I Don't Belong Anywhere

[GDPR]

I have felt different from everyone else my entire life. Like I just don't belong on this earth with other humans.Like maybe I'm a different species and ended up here by mistake.

Always on the outside looking in, never fitting in anywhere, never connecting with others. Like I am watching life, but not really a part of it.

I feel alone. Alone because there's nobody else like me in the world.

I do feel like I fit 'somewhere', but I just don't know where that is.

It's a lonely existence.

I have tried positive thinking, blah blah blah, but that feeling of not belonging anywhere has never left or even lifted just a little.

Sorry. I know this sounds pathetic.

 

[Daniel E.]

I do feel like I fit 'somewhere', but I just don't know where that is.

As you may have heard before, the goal, usually, is to start small -- easing your way out of loneliness. For example, just saying Hi to someone new. The idea is that even if a certain person or group does not "float your boat" or if (like many introverts) you feel that small talk is a waste of time, then you will have still practiced your social skills and will therefore be more comfortable the next time you socialize.

And, eventually, with enough trial and error, you will find people who you connect to in a deeper way.

Your therapist should be able to help you with the process, including helping you re-discover your interests that have a social side to them.

 

[GDPR]

The thing is, I don't really have a problem socializing, and people do seem to like me. I can talk to people just fine. I'm pretty shy, but I can fake that I'm not pretty well.

What I'm talking about is the way I feel inside. I can be with a crowd of people and still feel so alone. I can go out with people and feel like I'm on the outside looking in, even though I'm participating at the same time. I can seem/look/act like I'm having a good time, but the truth is, I feel a disconnection from the rest of the world. Like I'm just going through the motions, or putting on an act.

I feel like an imposter, like I'm here amongst humans, yet I'm not really one. Like I just don't belong.

 

[AmZ]

I feel the exact same way.

 

[Daniel E.]

These socially avoidant beliefs are just that -- beliefs and nothing more:

Thanks to a recent meta-analysis of 50 different loneliness interventions, the answer is clear. Interventions aimed at changing maladaptive thinking patterns were, on average, four times more effective than other interventions in reducing loneliness. (In fact, the other three approaches weren't particularly effective at all.)

It turns out that fundamentally, long-term loneliness isn't about being awkward, or the victim of circumstance, or lacking opportunities to meet people. Each can be the reason for relatively short-term loneliness - anyone who has ever moved to a new town or a new school and had to start building a network of friends from scratch certainly knows what it's like to be lonely. But this kind of loneliness needn't last long, and new relationships usually are formed... unless you've fallen into a way of thinking that keeps relationships from forming.

More than anything else, the cure for persistent loneliness lies in breaking the negative cycle of thinking that created it in the first place.

The Cure for Loneliness | Psychology Today

So I assume cognitive therapy and/or a mindfulness approach may be required. To be clear, cognitive therapy is not about "positive thinking." It's about increasing your cognitive flexibility. With depression and anxiety, for example, people tend to think in rather inflexible, all-or-nothing terms.

---------- Post added at 11:54 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:07 AM ----------

I can seem/look/act like I'm having a good time, but the truth is, I feel a disconnection from the rest of the world. Like I'm just going through the motions, or putting on an act.

In case boredom is a factor:

How to Instantly Transform a Boring Conversation into an Exciting One

...Lots of people go through life playing games, censoring their own feelings and being petrified about being open and honest with others. Your boredom is just your way of reminding yourself that you're not being honest with yourself or with the other person. You're pretending. You're lying. If you're willing to be honest and step out from behind your mask, your boredom will vanish...

There's actually no such thing as a boring person. There's only one cause of boring interactions, and there's one cure. Inassertiveness is the cause, and assertiveness is the cure. (pg. 441)

The Feeling Good Handbook

 

[greenstarz]

The thing is, I don't really have a problem socializing, and people do seem to like me. I can talk to people just fine. I'm pretty shy, but I can fake that I'm not pretty well.

What I'm talking about is the way I feel inside. I can be with a crowd of people and still feel so alone. I can go out with people and feel like I'm on the outside looking in, even though I'm participating at the same time. I can seem/look/act like I'm having a good time, but the truth is, I feel a disconnection from the rest of the world. Like I'm just going through the motions, or putting on an act.

