How to Feel Like You Belong: My Story of Self-Acceptance

This story is for you if you’ve ever felt unseen, unheard, or like you don’t belong.

Here’s how I stopped fitting in and finally found my place.

We all have a need to feel seen and heard.

Hello my friend

I just want to be seen. I want to be heard. I want to know that I matter and that I’m loved.

I want to feel that I belong.

So do you.

Feeling seen, heard, that we matter and are loved – that we belong – is something shared by all humans.

We experience loneliness when our need to feel that we belong is not met. We can do anything to meet that core need, even if it is detrimental to our overall wellbeing.

I want you to keep these core needs in mind as you read this article. I also invite you to sit down and get comfortable. All too often when we hear stories of loneliness, we often hear the 30-second version to fit into a sound bite or cater for shortened attention spans.

As I recently explained in a recent article where I detailed my loneliness story (read it here), I understand why this happens, but I believe it cheapens the experience. The connection lessons and inspirations can be found when we slow down and pay attention to the details.

This is the story of how a lifetime of trying to fit in eventually led me home: to myself.

If you’re comfortable – or at least not in a rush – let’s get into it.

My search for belonging – the school years

The feeling that I don’t belong makes me feel lonely. And lots of reflection shows that this feeling of not belonging is something I’ve felt over most of my life.

I’m sure that there were times when I did feel that I belonged when I was growing up, but they feel hard to remember looking back from this distance.

Growing up feels like I was in a near-constant state of trying to fit in, to be accepted and to feel that I belong.

I grew up in a tiny country town in regional New South Wales. It’s a farming community – and there are lots of sheep, wheat, kangaroos and bountiful sky. The topography of the area is flatter than the table you’re likely sitting at now, so there is a lot of sky.

Most of the kids in my small primary school were the children of farmers and they preferred being outside, whereas I preferred being inside.

While they loved playing outside at recess and lunchtime, I loved class time. I loved learning and I was a voracious reader at primary school. I would read books and pore over atlases and encyclopaedias to learn about the places I’d see in the news, eagerly absorbing the words about the world beyond my immediate surrounds.

I played tennis and cricket, but I always felt like I was terrible at those sports and was often the last picked when teams were formed. The boys at school and in my family were obsessed with one sport: Australian Rules football. I hated playing football. I believed that there was something wrong with me because I thought I was alone in not caring what was happening.

I was compelled to play it because I was a boy and boys played football. My older brother was a good footballer, and I was always being compared to him and, unsurprisingly, found wanting.

I vividly recall the time when the school principal stood over me and yelled at me in the middle of the playground one lunchtime. I was 10 years old, and he told me – loudly and forcefully – that I had to play football with the other boys at lunchtime. He then called my mother to make sure that I brought my football gear the next day. That next day, he checked on me – very publicly – to ensure I complied. 

I really felt out of place, but I learned a valuable lesson in hiding and learning how to please people, so they’d not hurt and threaten me. 

This cultural sporting obsession continued all the way through my secondary schooling, but with the obsession level dialled up to 12. I was sent to a Catholic boarding school just outside of Melbourne that was three hours’ drive away from my hometown. The school’s nickname was ‘The Football Factory’ for the number of elite footballers it churned out.

I spent six years of my secondary schooling hustling to fit in, trying so hard to care about the same stuff that the other kids I lived with cared about: football, girls and – later – boozing and partying.    

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I remember thinking that the other kids seemed to have worked out the secret to being included and being popular. I mean, I had friends, but it often felt that the friendship wasn’t reciprocated. There was a tolerance at best, an ambivalence to my presence at worst. I lost count at the number of times a friend was having a party with a limit of 20 guests, I was the 21^st on the list and didn’t quite make the cut.

But the cruel irony was that even if I did get invited to a party, I’d feel well out of place and that I didn’t belong there, either.

On top of that awkwardness, I realised that I felt attracted to some of the other boys. But a Catholic boarding school in regional Victoria in the early 1990s was not a safe space to be gay. It was far safer to shove those feelings down and pretend to like girls, too.

I became very good at hiding my sexuality, lest I give myself away and make life very uncomfortable and lonelier.

