There’s a shift that happens in life that most of us never learn how to name.
When things are moving forward, when momentum exists, when effort feels aligned with progress, we tend to feel invincible. Not reckless. Not arrogant. Just solid. Grounded. Present. As though we exist in the world in a way that has weight.
And when things go south, the feeling isn’t simply discouragement.
It’s invisibility.
Calls slow down. Responses thin out. The world doesn’t push back against you, it just stops noticing you. And in that quiet, something unsettling happens: you begin to wonder whether you mattered at all, or whether you were only visible while you were useful.
Not All Voices Carry the Same Weight
We like to say that we don’t care what people think. But that’s rarely true. What we really mean is that we don’t care what most people think.
Because the truth is, we all assign authority, consciously or not, to certain voices. And when those voices speak, they bypass logic and go straight to the nervous system.
A compliment from a stranger is pleasant.
A compliment from a friend is affirming.
But the same words spoken by one or two specific people can stabilize us instantly, or unravel us completely.
It isn’t the compliment itself.
It’s the weight we assign to the person giving it.
That’s the contradiction no one wants to admit.
The People Who Can Build Us, or Break Us
Every life contains a small handful of people whose perception of us carries disproportionate power. They’re the ones who:
- witnessed our effort
- mattered to our sense of future
- saw us when we were hopeful
- or became emotional reference points without ever being formally appointed
When they reflect us back positively, we feel strong, capable, even invincible. When they go quiet, withdraw, reinterpret us through failure, or disappear entirely, the impact can be devastating. Not because they define our worth, but because they were trusted mirrors.
When those mirrors go dark, it feels like we do too.
Why Invisibility Hurts More Than Failure
Failure can be faced. It has edges. It has lessons. Invisibility is different. It doesn’t confront you, it erases you. It tells a quieter story:
You were only valuable when things were going well.
Your presence was conditional.
Your worth was situational.
And that story has the power to undo even the strongest internal narratives if we don’t recognize what’s happening.
The Danger of Unexamined Authority
The problem isn’t that we care about certain people. The problem is when we don’t realize how much authority we’ve handed them.
When we outsource our sense of existence to one or two voices, we give them the power to confirm or collapse us, often without a word being spoken.
That’s when invincibility and invisibility stop being circumstances and start becoming identities.
The Quiet Work of Reclaiming Weight
The solution isn’t emotional isolation. And it isn’t pretending we’re self-contained.
The work is awareness. Knowing:
- whose voices you’ve elevated
- why they matter
- and whether they deserve that level of authority over your sense of self
Not so you harden, but so no single silence can erase you.
The Truth Beneath It All
We don’t feel invincible or invisible because life is easy or hard.
We feel that way because the people whose voices matter most either reflect us back, or don’t.
And when the reflection disappears, the work isn’t to prove ourselves again.
It’s to remember that existence does not require applause to be real.
Troy P Zehnder 