your fault. At that point, the task is not to explain or convince but to hold your shape - and walk in the other direction.