I was abused by my mother
and my brother.

I was bullied at school.

I survived two abusive marriages.

I shed the empy, feeling-defective feeling
long ago.

I belong to MYSELF.

I AM A FLOWER
ON THE
STEM OF THE UNIVERSE.

So are You

and you and you.

Healing can happen.
Recovery is possible.
Life can be fabulous.

I can relate to the I don't belong thoughts/feelings. Felt that way most of my life. But, I agree w/Ilene. Healing can happen. For me it took the right kind of therapy. It made all the difference.

For me it was reading books on abuse, like "The Courage to Heal" and "the Sexual Healing Journey" and working on these books in counseling. The stories in those books were very validating to hear because every time I read something I was like, "That happened to me too! I thought I was the only one!"

Group therapy helps too, but by now I'm pretty much past the "I don't belong" phase. I wish I had gone to group before when I was still struggling really badly.

I've only just found out that I was probably emotionally abused by my parents for the first 30 years of my life.

I have spent my entire life feeling like I'm an alien. I didn't feel human. I was always an outsider in any social group I tried to join. I never felt like I fit in properly anywhere.

I wanted to fit in so badly and I was so scared that people would realise I was a weird mutant on the inside, that I started to hide everything about myself. I became dissociative during school, feeling like I was always outside my body, and everyone spoke to my body instead of me, and I didn't feel like my body was part of me.

I'm still exactly the same today and avoid people on purpose so I don't feel that way.

I have been diagnosed with autism though, and I'm currently trying to work out if I'm actually autistic, and that's the cause, or if I was misdiagnosed and I was abused, and I have borderline personality disorder, and that caused everything.

Do you relate to anything I wrote?

I was abused in every way a person can be abused all the while growing up and well into adulthood.

I was bullied, sexually abused, physically and of course emotionally abused as well.

I thought I would never belong or fit in. As for fitting in, I thought maybe I was a weirdo or something because no one wanted me for anything, not even a friendship.

After getting serious therapy for abuse experiences, I found I didn't need to belong to anyone but myself. That made it hard at first because I didn't know what to do with this new freedom. But after a lot of practice, I feel tons better and know it is right for me.

But you know what folks, being a part of a support network like this, we DO belong. We belong here and we learn, we grow and we succeed. It takes time and that's ok, it's time we need.

Linda :)

Feeling that you don't fit in - that you don't belong - where and with whom? Don't fit in/belong with the sadistic, abusive, mindless, damaged, devoid-of-conscience-uncompassionates who target others to ravage and maim in order to compensate for their own feelings of incompetence, impotence, unworthiness, and defenselessness that threaten to devour them alive and screaming should they defy the demands of their self-serving wills and intentions? You don't fit in/belong with those who just cannot feed their self-delusions of superior worthiness to exist unless they have the heel of their boot on the back of some target's neck shoving their face into the dirt? You don't fit in/belong with those who tell you that if you were just a better person they would be able to deem you worthy of better behavior on their part towards you? In other words, they are not responsible for their bad behavior towards you - you are. HA!

You're right - you don't and do not want to fit in/belong with such because there is something about you that is different (otherwise, you would already "fit in/belong") - something about you that intimidates them - something inherently good and sane in you that they are unable to find in themselves which just makes them feel even more insignificant than they do already and compels them to destroy you, manipulating others into perceiving them as being more than what they are and assigning greater value to them than to you. Abusers must diminish others in order to elevate themselves; therefore, the ONLY value that any other human being has to an abuser is determined by the extent to which that person can be USED by the abuser to serve the abuser's insatiable self-interests; i.e., obtaining constant validation of the abuser's self-worth by any means necessary and at any cost to anyone other than the abuser. Period.

How a person treats others reveals who that person is, not who others are. The philosophies, beliefs, principles, and values we choose to embrace to define our identities are revealed through our attitudes, words, and actions, and create the world in which we all must live. Shift your perspective - you need to be more focused on who and what fits in/belongs in YOUR life - who and what is going to help provide the appropriate environment for you to become the healthy, kind, caring, compassionate, responsible, loving person you want to become, so that you can have the fulfilling and worthwhile life you desire. Retain that which is constructive and beneficial, and discard that which is not.

I am 62 y/o, and have never fit in or belonged either, and am determined that I NEVER shall!