Feeling like an outsider v. feeling like you belong

In My Humble Opinion
1

Where and in what circumstances do you feel like an outsider/alien/Stranger in a Strange Land? Whether or not others see you that way. And where (if anywhere) do you feel welcome and like you truly belong? Define those terms any way you like, but explain how you are using them.

I feel like an outsider most of the time on Planet Earth, but especially when I’m with my book club (all female-- 11 members)). Everyone in my book club is married or has a boyfriend. I’m the only widow and unpartnered person in the group. All except one have children and most have grandchildren. When they start pulling out pictures and telling their childbirth stories and now, their daughters’ childbirth stories… blech. Also, they all have brothers and sisters, so when they start telling Big Family Holiday Stories… blech again.

I’ve known people (and envied them) who go through life assuming they are welcome anywhere and thus, *being *welcomed anywhere. My default assumption is that I’m not welcome. I linger on the sidelines until someone on the inside notices me and invites me in (I mean that literally as well as metaphorically). A few times in my life I was in circumstances where I was with peers and felt equal to them and felt like I was one of them. Not the usual situation. I feel welcome at home with my cats and dog. This is a sad post.

2

Where and in what circumstances do you feel like an outsider/alien/Stranger in a Strange Land?

Every waking minute of my life.

3

I’m an alien. I’ve worked really hard on my humaning skills, and can blend in for a while if I need to, but people catch on eventually. I’ve realized that there are a lot of us, though, so it doesn’t bother me too much anymore.

4

I feel alien in just about every situation I’m in. There has never been a time in my life when I haven’t felt this way.

I feel like I belong at my workplace, though. I had only had a couple of years where I felt like an imposter. At work, everyone seems to appreciate my strengths. People are always asking me for advice and seeking my assistance about work-related things.

But once the conversation turns to social stuf–and it often does–I feel like a freak. I usually manage to power through these interactions, but I always feel like I’m an actor on a stage reciting a script entitled “Questions to Ask When You Need to Sound Like a Normal Person.” Because I’m a bad actor, the awkwardness is always there. And because awkwardness is exhausting, I don’t like socializing all that much. Fortunately, because I’m good with the workplace stuff, no one seems to care all that much.

Humor helps, though. It creates the illusion that I’m a confident person who doesn’t care that she’s awkward and weird. I do worry what will happen when I retire and I don’t have that arena where I can shine.

My problem is that I feel like an alien even when people are welcoming. I feel like an alien even when I’m with friends and family and I’m consciously telling myself “THIS IS MY GROUP!”. This makes me think I will always feel apart from others.

5

Umm. I was very shy when I was younger, but I got over it and had no problems mixing in any group.

Now, I have pretty severe hearing loss. I get along fine with hearing aids in the right situations (small groups, little background noise). I find that I would like to avoid larger groups.

Our work Christmas party is a good example of this. Only 15 of us or so, but I dreaded going. Was at a bar that we had reserved. Still, the music was blaring (to me) and I could hardly hear anyone.

6

Put me down as an “all the time” as well. It is probably just me and my perception but I never felt truly at home anywhere.

7

I’m real comfortable out in the desert in the Jeep with the dogs, loud music and a few beers. I’m sure the beer part helps. Feel pretty good driving fast in the mountains, too.

I’m pretty much at home when skiing. I stick to a very few places, and most people (lifties, regulars) know me (at least by sight) and wave. After skiing, if I went to a bar or someplace, I’m a fish out of water.

8

Outsider: Always. Was adopted. Never felt I fit in to my adopted family (and I was adopted at birth). Reconnected with many of my bio siblings as an adult and feel like an outsider there, too.

I was a little too bent for the sorority and a little too straight for the hippies. A little too dumb for the geeks and a little too clumsy for the jocks.

But I am normal! It’s everybody else that’s weird.

Actually, at one of my early newspaper jobs, I did fit in, in a sense. Everybody there was also slightly off. Or way off.

9

+1. The only exception would be when I’m at home with my lady.

10

Every second I am with people. But I am an excellent actor and manage to bluff my way through; however that acting is enormously draining. I am only comfortable alone and with animals.

11

I always feel out of place and an outsider whenever I am in a new group or situation. Once I’ve been in it for a while I’m usually fine (although new people added to the group or situation will put me a little on edge). It’s kind of like starting on the Dope. At first you lurk for a while before your first post, then you post a little more, eventually you find your voice and your niche in the larger group. That’s the way it is for me in just about every new thing I get into.

This is why parties where I only know one or two people are hard for me, there isn’t time for me to learn all the rules and figure out how to fit in. A casual friend has asked me to her holiday party now 2 years in a row, and the 2nd year was a lot easier even just from seeing a lot of the same people again a year later.

12

I was the unobserved and ignored middle child in a hugh family of weirdos. So…I have spent my adult life blending in the background and being quiet and unobserved. I am like the rest of you, not comfortable in social situations. I can get by though. I have a few friends who I deem okay. I also live in a very rural, solitary place. My kids are out of the house. Mr.Wrekker is on the go all the time. I spend an inordinate ammount of time alone with my pets. I find I prefer it that way. I am ok with it.

