Do you ever stop feeling like you don’t belong?
Feeling like you don’t belong can unleash a chain reaction of emotions.
You might feel isolated and lonely. Stuck and stymied. You may also have a sense of being an outsider, which can intensify feelings of anxiety, sadness, shame, and depression. Clearly, feeling like you don’t belong pulls you down and makes life feel heavy and burdensome.
You have a lot of company if you feel this lack or loss of belonging.
That said, you probably don’t experience much camaraderie when you’re in the midst of it. For most of my clients, particularly those approaching or in their midlife years, it’s an alienating experience to feel like you don’t belong. Most of us actually need a deeper sense of belonging, because we’re already going through a lot in midlife.
For instance, you may be experiencing…
- a shifting sense of identity
- changing family needs and roles
- societal constructs about gender
- physical and hormonal changes
- uncertainty about life choices
- gender-based ageism
Unfortunately belonging might feel closed off when you most need it. You don’t feel heard or seen. In fact, no matter what age you are, few people want to openly share about this experience.
However, belonging is a basic human need and many women yearn for a greater sense of it. But even though other women can relate to what you’re going through, you may not hear them say much about it.
Sharing the tender truth of feeling like you don’t belong can feel risky and embarrassing.
The shame that comes with being an outsider, mixed with the social constructs that tend to make the “in group” view the “out group” with doubt, make it difficult to trust that we can safely share this.
If that’s true for you, you might not talk much about it, fearing you’ll be judged or misunderstood.
The yearning for a sense of belonging may seem like a lonely ache in our hearts.
But sometimes, we can break through.
I remember a long ago evening when a brave woman spoke her ache aloud in my very first women’s circle.
“I’m so lonely,” she said. “I feel like I don’t belong anywhere.”
Gathered together amidst the melting candles and scribblings in our journals, her words illuminated the loneliness and longing we all had felt at times.
As we joined this brave woman in her loneliness, we entered the shelter of belonging.
It’s been many years since that night. Still, the memory is vivid.
Not long after, I discovered John O’Donahue’s wise words about the tension between longing and belonging…
There is a constant and vital tension between longing and belonging. Without the shelter of belonging, our longings would lack direction, focus, and context…[and] belonging without longing would be empty and dead, a cold frame around emptiness…The arduous task of being a human is to balance longing and belonging so that they work with and against each other to ensure that all the potential and gifts that sleep in the clay of the heart may be awakened and realized.
His declaration that our hearts continually hold longing and belonging that is waiting to be awakened is hopeful. He goes on to say…
The restlessness in the human heart will never be finally stilled by any person, project, or place. The longing is eternal. This is what constantly qualifies and enlarges our circles of belonging.
It appears that longing and belonging are actually complementary forces.
On the surface they may look like opposites, but when you put them together the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
And like the brave woman I wrote about earlier, when we give voice to our longing to belong, when we speak our lonely ache out loud, we have opened a door to the shelter of belonging.
At this point it would be irresponsible not to share all the helpful, action-oriented advice about feeling like you don’t belong:
- Cultivate self-belief: Remember that you are enough just as you are–you are whole and complete right now
- Give it time: Try new things and consistently show up even if you’re not quite feeling that sense of belonging
- Be you: Take off your masks and show up as the real you
- Experiment: Explore opportunities for belonging even if you’re not sure about them
- Take a risk: Go out of your comfort zone and try something that feels slightly radical
- Give back: Volunteer for a cause you believe in
- Seek companionship: Adopt a companion animal if you’re able to
Absolutely, experiment with all these things.
But also know that many women tell me they tried but it didn’t quite work out the way they hoped. They still felt like an outsider, still felt the aloneness. The root feeling of not belonging didn’t shift much.
You may find that your root feelings of belonging are cultivated through deeper, more personal experiences.
Over the years I’ve grown to understand that a deeper sense of belonging is often part of a larger journey to:
- Belong to yourself
- Belong to something greater than yourself
- Follow your longings and invite each other in
Belonging to Yourself.
Do you have a sense of how you belong to yourself?
You might recognize it in the moments when you stop and savor something that just feels intrinsic to you. It also can be found in your experiences of cultivating and trusting your inner wisdom instead of looking outside of yourself.
In difficult times, belonging to yourself might mean saying, “I’m doing the best I can.”
It’s almost always related to pulling back from over-giving and over-responsibility.
It’s when you’re breathing deep and saying “this is me.”
Belonging to Something Greater Than Yourself.
Is there something you feel deeply attached to that might be hard to put words to?
It may be something that feels transcendent, perhaps a spiritual calling or the creative muse. It may be a reverence for the natural world. It’s probably related to your most deeply held values, what gives meaning to your life and existence.
Essentially, it is something you value so deeply that it enhances your life in ways that might be difficult to describe.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls this the door to the world of your wild self, but you can really name it anything…
The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.
Inviting Each Other In.
When we follow our longings and invite others in, we heal.
Whatever your longings–space for traveling and wandering, emotional expression, creative experiments, gardening–invite others into it.
Be willing to risk. Invite each other in!
Show up, gather, and be vulnerable with each other. Leave judgment at the door. Share your experiences. Value the uniqueness of every person in the room.
Be with each other.
If you point your compass toward the deeper journey, I believe that feeling like you don’t belong will shift.
I know because I’ve been there, and for sure it was a process that played out over time.
I vividly remember the first time I invited women in and had no idea what would happen. My inner voice insisted that I do it.
What helped me most was to detach from the outcome. I finally realized that I didn’t have to expect it to go well. So I went forward without knowing or needing to know. I was a little scared but it turned out so much better than I could have imagined.
And then I did it again. And again. I’m still doing it in fact. And so can you.
If you go deeper and deeper into your own heart, you’ll be living in a world with less fear, isolation and loneliness. -Sharon Salzberg
