I feel like everything everyone says makes me feel like I'm not a real human being, more like I'm absolutely nothing. When I say 'everyone', this includes people writing stuff in articles or online, thinking that what they say is innocuous. But even those little things hit me at my core, & make me feel like I'm less than human. I know I should just shut up, & accept the fact that I'm less just because of who I am.

Honestly I've felt like that many times in my life and it sucks :/ but I do think that you'll find a way to feel better about yourself. It takes a lot of perspective change to find your way out and sometimes having a hobby that you're good at can help you gain self confidence.

It's a struggle--I feel like a displaced alien.
Learning about Highly Sensitive People (def me) has helpeed me & constant study of life, as a student wanting to learn as much as possiible from this human experience helps me. RfM is so helpful in this transition--lots of support & experience here...

That simply isn't so. Let me tell you a story.

Many years ago when I first graduated from college, the economy was tanking much like it has in recent years. There were few decent jobs available, so I took what I could get, which was manual labor.

Now the job that I took was, in retrospect, varied, often interesting, and even fun in certain ways. As one of my coworkers kept pointing out, it was what she *wanted* to do. Not so for me. I longed to work in an office, and wear fancy woolen and silk clothes, and have business cards with my name printed on them.

One day I was walking home from work. I was sweaty and thoroughly grubby, to almost a comical extent. Inside, I was miserable and ashamed of myself. I felt like a complete and abysmal failure. A nice looking young man was walking almost alongside me. In a very playful, joking tone of voice, he commented, "you're a mess!" Even at the time I knew that he was merely trying to be funny and friendly. Who knows, maybe he even thought I was kind of cute underneath all that dirt. But his comment made me want to burst into tears.

All of this is to say that how you feel about yourself can have little to do with objective reality. It can have little to do with how others view you or with what they have to say to you. It is like you are seeing things through a distored lens.

There came a day when I finally did get the office job in the high rise in the glamorous city. I got the woolen and silk clothes and had the business cards printed up with my name on them. And I realized that my dream, while very nice, wasn't the end-all and be-all of life. There came a day when I gave all of that up and moved on to do something else. But it had been a necessary stage for me, I guess. Something that I had to do at that particular time of my life. Something that I needed to prop up my fragile sense of self.

***************************

You are better and worth more than your own dark opinion of yourself right now. Counseling and perhaps medical help would be a good option for you if you can afford it. Even if you can't afford it, there are often community resources that can help. But know that there are more positives in your life than you are capable of seeing at present. Hang in there and have a loving attitude toward yourself. Things will eventually change. A few pieces of the puzzle will fall into place and the world will seem more supportive and not so much against you as it does at present. You are okay just the way you are, and we are here to keep telling you that until you are stong enough to see it for yourself.

That was a fantastic bit Summer. You must be a terrific educator.

Summer is right. Don't give up yet. You should see how socially retarded I can be and I'm relativity good at it. The're isn't enough time in life to be good at everything. Just pick a few (or one) thing(s), focus on that and pat yourself on the back for being awesome.

I know too many people who feel down for not being good enough. Myself included.

I'm OK. You're OK. You'll feel better soon.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2013 09:02AM by The Man in Black.

Thank you, summer, for the post.

I makes me think.

I love reading your posts, Summer. :)

Steve

+1

I've come to accept that I never fit in with Mormonism and that I'm never going to quite fit into the real world either. There's still too much of my thinking which comes from 30 years of Mormonism.

But I'm finally comfortable in my own skin, so I figure that's the most important thing.

Many people feel that way. Life can be tough and do a number on us. Try not to base your opinion of yourself on what others might be thinking. You have a right to be who you are and it's no one's business to judge.

Take care.

Don't try to fit in when you were born to stand out

I'm actually ok with that. This is the best quote I have read on the issue:

"I realized I did not have to be a mainstream reject; I could be a successful rebel." Tonya from "Promiscuities" by Naomi Wolf

Not less, different.

Everyone manifests differently as to assorted variables (sexuality, sociality, etc.) and exists somewhere on the spectrum (for example, very social, social, not very social).

Most people (say 50% or so) inhabit the central part of the bell curve that generally overlies the spectrum. So as to sociality, most people are more or less social. On the ends exist those who are very social (to continue with that example) and not very social (25% each, roughly, with those at the extreme ends representing a smaller portion of the overall population).

Is OK. Even more interesting--most of us can switch from one part of the spectrum to another any given day, hour, or even minute. We don't always identify with one particular part of the spectrum (although we might have an over all baseline).

