In search of ‘that feeling’ to belong

When they say its and inside job, that really means the work starts from within. That means looking at the patterns over your lifetime and exploring how they are coloring your current experience. I recently came to a realization that a pervasive feeling of 'not belonging' is deeply ingrained into my mind and it sounds like 'Why do I feel like I don't belong no matter where I go? '

And this is where the 'feel the feelings' come in, and ‘we set out to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves’ looking specifically at resentments as they are the keys to unlock the layers of old wounds, buried for years in our subconscious minds.

A little story to go with it:

One day I was on the football field with my 8-year-old son. I was standing in a circle amongst the moms of the other football players when the talk of 'the club' came up in conversation. It almost felt like a collaborative and intentional bonding reach to create a connection with the other moms. And for me it felt like the walls went up around the moms and there I was, again on the outside looking in from afar. Two of the five moms were boasting about recently joining "The club" which requires a list of formalities where a yeah or neah'd by The Board gets you on the in or the out. In my mind, I already decided I was out. First of all, I'm a single mom, I didn't come from the right family, and the list goes on and on. There it was, that old tape that fulfills a self-segregating prophecy. I have been to enough birthday parties to know that the conversation is going to move on to exclusive vacations, boastful renovation projects and then a mom's trip with their obligatory husbands, only open to those that can make the cut. Do you see that nasty narrative?

In taking a more compassionate view of myself, I am compelled to ask: Why do I want to part of this club? or is it the evidence that I am looking for to further perpetuate the narrative that keeps me from making the actual connections I am seeking with other people? It has to be the latter, for sure. Because truth be told, I have no idea what was happening for the three other moms, that were seemingly on the outside of this conversation and alongside of me. And I don't even know what the underlying motive of the conversating moms was to discuss the gate-kept club at the children's football game. And if their husbands are obligatory, I certainly don't want that either.

During that conversation, my mind kept returning to the love I felt on a recent Labor Day camping trip (Camp Kresge) where I connected with others who also often feel like they don’t belong. What made that trip so meaningful for me was the deep emotional bonds I formed with friends, old and new, fellow travelers who, like me, are “trudging the road”.

Maybe the work here isn’t to chase belonging in spaces that activate old wounds, but to keep choosing the spaces (like Kresge) where I (and maybe you too) do feel connected. And from that place, when those old tapes start to play, you can remind yourself: I already belong to myself, and I already know what belonging feels like. I don’t need to look for evidence of exclusion anymore.

Real vs. old tapes. A reflection journal prompt for you to use to explore your own patterns and old tapes. Click to download the journal prompt.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRvxrOaYbbPZFnWNpVhLQDdI9Cl-LvHusZyI5y9si4jHY9pSW9jxQgvOXGPaeyahJIp_YnNGX8n3Ebs/pub?embedded=true"></iframe>

I look forward to meeting you on that road to a happy destiny!

Angelina Rao, PMHNP-BC