I thought that this is how life was always going to be. I believed that I was always going to feel on the outer. I had some very dark times at school, and I simply marvel at how younger me got through those times.

[I shared some of this part of my story in ‘Are you too nice for your own good? How people-pleasing feeds your disconnection’ here.]

Despite that internal turmoil, I still loved learning about the world and was fortunate to have great teachers who fed my interests. I did well in my final exams and was accepted into a prestigious university.

University and hustling for achievement

I was fortunate to live at a residential college at university, and I was surrounded by others who had also been the smart kids at school. There were others who loved learning and using words and language as much as I did.

I thought that I’d found my place, but as classes commenced, I quickly began to feel like a fraud. The people around me were so smart, so accomplished and so destined to achieve great things that I felt like my presence was some kind of mistake.

I went from being too smart at school to not feeling smart enough at university.

I learned the power of achievement to help me feel that I belonged. Fitting in now meant excelling and never letting the mask slip.

I hustled and I hustled hard. I studied like a demon, but worked just as hard to make it look effortless. I won awards, prizes and accolades for my studies, community service and my swimming (oh yeah, turns out that while I hated football, I loved swimming and was pretty good at it).

I cultivated the nice-guy image: always quick with a joke and words of encouragement to boost others up. I began working out at the gym. I felt great when someone noticed. The recognition and respect for the effort felt good.

All the while, the attraction to men was still there. I pushed it down, because I’d made friends and was being accepted for the ‘straight’ me I was presenting to the world. Being gay was an inconvenient truth that didn’t fit the image I wanted to cultivate.

Besides, I’d felt like I cracked the code to feel like I belonged and beat being alone. I simply needed to be smart, funny, buff, athletic and always wonderful to be around. I was recognised for achievements and contributions, and those recognitions gave me a sense of belonging: until the glow from the praise wore off.

I needed to increasingly do more to feed the insatiable beast within to keep the fear away. 

Belonging now meant excelling, and never letting the mask slip.

Diplomatic life and the breakdown

I graduated university after four years and got a job in the graduate program of an important department in the Australian Public Service. I moved from Melbourne to Canberra.

I thought that I’d made it. A new city brought a fresh start.

My workplace was like university on steroids: I was surrounded by others who had worked hard at university and were wanting to do what was needed and expected – and much, much more – to get ahead in their careers.

I employed my formula of being great at my job plus being the loveliest human – both to look at and to be around. It seemed to work. Over the years, I was promoted. I got given important jobs. I met a wonderful woman and we married. Together, we got to live and work in Venezuela, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand as Australian diplomats doing important jobs in important places for Australia.

I became a Dad to two wonderful boys and life became immensely richer.

Still, I hustled to be perfect: as a husband, father, son, friend.

I would feel like I belonged until any praise died down. When it did, I’d go back to feeling hollow and I’d feel like I was a fraud.

I’d then repeat the cycle.

Then the formula I’d used to achieve in life and my career since university stopped working.

The thoughts and feelings of being a fraud were getting harder to ignore. No amount of Sheryl Sandberg’s advice to lean in helped. I leaned all the way in to almost be prostrate on the table but not even that worked. Any praise I received felt hollow.

I began feeling like I was adrift and lost.

Rather than accept those feelings, I did what we all do when we desperately want to restart a car: I kept pumping the accelerator and turning the key hoping for the engine to fire up again so I could continue as before.

I was in a broken-down car on the shoulder of life’s freeway.

All the other vehicles were speeding by on their way to where they were going at great speed.

It felt like no one saw me. As I sat in my car on the shoulder of life’s freeway, I could no longer ignore those thoughts and feelings that I didn’t belong. I knew that I needed to do something. I was too scared to get out and prop open the bonnet to see what the issue was. And I didn’t want anyone else to see the hot mess that terrified me under there.

The hustle I’d developed had stopped working. The thoughts and feelings that I know now to be loneliness – that I was unseen and unheard – flooded through me.   

Was loneliness my mid-life crisis?  

I desperately did not want to be lonely. Loneliness seems so sad. Lonely people seemed so clingy and needy. The internet in 2016 told me that loneliness was for the elderly and the bereaved. I wasn’t any of these.