I feel like an imposter, like I'm here amongst humans, yet I'm not really one. Like I just don't belong.

I feel that way many times..i don't rememeber who, maybe it was one of my therapists...but i heard that you feel that way sometimes because you don't know who you yourself are, and you're not comfortable being with yourself at all. It's like if you were more settled in being you---which I still don't know what that means for me---than you would be more comfortable being with others and connecting to them. It's like, if you can't connect to yourslelf, you can't really connect with ohters.

I may have gotten that really wrong, so anyone is free to correct me, I apologize if I don't make sense. But I too feel that way as well.

 

[GDPR]

That actually does make sense greenstarz.

I can't connect to myself. I think I have been like a chameleon my entire life, and have adapted to my surroundings and have never been my true self...and don't even know who the 'true' me is.

 

[greenstarz]

That actually does make sense greenstarz.

I can't connect to myself. I think I have been like a chameleon my entire life, and have adapted to my surroundings and have never been my true self...and don't even know who the 'true' me is.

I could have written what you just did.

For me, even thinking about "discovering who I am" is mind blowingly difficult. Where do you even start to begin to do that? I have no clue. I have tried to think of things I like to do, but I don't even truly know if I really like doing them or not, etc

THere's got to be a way to know who you are inside.

 

[H011yHawkJ311yBean]

Could be that to survive our childhoods, we had to squish or guard or hide anything that made us different or unique or 'ourselves.' So if we had to do that all our lives, that could explain why it's so tough to figure out who the heck we actually are.

I had a dream once, while going to therapy, that I was in this great big mansion-like building that was a popular spiritual retreat (or a place that attracted a lot of different spiritual groups like Buddhists, priests, etc of varying religions, even shamans and some human-like creatures that had antlers and were covered in bright crimson veils -- they were all in groups sort of organized by pavilions and tents)...

In my dream I was with my brother (coincidentally, the only sibling or person in my family who could and still relates to me because the rest of my family are still um... Not normal)... He dropped me off nearer to the entrance of this house and I was going to go in and get our "tickets" while he looked for a parking space (the parking lot was out in the country, like a big Disney Land parking lot but just sandy/gravel like a giant festival or Woodstock)...

Our "tickets" were $10 each and I had to stand in a long long line of people and collect these tiny little postage-stamp squares that were supposed to be our name tags. I was in line so long I was afraid my brother would be mad at me or come looking for me. And this house had weird weird floors that seemed organic and flexible, and hundreds of dark passage ways, and you could turn a corner and be lost again for hours, and see people that were part ghosts, or rooms that had conferences with important speakers and get distracted. I remember thinking inside my dream, "What the hell kinda place is this, anyway?" I thought the lighting and organization was ridiculous and disorienting.

Anyway, not surprisingly, I lost my tiny little identity tag and I looked all over it, and even though I attempted to retrace my steps I'd end up somewhere different from where I had been... And by the time I got back to the big long line, I was certain it would be too late to get another ticket. My brother would be fuming that I was taking this long, and might even have been in the house looking for me. I didn't even know if I would have to pay again and the ID tags were so darn small, what if I lost them again??? I think I woke up from that dream and I was still annoyed and tired and wrote down what happened.

Talk about your identity crisis... lol

My therapist thought the house was me or my mind, and I was exploring it and trying to find myself. We both laughed about the teensy little ID stamps. I seem to find my mental insides a bit hard to figure out, eh? I laugh because I mean, what the hell kind of place am I running here?

 

[GDPR]

Could be that to survive our childhoods, we had to squish or guard or hide anything that made us different or unique or 'ourselves.' So if we had to do that all our lives, that could explain why it's so tough to figure out who the heck we actually are.

I believe you're probably so right about that.

I have no clue who the real 'me' is. I was taught to be who/what others wanted/needed me to be. So much so that before I went out in public, my mom rehearsed and practiced what I could and couldn't say when talked to by people. I said all the right things and put on the best act. I think I still do that actually. It's probably why I feel so disconnected from everyone. I'm still saying all the right things and putting on an act and not being myself.

Cool dream, BTW.

