Trueform Therapy

Tag: belonging

  • How Belonging Shapes Our Thoughts

    I’ve been thinking lately about how difficult it can be to know which of our thoughts are actually ours.

    Not in the obvious sense. Of course I have my own opinions. I know what I like, what I believe, what I agree with and what I don’t.

    At least, I think I do.

    Every now and then I come across an idea that makes me stop and wonder: Did I arrive at this myself, or have I simply heard it often enough that it now feels like mine?

    A slightly unsettling thought when you consider how many opinions you have accumulated over the years.

    I suspect most of us do this more than we realise.

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    We grow up around other people’s ideas long before we have the ability to question them. We learn what our families think, what our friends think, what people like us are supposed to think. Some of these things are said explicitly. Others are just implied. We pick them up from the atmosphere around us.

    And perhaps we learn something else at the same time: which thoughts make us feel closer to people, and which ones might create distance.

    I notice this most when I disagree with someone I care about.

    There is something very different about thinking, I don’t agree with this, when the other person is a stranger, compared with when it is someone whose opinion matters to you.

    With a stranger, it can simply be a disagreement.

    With someone close to us, it can feel so much more personal.Sometimes we don’t even notice that we have started editing ourselves. We soften an opinion. We leave something unsaid. We decide that perhaps it isn’t worth getting into. Or we do that very adult thing where we say, “Interesting,” while internally having written a seventeen-page rebuttal.

    None of this necessarily feels dishonest. Sometimes it is simply part of being considerate. But I wonder where the line is. At what point does being adaptable become losing track of what you actually think? And perhaps even more difficult: how would we know?

    I wonder how much belonging influences our thinking

    We tend to think of belonging as an emotional need and independent thinking as an intellectual one, as though they belong to separate parts of us.

    But I’m not sure they are that separate.

    If belonging matters to us—and of course it does—then it makes sense that the possibility of losing it might influence what we are willing to question.

    Imagine discovering that you no longer agree with something your family has always believed.

    Or that your friends have become very certain about an issue you feel much less certain about.

    Or that you have changed your mind about something that once felt central to who you were.

    The difficult part may not be the new idea itself.

    It might be what the new idea means for your relationships.

    There is a particular discomfort in realising that your thinking has moved somewhere the people around you haven’t.

    You can still love them. You can still feel close to them. But suddenly there is something you cannot quite share in the same way.

    And I wonder if this is one reason certainty can feel so appealing. Being certain can be socially comforting. You know where you stand. You know who agrees with you. You don’t have to sit in the awkward space of I’m not sure yet.

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    Sometimes I think we underestimate how uncomfortable that space is. There is a huge amount of pressure to have an opinion. On politics. Parenting. Relationships. Therapy. Food. Sleep. Screens. Whether people should have screens. Whether people who have screens are ruining society.

    Apparently, we are all expected to have a position. And preferably one that fits neatly into a sentence.

    The strange thing about changing your mind

    We often praise people for thinking for themselves, but I wonder if we sometimes make independent thinking sound much simpler than it is.

    It is easy to imagine the independent thinker as someone who stands apart from everyone else and follows their own judgement. But what if I disagree with everyone around me simply because I don’t want to be like them? That doesn’t feel particularly independent. I’m still organising my thinking around the group. I’ve just chosen the opposite position.

    So perhaps thinking independently isn’t really about agreeing or disagreeing. Maybe it has more to do with being able to pause long enough to ask yourself what you actually think.

    And that sounds simple until you try it. Because sometimes what we think is mixed up with what we fear.

    Or what we want other people to think of us.

    Or what we have always believed about ourselves.

    Or what would be easier for our relationships.

    Or what would make us feel like we belong.

    And sometimes, annoyingly, we don’t know which is which.

    What happens when we change?

    I’ve always found the idea of changing your mind slightly uncomfortable. Not because I think changing your mind is wrong. Quite the opposite. I hope I change my mind about things. I hope I learn.

    But there is something unsettling about looking back at an earlier version of yourself and realising that you no longer agree with them.

    What do we do with that?

    We often want to make the story neat afterwards. I used to think that because I didn’t know better. Now I understand. Lovely. Very satisfying. Almost suspiciously satisfying.

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    Real change isn’t always that tidy. Sometimes the old version of us had a point. Sometimes the new version does too. Sometimes we simply see something differently because we have lived a little longer.

    And perhaps we don’t need to decide that one version was completely wrong in order to allow another version to exist. Maybe changing your mind doesn’t always mean that your former self was foolish. Maybe it just means you have changed.

    Perhaps belonging needs a little more room

    This makes me wonder whether we have been thinking about belonging in the wrong way.

    Perhaps belonging isn’t necessarily about finding people who think like us. Maybe it is about finding relationships in which we are allowed to think differently and still remain connected. There is something quite reassuring about being around people who agree with you.

    But there is something else, perhaps more valuable, about being able to say:

    I don’t see it that way.

    Or:

    I’m not sure.

    Or even:

    I used to think that, but I don’t anymore.

    And knowing that the relationship can withstand it.

    That last part might be harder than it sounds. I don’t think we can ever completely separate ourselves from the people around us. And I’m not sure we should want to. Other people influence us in ways that can be wonderful. They introduce us to ideas we would never have encountered on our own. They challenge us. They change us.

    Some of our best thinking probably happens because someone else put an idea in front of us that we would never have found by ourselves.

    So maybe the point isn’t to become completely independent of other people’s thinking. Maybe it is simply to become curious about the influence they have on us. To notice when we are agreeing because something feels true, and when we might be agreeing because it feels safer. To notice when we are disagreeing because we have thought something through, and when we might simply be trying to prove that we are our own person. And perhaps to become a little more comfortable with not knowing.