Besides, I was living my dream!

I had a wonderful family – a wife and two kids – who I knew loved me. I was living in Seoul doing a job that I’d loved. We lived in a beautiful apartment. The kids were going to a great school. We were financially secure. I had friends. I had so many people in my life.

While I had all these people in my life, I felt that I had no one who could call and say, 'I need you to listen to me' without feeling like I was intruding, being a burden or saying anything inappropriate.

I also felt that I couldn't speak up. I was surrounded by smart people who looked like they had everything under control and loved their work and lives. I felt so alone, the only person who wasn’t – or couldn’t – cope.

I felt that familiar separation from myself from those around me from back in my school years. Something within me refused to accept any of this.

 

The turning point(s)

It was my wife who first noticed that I wasn’t myself. My wife was a great support to help me get out on weekends to do something I enjoyed. I joined a swimming group. But this petered out after a few months and swimming isn't really a sport where one can chat with others. Besides, getting out to meet new people and explain myself was also exhausting. 

I called my employing agency’s contracted counselling service a few months later. I spoke to a lovely person who listened to me, pitied me and then told me what Dr Google had said: find what I loved to do and 'put myself out there'.

She didn’t understand my situation and not once did she mention the word belonging.

Weeks went by. My funk deepened.

 

An accidental exclusion

I recall one Friday afternoon during this time when I went to leave the office to go for a walk and to get some fresh air. While I was waiting for the lift, most of my colleagues who worked in other parts of the workplace entered the foyer with the energy and enthusiasm of people getting together and having a much-anticipated lunch.

Their exuberance dissipated when people saw me and many eyes fixed upon interesting spots on the floor. The tone shifted. One of the people in the party said hello and said that they were all heading out to lunch and that I could join them if I wanted to.

The invitation, I hope, was genuine. But to me, in that moment, it felt like they’d been caught. The invitation was made hastily to avoid embarrassment.

I declined the invitation with a chuckle and said that I was heading out to run errands before the weekend. The polite ‘You sure?’ questions were said three times before the lift arrived and saved us all from the socially awkward situation. 

While I may not have been actively excluded and the exclusion an honest oversight, I was not actively included. I just didn’t register on their social radar.

Within me, the years melted away and I was no longer a grown man in my late 30s, but a 14-year-old who desperately wanted to be part of the group.

I was really upset and my reaction surprised me. Logically, I knew that the oversight was unintentional. Emotionally, I was shaken. It was a nudge that started me down the spiral of intense self-reflection.

I realised that there were days when no one, no one, asked me how I was. Did I not matter? I felt hollow, like a thin shell. I felt unseen.

Like I didn’t belong.

On reflection, my strategy of projecting boundless competence and endless good humour I’d cultivated to help me get me through life meant that I wasn't giving people much of a reason to ask. I asked how other people were, but when they asked me, I rarely gave them reason to worry: I was always happy and life was great.

I craved to be seen and heard, yet I feared it. That was the paradox of my loneliness.

I was scared. This terror kept me from seeking out more help.

Support arrives

Weeks passed and, to return to the metaphor, a roadside assistance truck in the form of Mike Campbell - a men’s coach - stopped to see if I needed support to get going. Together, we opened the bonnet and had a look to see what was there.

His coaching program was just what I needed. The program involved a lot of talking. It involved a lot of sharing and listening to myself and others.

One word began to come up within me and in conversations time and time again: belonging.

It came up when my coach asked the question – this pivotal question: do I believe that I am worthy of love and belonging just as I am? 

The answer was no. I felt unworthy of love and belonging.

I began to realise just how much the hustle to belong had ruled my life. I’d edited and moulded myself to fit in to some kind of amorphous definition of what I thought I needed to be to be accepted.

That strategy had kept me safe, but it also fed my disconnection by ensuring that I was not me when interacting with others.

For the first time, I stopped asking how to fit in with others. I started asking if I belonged to myself.

The reframe changed everything

At the end of the program, and after a lot of hard work, I felt like I had stepped into myself for the first time. I did believe that I was worthy of love and belonging, just as I am: gloriously and imperfectly awesome.

