Shadowing Practice: How to Talk About Feelings in English: Belonging, Trust, and Connection - Learn English Speaking with Video

Here's a topic I never really expected to hear my students talk about so much in English, even after more than 20 years of teaching belonging.

Belonging is that feeling that says, yes, this is my place.

These are my people. This is where I feel most comfortable.

It's kind of like walking into your friend's kitchen on a Sunday afternoon. You don't knock, you just go right in.

You know where the coffee mugs are?

Her kids run past you because they've seen you a hundred times and you just sit down at the table. You have a conversation and it's like you never left.

But how do you really describe that kind of feeling in English?

And what about the opposite of that?

Like when your partner takes you to dinner with his oldest friends and before going, you're a little nervous. You don't really know what to expect, but everyone's kind to you. They smile, they pour you a glass of wine.

They ask some polite questions, but then they start talking about a trip that they took together years ago. They're talking about a specific moment and memory.

They're laughing about something you know nothing about. So you smile, but you're not really part of the conversation.

How do you also talk about that feeling?

This is exactly what I want to help you do today.

I want to help you have the language you need to talk about these more complex feelings in English, specifically these feelings of belonging, trust, and connection. Now, you might be wondering, why are we talking about this here?

And I'll tell you, when my students join my Confident Women community, they often arrive looking for one thing, more English practice and a safe place to practice speaking.

But after a few weeks, they tell me that they found something they didn't expect, the place where they belong.

A group of women who feel like they're people belonging is a deep feeling.

And to experience a sense of belonging in your second language, that's powerful.

I want you to have the words to talk about feelings just like that in English.

The challenges that feelings are hard to talk about, no matter what language you might speak even in your first language.

Talking about things like belonging can be challenging.

And the same is true about the opposite feeling of being left out.

To be left out means to not feel included or to be unhappy because someone is excluding you. For example, I know I shouldn't feel this way in a new workplace. I just started this job, but I do feel a bit left out of most conversations.

As I said, these feelings of belonging and being left out are complicated.

That's exactly why having the right words matter without them, you stay on the.

Surface of every conversation. In English, you can do things like order lunch or get through a meeting, or even chat with a neighbor about the weather, but you can't really tell someone what your week actually felt like.

You can't share why a small moment with a friend meant so much to you, and you can't talk about the relationships that matter the most to you.

So for this lesson today, I wanna introduce you to the language we use to describe all of this.

And we'll start with our first category, welcoming and being welcomed by someone else.

When someone wants you to feel included, they find ways to pull you closer in English.

The phrases we use are all actions.

Someone does something to make you feel included.

And here are some of the phrases we use to describe that moment when someone chooses to include you, the first is to make room at the table.

This means to intentionally create physical space, social space, and emotional space. For example, when I joined the team, my manager really made room for me at the table.

She asked for my opinion in every meeting. Now, I want to highlight that when we use this phrase, it doesn't have to be a physical real table to be at the table could be part of a conversation or part of a project or a community. Now, the second phrase that we use here is to bring somebody in.

This means to actively include someone who is present but not yet participating. For example, I was quiet at dinner because I didn't know anybody, but Sophia kept bringing me in by asking me questions and making sure I was part of the conversation.

I wanna take a moment to notice something important about both of those phrases.

The emphasis is on the effort that another person is making to help you feel included.

That's why this kind of action isn't passive, it's intentional.

Now here's one more phrase that you're more likely to hear in a professional setting. To have a seat at the table, this means to be included in important conversations and decisions, especially at work. For example, as a junior designer, I didn't expect to have a seat at the table when the company was deciding its brand new direction, but my manager pushed for me to be included due to my experience.

Now we've got two phrases here that are very similar.

They both talk about being at a table.

So let's make sure the difference is clear.

The first one to make room at the table emphasizes the effort that someone makes to include you. It's all about the action.

And then to have a seat at the table emphasizes your position, the fact that you are present when it matters, whether it's in a meeting, a planning conversation, or a family decision.

So there are three key ways to talk about being welcomed in.