    Because I suspect there is a strange relationship between belonging and independent thinking. We may need other people in order to become ourselves. And we may sometimes need enough security in those relationships to risk becoming someone slightly different from who we were yesterday.

    Maybe belonging isn’t about never having to change.

    Maybe it’s about knowing you don’t have to stay the same just to keep your place.

    Interested in working together?
    Find out more about therapy and my approach at Trueform Therapy

  • “Fitting in is the greatest threat to belonging.”

    I heard Brené Brown say that on a podcast recently. I nearly skipped past it (she says a lot of things worth writing down), but this one stayed with me.

    It made me think about how often we confuse fitting in with being connected. In therapy, that confusion shows up all the time: people are exhausted from trying to be easy to like, easy to love, and easy to keep. I know that this might sound like manipulation, but in these cases, it’s more about survival. We learn early that approval feels safer than authenticity, and that lesson sticks.

    It took me back to my younger self. The one who didn’t question much, who tried to move in step with everyone else. Back then, adulthood seemed to come with a ready-made script: go out, settle down, buy a house, have a baby, repeat. I thought that was just what being a functioning adult meant.

    It took a few detours to realise how much energy I’d spent trying to keep up. I wasn’t unhappy, exactly… just busy keeping pace. When life started to drift off-script, I expected disappointment. What I felt was relief.

    These days, I choose what fits me, not what looks good on paper. That still raises eyebrows sometimes, especially around the topic of children. People I’ve just met seem oddly invested in that decision. But I’ve stopped explaining. I’ve found people whose lives don’t need to mirror mine for us to feel close. That kind of belonging feels far less like a performance.

    The Psychology of Belonging

    Psychologists have long said our need to belong is as essential as food or safety. Rejection registers in the brain like physical pain. Which explains why we work so hard to fit in.

    But belonging isn’t about being included. It’s about being seen and recognised. And that distinction gets blurry early. We learn which parts of us are welcomed and which are inconvenient. So we start adjusting, smoothing our edges, editing our sentences. Those early edits don’t disappear; they just become habits. People-pleasing, overthinking, and constant self-checking are different flavours of the same survival strategy.

    I learnt to be easygoing, agreeable, and never too certain. It kept the peace, but I often felt like I was watching myself from a distance. There’s a loneliness in being well-liked for a version of yourself you barely recognise.

    Fitting In as Self-Abandonment

    When I think of “fitting in” now, it feels like a slow fade or a series of small, polite disappearances. Saying yes when you mean no. Nodding through things you don’t believe in. Smiling instead of speaking up.

    Individually, none of those things looks serious. But over time, they pull you away from your own preferences until you can’t quite remember what they are.

    Research backs it up: constantly managing how you’re perceived wears you out. It drains your attention, heightens anxiety, and slowly burns through your energy. The mind calls it social intelligence; the body calls it exhaustion.

    I know that exhaustion. I blended in until I couldn’t hear my own thoughts. It wasn’t rebellion I feared (I am a proud rebel); it was isolation. But the irony is that the harder I tried to belong, the lonelier I became.

    Belonging to Ourselves First

    It took me a while to understand that belonging starts with yourself. Not with finding the right crowd, but with knowing your own values well enough to stay loyal to them.

    Self-compassion researcher Kristin Neff found that being kind to ourselves calms the same stress responses triggered by exclusion. I like that: belonging as a physiological state and not a social achievement.

    For me, that looked like saying no when something feels wrong, even when it’s inconvenient. Choosing what feels right in my body, not just what looks sensible from the outside. Each time I practise this, life feels a little lighter, a little more honest.

    When Belonging Looks Unusual

    Living in alignment can look odd from the outside. People notice when you don’t follow the usual route. My lack of maternal instinct, for example, continued to be headline material up to my early 40s. Apparently, I was expected to “change my mind” at some point, as though I’ve misplaced it temporarily. (I didn’t.)

    I used to find those comments uncomfortable. Looking back now, I mostly find them funny. The confusion usually says more about the other person’s expectations than about me. Living differently can be unsettling for people who’ve never questioned the script. It hints that there might be more than one version of happy.

    I’ve stopped trying to make sense to everyone. The people who get it—who understand I’m not rejecting anything, just choosing differently—are the ones I keep close. Real belonging isn’t about matching. It’s about being met.

    Returning to Ourselves

    Hearing Brené Brown that day reminded me how long I spent trying to earn connection through conformity. I used to think I needed approval to feel safe. Now, when I notice myself editing again, I take it as a sign to pause.

    Life didn’t follow the neat timeline I once expected. I’m grateful for that. The detours brought me to a version of life that actually fits me. Not perfectly, but truthfully.

    The friendships I have now are easy in the best way: no performance, no persuasion.

    I still catch myself wondering sometimes if I seem “normal enough.” But the thought passes. Belonging isn’t about being understood by everyone. It’s about understanding yourself enough to stop chasing that.

    Reflection prompts

    • Where do I still adjust myself to stay accepted?
    • What signals tell me I’ve stepped away from my own preferences?
    • Who helps me feel at ease in my own company?

    Want to find out more?

    For anyone wanting to explore these ideas further, Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection (2010) and Braving the Wilderness (2017) both dig into the tension between fitting in and true belonging. Kristin Neff’s Self-Compassion (2015) offers a grounded look at how kindness toward ourselves can regulate the same stress that comes from exclusion. For a more psychological angle, you might look at Baumeister and Leary’s classic paper The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation (1995). Each approaches belonging differently, but all point to the same idea: connection starts with how we relate to ourselves.