13

I’ve always felt like an outsider, but I started embracing that early in life. In fourth grade my best friend and I started a Weird Club. We had a song, and a handshake, among other things. I was an extreme introvert, so oftentimes I would sit outside at recess and read books by myself. My teachers were concerned about me. My Mom was not all that worried: ‘‘I know it’s weird, but she actually likes what she’s doing.’’

I always had my head in the clouds, dreamy, disconnected from stuff going on around me (found out last year I have ADHD, massively underdiagnosed in girls, especially those who aren’t hyperactive.) I’m hyper-creative and even at age almost 35 I get stupid giddy and play make-believe all the time. I can’t say I’m feeling ‘‘sluggish’’ without making antennae with my fingers. I’m weird, okay. And because I’m always thinking about something else, I’m always losing threads of conversation. I’m good at faking it by now. I like people just fine, but I prefer extroverts who do all the social work for me.

Then there’s all the mental stuff, I’m prone to anxiety, depression, existential angst, self-perpetuated suffering, just a ton of downer things and I have to feel comfortable talking about it in order to feel like a part of the group. I have a messed up family that is really unrelatable to many, so that’s another thing that makes me feel other.

It’s not often I’ve felt a real need to be a part of something that I didn’t fall into naturally. Feeling like an outsider hasn’t been a huge loss for me. I like all the ways I’m different and prefer to have more intimate relationships with fewer people who embrace all the strange.

I feel most at home with other outsiders, particularly crazy people (those with mental health issues.) I love unabashed weirdness. I love openness. I’m not a troublemaker myself but I love iconoclasts and thoughtful trolls. I love socially awkward nerds, and geeks who can’t contain their excitement for things the world might judge them for. The unspoken social contract among my groups is: I’ll validate your weird if you validate mine. My house is full of artistic representations of snails, slugs, and various sea creatures, particularly cephalopods, and I can kinda gauge the friendship factor by how you react to my weirder interests. I have a friend who is creeped out by them but she makes it a point to send me Facebook photos of squids whenever she sees them. That’s love.

ATM the place I most feel I belong is in my writer’s group. We are all outsiders of a sort bonding over this weird passion for making up stories, we come from many different walks of life, but the general trend is that we never felt we fit anywhere else. I am almost never quiet and reserved and disconnected when we get together. I’m almost like a different person, in the sense that I am more fully myself than I’m used to being. I particularly love that my friends in this group are hard to shock, so my darker humor comes out more, and I say stuff I wouldn’t say around most people. I’m comfortable talking about the weird and the dark with them, I feel like I contribute in a concrete way, and they miss me when I don’t show. In fact, one of them makes it a point to hunt me down if I talk about feeling too depressed to go, and he cajoles me into going.

So, it’s good. One of the cool things about being an adult is you get to define friends and life and outsider/insider status on your own terms. I’m not bitter, I like how things are.

14

Oh, and here of course. I don’t feel like an outsider here. I have made a ton of personal friendships with Dopers and it’s the most natural thing in the world.

15

I felt like an outsider throughout grade school and high school. I was the brainiest kid in class, but also socially awkward among my peers, extremely nerdy, non-athletic, and from one of the less well-off families at my private schools. As a kid, I was always more comfortable among adults than among kids my own age.

That all changed when I got to college, and was able to find a set of friends who were just as nerdy (and just as smart) as me. 30+ years later, I’m still close friends with most of those people.

I also finally found that my social skills developed, and it became a lot easier for me to get to know people, and to make friends.

16

I’ve felt like an outsider the vast majority of my life. Like others have mentioned, I fake it a lot. What little family I have is on the other side of the country and I have no real friends here. The few acquaintances I have are married or otherwise paired off so I don’t really have a social life. The thing is, I’m so used to being alone and doing as I please, I sometimes find it that much harder when I’m in social situations. Maybe it’s just my perception, but it seems like the only thing people want to talk about is *themselves.*And yes, I get that that is what we’re all doing in this thread :p(but in this case we’re willfully participating and sharing with each other).

That’s why I love it here but don’t participate in any other social media. We share personal stuff but we’re all also *interested *in one another and that makes us interesting.

17

Me? I get along with everybody and everybody loves me. This planet totally makes sense.

:dubious: Okay, no.

18

I’m always waiting for the Fraud Police to come tap me on the shoulder and say “come with us - you know you don’t belong here.”

19

It has nothing to do with feelings; I am a stranger in a strange land.

Actually, I think that was one of the attractions of living in Asia. Natives didn’t know I’m weird and Americans just assumed I had “turned Japanese.” No one knew that I was like that from childhood.

Almost everyone in my entire family was weird to varying degrees. One sister was the oddest, but we were all outside of normal. I guess it comes with the extreme dysfunctionality; we just didn’t learn the norms of society.

I wasn’t into sports or other typical boys things, and more often than not played by myself or with another socially awkward friend at recess and lunch.

Since leaving Japan where I spoke the language and understood the culture, and then moving down to Taiwan where I don’t speak the language or really know much about the culture outside of what I learn from my wife, I’ve become more isolated.

My anxiety disorder has really affected me for the past number of years. I just don’t enjoy talking freely to people like I used to. Hopefully that will improve some day.

20

I always feel like an outsider. Even when I’m considered an insider I still feel like an outsider. I’m never comfortable being treated as an insider and I end up doing things to separate myself from the pack.