Someone makes room for you, someone brings you in and someone gives you a seat at the table.

But being welcomed in is just the beginning.

Someone could do all of those things, but you won't really feel like you belong until trust starts to build. In fact, trust is what moves you from being included to actually feeling that sense of belonging. In English, we often talk about trust with the image of a wall.

When you don't trust someone, yet you keep a wall to protect yourself.

And then when you feel safe, you start to lower that wall and let someone in closer. So with that in mind, here are some phrases we use to talk about different levels of trust.

The first is to let one's guard down.

This means to stop protecting yourself emotionally and to allow yourself to be open, honest, or vulnerable. With this particular phrase, you can think of guard as a wall that you've put up at first to protect your feelings and you're beginning to lower it. For example, I was nervous at the team dinner, but after a few minutes, I let my guard down and I actually enjoyed myself.

This particular phrase helps us describe that emotional protection that we carry when meeting somebody new and letting it down is usually a positive moment. That means you feel safe enough to relax.

The next phrase here is to let someone in.

This means to allow someone to know your true self, including your thoughts, feelings, struggles, or even personal life.

For example, it took almost a year to let my coworkers in, but once I did, I realized how much I had been missing. Now, both of these phrases describe lowering your emotional protection, but in different ways.

Letting your guard down is relaxing in a moment or in a particular environment. In contrast, letting someone in is about letting someone be closer to your authentic self. So at this point, let's say that you've been welcomed in, you've started to trust others, and others are starting to trust you.

So now you're not standing at the edge anymore.

You're part of the conversations, the group, and you're enjoying yourself.

In English, we describe this feeling using words about the location, where you stand, who you're next to, and what room you're in. With that in mind, here are three phrases that we use to describe that feeling of real connection and belonging. The first is to be on the inside.

This means to have access to information, to trust, or to relationships that other people might not have.

For example, after working there for two years, I finally felt like I was on the inside. I knew what was really going on, and people trusted me with the most important projects.

Being on the inside means you have access to things that are not shared with everyone. This could look like inside jokes, inside information, inside conversations, and so on.

The second phrase here is to be in someone's circle.

To be in someone's circle means to be part of a close group, a close group of friends, family or trusted people. For example, it took me years, but I'm finally in her circle.

She invites me to the small gatherings that she hosts, not just the big parties.

When we talk about someone's circle, we're talking about something very personal.

These are the people that they've chosen to be close to, the people they've chosen to trust, and the people inside that circle often have the most value to that particular person. And now our third one is to be at the table. Yes, we're coming back to this idea of a table.

To be at the table means to be consistently present and included in important conversations or decisions. For example, I used to be the person who heard about decisions afterward. Now, I'm always at the table when they're made. As I'm sure you've noticed, this phrase is very related to having a seat at the table.

But to be at the table emphasizes that this is ongoing.

This is an ongoing experience of being included, not just in one particular moment. Now, all three of these phrases describe belonging, but each one emphasizes something a little different.

To be on the inside means you have access.

To be in someone's circle means that you are close, and to be at the table means you are included in what matters consistently. So before we go to our next category, I want you to take a moment and think about your own life.

Is there a group or a community or a relationship where you are on the inside?

Or whose circle are you in?

How do other people make you feel like you belong? Now, if you'd love to experience that same kind of belonging in English conversations with women from all over the world, that's exactly what you'll find inside the Confident Women community.

The CWC is my English speaking practice community for women.

It's where you get the words and the confidence you need for the conversations you want in English, and it's where my students tell me again and again that they found their place. If that sounds like something you've been looking for, I'll leave a link with more details in the notes below.

And now we're going to flip everything. So far, we've talked about the language of being welcomed in, trusted, and feeling like you belong, but sometimes the experience is the total opposite.

You're on the outside or maybe you've stepped back on purpose to protect yourself.

English has just as much language for this side of the experience.

And like the phrases we've already learned, these are built on physical images like doors that close, or walls that go up and warmth that disappears.

So for this section, we're going to look at two different sides of this.