I needed to know and accept myself and belong to myself before I could connect with others and the world around me.

This was a powerful feeling.

Coming out

I started to reach out to people in my life - both past and present - with whom I wanted to connect.

Some people were too busy to spare time and others told me that I deserved my loneliness. This is hard to hear when I'm putting the real me out there. It hurts.

Many more others were thrilled that I wanted to connect with them.

The conversations that happened were beautiful. I was being me. I was allowing them to be themselves, too.

I was being seen and heard. I was seeing and hearing them.

I felt like I belonged.

Life went on. But after a year of feeling so much better socially, I realised that there was another aspect of myself that I knew I needed to sit with and allow myself to accept.

My sexuality.

I realised that not being me – all of me – was coming at a cost and I was paying the price. I didn’t know how I could be true to myself AND not hurt my family.

Then one evening, I read this quote from Dr Maya Angelou. It spoke to my soul with a clarity:

‘You are only free when you realize you belong no place—you belong every place—no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.’

As someone who’d been on a lifelong quest to feel that I belonged, this spoke to me. Dr Angelou said that I belonged everywhere when I belonged to me.

No one had spoken about belonging like that.

These words helped me summon the courage come out of the closet. First, I came out to myself. Secondly, I came out to my wife. Then, later, to our children when we made the tough decision to end our marriage. Then I came out to family and friends and to the world.

I feared coming out for so long. I feared not belonging, exclusion and judgement. I feared the words and the judgmental language that I could receive from those around me and the world. I did receive – and still receive – judgement from others. But those most important to me have almost universally said beautiful things and expressed loving sentiments.

But the judgement I have for myself has diminished dramatically. I am now me in the world and the connection I have with myself, those most important to me and to my communities nourishes and energises me.

This is me now

The sense of belonging I feel within myself after I accept me – all of me: the light, the dark, the bits I’m proud of and the bits I’d rather the world not see – is indescribable. There is an ease, a joy.

My search for belonging wasn’t a search for the right hobby, the right interest, the right job, the right contacts or anything else outside of me.

My quest for belonging led me to accept myself and then have the courage to be me in the world.

Owning who you are is a powerful statement of belonging

Coming out is a powerful declaration of owning who you are.

I want to share a few important observations with you. I come out regularly for two reasons: for being gay AND for experiencing loneliness.

Coming out as either gay or lonely is always hard. I still fear judgement and exclusion.

Coming out as either gay or lonely is always worth it. I met my beautiful partner, Jeff, because I came out as gay and I was my authentic self when we met. Coming out as lonely has led to me being here with you as you read these words.

Connection – and the feeling of belonging we seek –comes when we accept and then learn from the parts we love and fear about ourselves. The work we do at HUMANS:CONNECTING is all about helping others accept their loneliness and use it to get the connection they’ve been missing.

Let’s end your struggle to belong

I know that I’m not the only person in the world who’s been on a quest to find belonging. The hustle to feel that we belong can drive us to do great things, and it can also lead to destructive behaviours within ourselves and when we’re with those most important to us and are in our communities.

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You hustle to feel that you belong on some level, too. Your hustle may be feeling worthy of your job or job title. Your hustle may be to prove that you’re a good enough parent, spouse, child, sibling or friend. Your hustle may be in the hoping that your worthiness for love and belonging depends on reaching a goal weight, a promotion, a relationship, buying something. Whatever your hustle is, it’s likely very exhausting and it’s feeding your loneliness on some level.

Please, pause for a moment. You are worthy of love and belonging, just as you are.

Loneliness starts to lift when you stop hustling to prove your worth, and start living from the truth that you already belong.

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Important:

All views expressed above are the author’s and are intended to inform, support, challenge and inspire you to consider the issue of loneliness and increase awareness of the need for authentic connection with your self, with those most important to you and your communities as an antidote to loneliness. Unless otherwise declared, the author is not a licensed mental health professional and these words are not intended to be crisis support. If you’re in crisis, this page has some links for immediate support for where you may be in the world.

If you’re in crisis, please don’t wait. Get support now.