So what if you are a little different? Who is "normal" or "ideal"? Most people are trying to conform to something they aren't... I'm more interested in being who I am than presenting an ideal or "norm" to the rest of the world.

This means, of course, that you might not fit in, but it doesn't make you somehow "less". You'll just have to find the crowd with whom you do fit.

Make sense?

Finally: this is one reason why the Mormon "Church", and Correlation, are so harmful. You can't treat everybody the same and expect the same from everyone (anyone with kids should know that...). You can't take a square peg and try to put it in a round hole. The Mormon Church's expectation for conformity and cohesion is outrageous, evil, unreal, and unnatural. There will always be exceptions and outliers.

So unless your differentness is really harmful (to yourself or others), I don't think it is likely to be a big deal. You might just have to work a little harder to find a group with whom you click. Good luck and don't give up. Don't see yourself as less because you are different. Most of us are...

Maybe the world doesn't fit with you.

I have about five people on the planet who I really connect with and the combination is dynamite. It took a long time to find them and it was worth the wait. The other few billion on the planet are filler.

The more you build the life you want to have, the more you are comfortable in your own skin, the more you will be likely to find your own kind. Most people who seem to have a lot of friends just have a lot of acquaintances.

My dear blueorchid, kindly do not refer to me as filler ;) Now, anonymous regular poster, a story: About 1950 in Florida, a young boy was placed with foster parents, parents who were brutal to this boy, parents who were mormons. They moved to Arizona, where he lived in misery until he ran away. He never forgot those experiences and eventually wrote a classic of the underground press called "Dream World", featuring sharp satire of "Mormonville", using the pen name of Kent Winslow. He was a voracious reader, and as a result became a talented writer, and in 1969 he began his own zine, which he wrote, edited, printed offset, and published. Today, the zine is the longest running zine on the planet, and he has become world famous. Because he chose an unpopular theme for his writing, he has been attacked, marginalized, ignored to the point of non-existence, but he has stubbornly persevered. Recently the Leonard Axe library in the special collections of Pittsburg State University in Kansas has created a collection in this man's name, so that his heartfelt effort over decades will be preserved. In recent years the public library in his town declined to let him display his zine, free of charge, on its public tables of newspapers and journals. Through legal help he managed to get consent to do that, only to find out the library was each month discarding his zine instead of making it available to the public. And now, just when news of his collection at PSU is making academic news, the Arizona university library which for decades has ignored him, has written him asking for donations of his zines and journals for its shelves. The man is generous, charging nothing for his two journals besides donations, and sending many copies to felons in prisons and penitentiaries at no charge. In a recent note, he wrote that PSU might be surprised when he included copies of Playboy and Esquire (because he has published in both). He is now in his early 60s, and because this message board does not encourage "advertisements", I do not mention his name. I might mention the name of his zine: "The Match! A Journal of Ethical Anarchism", which features the longest letters to the editor column anywhere. I tell this longish story so that you can see that from a rotten start, in which nobody cared what happened to him, did not consider him even human, this man made this enormous effort, persevered, and has at last prevailed against many enemies. Many small steps can amount to the large steps you may sometimes think of. I hope Fred's story encourages you to take a few of those small steps. Very best wishes.

I think you may have misunderstood the intend of the phrase which was meant to be humorous. I wasn't seriously calling three billion people on the planet filler. It was only a way to illustrate that we only can connect personally, meaningfully one on one with so many people.

I am still not sure how I insulted you, nor what this story you posted has to do with it, I see no clear connection to anything I said and am confused by your post.

People rise up from nothing everyday. This is not a new story and I certainly wasn't implying otherwise.

No offense at all intended. The first line was just a cute line in response to your cute comment. The entire story was intended for "anonymous regular poster", who had a serious comment as OP: not directed to you! Cheers!

Geez. I misunderstand everything. Thank you. Cheers!

You misunderstood because you didn't connect with davidkent/filler. haha (meaning, my comment is purely in jest)

I really like your posts btw. You seem to be one of those extra sensitive individuals as well as extra articulate.

Double cheers.

Because I too seldom feel like I'm really part of any group, I was able to look at Mormonism with more distance and objectivity.

Because I felt like an alien in the church, I was able to get out.

It may have been worth it.

If i'm in a crowd of people, I seldom fit in.
Usually it's a good thing.

There are very few people out there that I want to fit in with. It took me years to realize that.

Some days I feel like I fit in, other days I don't. I think it has more to do with my mood than what other people say or do.