We'll start with the feeling itself of being excluded, and then we'll also talk about what causes it.

So the first phrase here is to be on the outside looking in.

This means to feel excluded from a group, a relationship, or an experience that you can see you're not a part of. For example, everyone at the office had inside jokes from before I joined the team, and for months I felt like I was on the outside looking in.

In English, we use this phrase to describe that feeling of watching from a distance. It doesn't necessarily blame anyone. Instead, it just names the situation that you're going through, the feeling that you have. Now, sometimes that distance that we feel is something that another person or another group actively creates.

So when they're doing that, you might use one of these phrases.

The first is to freeze someone out.

This means to deliberately exclude someone from a group, a conversation or a decision.

And the behavior that we associate with this is to ignore someone or withhold warmth to withhold kindness. For example, after I disagreed with her in the meeting, the whole team started to freeze me out.

No one invited me to lunch for weeks.

Now this experience of freezing someone out is not a one time moment.

It's often slow repeated.

It's cold and deliberate. Now, another phrase that we can use in these situations is to give someone the cold shoulder.

This means to totally ignore someone or treat them in a cold or unkind way, usually after some kind of disagreement or hurt feelings.

For example, my brother and I had a small argument on Friday, and he's been giving me the cold shoulder all weekend. Now, as an alternative to giving someone a cold shoulder, you might hear to give someone the silent treatment.

This also means to totally ignore someone, to not talk to them at all.

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The next expression for this experience is to gatekeep.

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This means to control who is allowed access to a community, a hobby, information or an experience.

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And it's often a way that we deliberately exclude specific people. For example, maybe at the office you've noticed that everyone keeps having meetings with your manager and something is getting decided. There's some big project happening, but you've been excluded from all of that.

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Your manager is gatekeeping information.

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She's deliberately not sharing it with you. Now, this particular word is one that I'm hearing a lot right now. And again, it means controlling access to something serious.

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It can be controlling access to a job or an industry. And now, especially online, I'm also seeing this word get used in lighter or less serious contexts, like sharing information about someone's hobbies and how they do it, or new restaurants or music. In fact, just recently I saw a post about a skincare routine, and some of the comments showed that people were frustrated because it seemed like the person who was sharing the video was doing a bit of gatekeeping.

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Okay, now that we've talked about when others deliberately exclude, we also need to talk about when we create distance ourselves.

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Sometimes you might be the one creating that distance.

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Maybe you step back because you've been hurt or because you're protecting yourself from something that you can kind of sense or feel is coming.

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So when you're describing those moments, you might use to put your walls up.

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This means to emotionally protect yourself by not letting anyone else get close to you. This is something we often do after being hurt. For example, after her last relationship ended badly, she really put her walls up.

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It took her a long time to trust anyone again.

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Now I wanna pause here for a moment because earlier in this lesson we talked about letting your guard down that moment when you lower the walls and let people in. The opposite of that expression is to put your guard up, and it means to be careful, to be alert because you're checking to see if you can really trust someone.

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And then when we add this idea of putting walls up, this is much stronger. It's much deeper, meaning that you are completely shutting others out so that you can protect yourself. Now, when you think about everything we've talked about today, do you notice that we keep coming back to the same images, tables, walls, circles and doors, warmth and cold?

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In English, we describe these feelings of belonging and exclusion.

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As two sides of the same window.

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There's the warmth on the inside and the cold of being on the outside.

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And after learning these phrases today, you're likely going to notice that they show up everywhere.

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You might hear them in a friend's story about her in-laws or in a colleague's frustration after a meeting. You might hear them in a podcast, a novel or a song. So for now, here's what I want to know.

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Which phrase from today are you already hearing in your own life?

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Tell me about it in the comments.

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And then I'd also love to hear one phrase you're going to start using.

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As always, if you found this lesson helpful to you today, don't forget to subscribe or follow wherever you're watching or listening from today. Thank you so much for joining me, and I look forward to next time.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: How to Talk About Feelings in English: Belonging, Trust, and Connection - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?