A weekly note on the art of seeing, and being seen, from the consulting room and from life.
Reflection 01
For most of my childhood, I wanted to disappear
At four years old, white patches began to appear around my eyes and across my body. Vitiligo. I was the only one in my family it found, and I felt as though everyone was staring.
So I learned to go quiet. I did my talking on paper, where I felt safe and sharp, and let the playground get on without me.
Today, I spend my working days looking into people's eyes. And somewhere along the way I learned something I wish I could tell that boy: looking and seeing are not the same thing.
Looking is what eyes do. Seeing is what happens when someone feels noticed, understood and valued, exactly as they are.
That's what I'll be writing about here, week by week: the art of seeing, and being seen, in the consulting room and in life.
My profession is built on looking. Lights, lenses, magnification. We can examine the front of the eye in remarkable detail.
But the instruments only tell half the story. The other half is sitting in the chair: a person who may be worried, tired, embarrassed about a symptom, or simply hoping someone will take them seriously.
You can look at someone for twenty minutes and never see them. And you can see someone in a single moment: the pause before they answer, the question they almost didn't ask.
I've come to believe that seeing is a choice. It means slowing down, putting the agenda aside for a breath, and being curious about the person rather than just the problem.
It's true in clinic. It's just as true at the dinner table, in a team meeting, or in a five-minute conversation with a stranger.
This week, who might you be looking at without truly seeing?
Reflection 03
The first ten seconds
Before I've said a word, a patient has already started to decide how they feel about the next half hour.
It's in the walk from the waiting room. Whether I use their name. Whether I'm still glancing at a screen, or whether I've turned to face them.
None of this is clinical skill, and yet it shapes everything that follows: how openly someone describes their symptoms, whether they mention the thing that's really worrying them, and whether they leave feeling processed or cared for.
We often think of first impressions as something we receive. I think they're something we give. Every day, in a hundred small moments, we tell people whether they matter to us.
The good news is that it doesn't take long. Ten seconds of full attention can change the whole conversation.
How do people feel in the first ten seconds with you?
Reflection 04
Starting the day in stillness
Before the phone, before the diary, before the first patient, I try to begin with a few minutes of meditation. Eyes closed. Attention gently drawn inward.
It isn't dramatic, and some mornings my mind is anything but still. But over the years it has become the quiet foundation the rest of the day stands on.
What I notice most is how it changes the way I meet people. When I start from stillness, I'm less hurried and more present. I listen a little longer. I see a little more.
Meditation is my own practice, and it's part of a path that has shaped my life. I'll share more about it here in time. For now, the invitation is simple.
Tomorrow morning, before you reach for your phone, could you give yourself two minutes of quiet?
Reflection 05
The day I stopped performing
If you've read my story, you'll know about the vitiligo, so I won't retell it here.
But there was a turning point. I simply got tired of managing how everyone saw me. The adjusting, the covering, the careful angles. It was exhausting.
So I stopped.
Not dramatically. Not with some grand announcement. I just quietly decided: people who like me will like me. Those who don't, won't. And that's fine.
Something strange happened after that. I relaxed. And when I relaxed, people came closer. Real conversations started. Real friendships formed. Not because I'd changed anything about my skin, but because I'd stopped asking the world for permission to be myself.
In Sahaja meditation, the Vishuddhi chakra, the energy centre at the throat, is associated with self-expression and self-respect. In my own practice, I've come to see it like this: when it feels blocked, we shrink; when it opens, we stop performing and start simply being.
That's what happened to me. I stopped performing.
Being seen starts with allowing yourself to be seen. Not the polished version. The actual one.
What would change if you stopped hiding the thing you're most self-conscious about?