We All Yearn to Belong
You belong.
How often have you longed to hear those words spoken aloud by another? You belong here. Our desire for belonging is one of the deepest needs in the human psyche. It allows us to feel safe, to feel like we are part of something greater than ourselves. It’s integral, and yet: so many of us find this quality incredibly elusive — at least, I know I have.
I’ve spent much of my life longing to belong.
I’ve always been a different kind of person — I love a lot of different things, and I was born with the kind of intensity that has always driven me towards developing a high degree of skill in whatever I set my mind to. This means whenever I walk into a room, I do so with the knowledge I’m generally not quite like everyone else. Among writers, I was always an elite athlete. At school, I was the gymnast. In the circus world, I was the bookish, intellectual one, a little too ‘normal’ to fit in. (Yes, I know that seems like an oxymoron, but if you’ve been in the world, you’ll know what I mean).
I always defined myself as the kind of person people noticed more for her absence than her presence. I believed that people liked to have me around but they wouldn’t go out of their way to invite me to things if they didn’t have to. I had friends, but I never thought of myself as all that important in their lives — if I wasn’t there, I assumed there would always be someone else they could go to. I felt replaceable, and ultimately, I hid my feelings beneath a façade of fierce independence and self-sufficiency, keeping myself so busy I could simply pretend I didn’t care.
Enter: Confirmation Bias
Now I can see all of this wasn’t quite as true as I thought at the time. It turns out I have a core wound around feeling like my true self is unlovable — that I’m always too much of something or not enough of something else. When this is your narrative, it feels like The Truth. It’s indisputable — you feel like you are a difficult person to be with, so why would anyone want you around?
When you have a core wound around feeling unlovable, you may learn to block yourself from receiving love. You’ve been rejected more times than you can count, so the thought of putting yourself out there becomes unbearable. The risk feels like too much. We put up walls to contain the hurt, and we think this will stop the harm from getting in, but what we don’t realize is that it only blocks us from receiving the very thing we want most: love. Affirmation. Belonging.
Our brains are hard-wired for confirmation bias: believe you are unlovable, and you will see all the ways this is true. You won’t see the people who show up to love you just the way you are, because your brain is literally incapable of registering their actions. You will simply block them out or justify that they’re doing what they’re doing because they’re a ‘nice person.’ You won’t know how to receive their love.
I witnessed this in myself a few weeks ago, in such an acute way that it brought tears to my eyes.
Trauma can block us from receiving love
When I was eighteen, I moved out of my parent’s home to live in a city several thousand miles away. I had just been through a lot of trauma — my teenage years were fraught in ways I’m only now beginning to understand, and in a sense, when I was moving, I was running away. I couldn’t get away fast enough.
Because so many hard things happened, and I was in denial of the pain I was carrying around, I couldn’t see the good stuff. I didn’t see the few friends who had stuck it out with me through all the ups and downs, couldn’t see how they saw me because I was convinced they didn’t understand certain aspects of who I was.
They aren’t circus artists, I thought. They’re not high-level athletes. They’re not pursuing an artistic path, so there’s no way they can understand me. They wrote beautiful cards that I read, and I’m sure it meant something to me at the time, but I don’t remember feeling any emotion other than this driving desperation to get out and start my new life.
A few weeks ago, I went back and read those cards. I saw how those girls saw me for me — not Maia the performer, but Maia the person. They called me kind, loyal, and patient, things I couldn’t believe about myself when they’d given me those cards. Now, I see how deep those friendships ran, how much they actually loved me.
There are many ways for a person to see you — they don’t have to understand your world to see you and love you for who you truly are.
Redefining what it means to belong
These days, I am much softer. It’s taken a lot of unraveling, much undoing of years of self-hatred and shame, but I am learning to love who I am. I am learning to see the simple ways in which my presence might make someone else’s life a little better, learning to accept my own strengths. I’ve come to enjoy my own company quite a bit, which feels like a stark contrast to the days I spent looking for every little flaw in everything I did, just waiting to let someone down.
Author and researcher Brené Brown defines belonging as, “being part of something bigger [than yourself], but also having the courage to stand alone, and to belong to yourself above all else.” She says the opposite to belonging is fitting in, because true belonging can only occur when we can be our true, authentic selves — something we can’t do if we’re busy seeking other people’s approval.
When I was younger, I can see how my desires were so similar to what they are now: to write, to create, to witness beauty and spend time in nature, to feel connected and be in relationship to those I love. To belong.
Yet these desires seemed too simple for me, so I derived complex ways to go about getting them. I thought I could only find the deep, intimate kind of love I yearned for if my romantic life overlapped with my work. I was wrong.
After nearly two years of intense physical isolation and copious amounts of introspective work, I am beginning to see how this sense of belonging, this thing I’ve craved my whole life — it begins with me, with how I relate to myself.
When I belong to myself, I am no longer willing to abandon myself for other people’s approval. I become an advocate for my own needs, and I see that my desires are valid and my experience is real, regardless of who does or does not agree.
When I belong to myself, I can call in this feeling of belonging into other areas of my life, too — I find the people who feel like home and attract opportunities that align with my values. I no longer feel the need to compromise my well-being to survive, because I know I am worthy of feeling good.
I may not yet have found that one space of constant belonging I’ve always yearned for, but I’ve discovered some beautiful pockets along the way — friends who love me deeply, colleagues who see me and value my work, and larger online communities who are having the kinds of conversations I want to be part of.
This is where we start.
Mantra: I am no longer willing to abandon myself for other people’s approval. I can choose to stay with myself and still be in relationship with those I love. I am learning how to feel at home within myself. I am loved.
Sources:
School of Greatness podcast, Lewis Howes interviews Brené Brown
Finding our way to true belonging, by Brené Brown
As a poet, writer, and multidisciplinary artist, Maia Thom works with words to create spaces for people to breathe and come home to themselves. In 2020, she published her first anthology, Kitchen Table Talks: Simple Reminders + Thoughts on Life. You can find her on Instagram as @maia.thom.
