It's not unusual to be rejected by others for being different—but that doesn't make it hurt any less. drlee1 explains why.
to avidly seek to join others who, hopefully, are like-minded enough to accept us. This post comes in 2-parts. Here I'll describe the many quandaries involved in this fitting-in challenge. In my next post, I'll describe various remedies put forth to ameliorate it, though, frankly, some may require therapeutic intervention.
First of all, ask yourself whether you ever harbor feelings of being an outsider, outcast, misfit, maverick, pariah—or, to employ these distinctly unflattering labels, freak, geek, oddball, or weirdo? If now or in the past you felt like a strange bird—or a fish out of water—what was that like for you? Chances are it made you feel not just uncomfortable but alienated from your surroundings or downright deviant.
If, however, at present your sense of self is much more evolved, you might actually perceive the above designations positively, as signaling your individuality and uniqueness . Nonetheless, if you're like most of us, you may still feel there's something missing in you, something granted to others but, ill-fatedly, denied to you.Fresh out of the womb, you don't judge yourself. You don't even recognize this most primitive version of yourself as subject to evaluation.
As you develop cognitively, you increasingly discover which of your behaviors displease your parents. Not yet possessing any legitimate authority of your own, you're likely to judge yourself as negatively as they seem to. Moreover, if, in general, your parents don't appear to like you very much, you'll follow suit—disliking yourself as well. Ironically, perhaps this is an, last-ditch attempt to"join" them when otherwise you'd feel scarily detached from them.
Many of the challenges you may later face, both with neighborhood kids and school peers, and then with fellow adults, relate to having over-generalized your presumed deficits. These apparent failings are based on how you interpreted your caregivers treating you—even though they may have been deficient in providing you with the understanding, compassion, and respect you, and
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