---------- Post added July 3rd, 2011 at 05:45 PM ---------- Previous post was July 2nd, 2011 at 08:19 PM ----------

Ugh. I am reading a booked called "The Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook" and just read this paragraph:

Many adults with DID talk about feeling different from other people, even alien. They learn to play roles and they do it well, but when it comes to interacting socially with others they talk about a deep sense of loneliness that pervades whatever they do. It is the belief that "I do not belong". Worse yet, for some it is the belief that "I do not deserve to belong."

 

[H011yHawkJ311yBean]

my mom rehearsed and practiced what I could and couldn't say when talked to by people

You know, now that you mention it, I remember that happening to me, too... My mom would say jealous things about our aunts and uncles but then she would instruct us not to mention these things. Like to my father she would say, "Oh, I don't understand why your sister and brother-in-law moved into a newer bigger house, when they had a perfectly good house to live in before. It's such a waste of money." Or regarding her own sister's first husband: "Your uncle is a bum. He shouldn't be driving around in that van trying to get construction work when there are other businesses he could be working for that are already established. He needs to look for a real job." She would say these things and then expect us kids not to go around repeating it and instructed us accordingly.

Pretty soon we stopped going to visit those relatives "who were too good for us." And when my cousin told me that my mom was strict, I said her dad was a bum. So then a big argument erupted and my aunt and uncle and my cousins all left us at Christmas time. And of course it was MY fault for saying anything. In my eyes, I was sticking up for my mom. My cousin's mom was the same in some ways as my mom. Both my cousin and I were left in charge of our younger siblings when we weren't much more than kids either. My cousin got in my face about me calling her dad a bum at our gramma's funeral (I guess we hadn't seen each other in a long time and that was there in the back of her mind the whole time). I denied remembering it at while we were at the funeral because I was already dealing with the loss of my gramma (and the weird crap going on in my mom's side of the family in relation to my gramma's funeral). Her mom, my aunt called her away and told her to back off. Later I did apologize to her, but when I did, she claimed she couldn't even remember what I was talking about! lol Riiiiiight...

Sorry... I went off on a tangent there. *ahem* In summary, I totally know where you are coming from, I think. I don't claim to know exactly what you are going through, but I think we are, to some degree, in the same pickle jar. lol

 

[GDPR]

My mom rehearsed things like 'what do you say if someone asks you if daddy drinks?" "what do you say if anyone asks you if daddy has been in jail?" "What if someone asks you about *specific illegal activities* that daddy does"?

She also demanded that I act happy, act like everything was fine, wanted me to smile, wanted me to look and act my best so that nobody ever suspected anything. I played the part so well that I never really knew what was real and what wasn't.

 

[disotb]

I know how you feel more then I could ever express. I feel this same feeling so deeply that it's unbearable just existing/living. It feels like being an alien that was born here among another species and in a foreign environment. I don't feel comfortable with everything about this life....everything about it just seems wrong to me. I feel like I have to keep people at a distance and act fake so they don't see the real "alien" me...because if they see the real me they freak out and want me dead or suddenly turn on me. I don't feel like anyone can understand me at all or understand how it feels to be me. I think it's like my humanity was killed before I ever got to be human so I don't know how to be or how to live among other humans. I know it sounds crazy to say but I intellectually know I am human and there are probably others who feel the way I do (at least at times) but emotionally I feel completely and utterly different. I feel like I was born a freak of nature..an alien mutation of some kind. I can't enjoy socializing or relationships because I also feel this deep sense of separation.:tearyeyed:It doesn't make me feel happy to know that others feel like I do. It makes me sad to know that there are others who have to live in such deep pain too and upset at the state of existence and this "human" world.

 

[Daniel E.]

but emotionally I feel completely and utterly different.

Which you allow to affect your behavior, which in turn affects your thoughts and feelings -- a self-fulfilling prophecy common with depression and social anxiety.

 

[HotthenCold]

eek:I feel the same way. Although if we hung out we'd probably both look like we were doing o.k while feeling totally out of place on the inside.

It can be a grind to always feel so different. Sometimes I find it empowering and fun, and I can actually really dig my uniqueness because of the potential I have to blaze a trail that most people who fit in really well could never conceive of. At the moment I feel like a pathetic weirdo, but I guess that comes with the territory.