The danger in projecting into an imagined future is that you forget how to be present in the moment. So even when you arrive where you dreamed of going you might not recognize it when you get there. Anger is a double edge sword it can help you identify what you want to change but also cut you off from who you want to be.

You can have what your looking for where you’re at… if you allow yourself to be where you’re at.

Hi Victoria,
I can relate to feeling different. I tried to fit in as best I could, but always had a sense of being different. As years went by, after graduating, this feeling has even continued with me, until today.

I am different. I have also finally accepted my “differentness”. I am an unusual person. I know it, people have told me, “I have never met anyone like you”, “where do you come from” (in a positive way, of course). Sometimes they just look at me with squinched eyes trying to figure me out. I just warmly smile back at them.

The other day at work, one of the employees came up to me and asked “how can you be as you are each and every day?” I said, “what do you mean by that?” He said, “you don’t change. Each and every day the same. This calm, nice pleasant “persona”, although there is so much stress here every day, with the bosses yelling, and speaking to us rudely”. I simply said “because this is the person I choose to be”.

It is who I am at my core. I choose to be true to who I am and to who I want to be. Not for anyone else, just for me.

Victoria, I don’t know if you can understand what I mean, but I think you do.
I love how you wrote: To me, being true to myself and who I am is far more valuable than pretending to be something I’m not.
That is so true, thank you for writing that.

No one can make us do or say or be anything that we do not want to be. It doesn’t matter how much they yell or what words they use. If we feel pain and hurt inside, it is something we need to sincerely reflect on. No one can make us feel anything. That was a hard concept for me to understand.
There is a lot of stress where I work. Totally unnecessary stress, in my opinion.
About a week ago one of the bosses came upstairs where I was working, hands on her hips, red in the face, on the verge of absolute rage, and ask me “did you do this?” “were you in charge of this?

Without going into a lot of unecessary details, I mentally relaxed, paused about 2-3 seconds, “sat on it”, and felt in my body where I was feeling the emotion, quickly analyzing what I was feeling, meanwhile the hairs on the back of my head were standing up, my hands were slightly trembling, but I was also not going to be pulled into it. Years ago I would do what most people do, react with a typical knee-jerk reaction, and respond in like. Voices raising, a lot of tension in the air, many times saying things I didn’t mean… you know the drill.
But I choose not to be that person any more. I choose to be true to who I am and who want to be.
Do you “feel” me, as they say in the States?

I had a long conversation with this woman, who is one of the bosses. I waited for a “good moment” to talk about it. I explained that whenever she gets like that, always expect that I will “shut down” for a few seconds. She smiled at hearing that. I told her I will not be pulled into these unnecessary rants. Then she did the unexpected, and admitted that she has always had this problem. She said she has trouble controlling it. So I suggested other ways to ask the questions, other words to use, so that we can both feel that we are working together to solve a problem, not her on her throne pissing down on everyone else. I also explained that when she acts like that, it is totally counter-productive. For the employees will, for the next few hours, be thinking more on the yelling than doing there job.
I know this is all work related, but it can also be used with our family.
No one can make us feel anything. It comes from the meaning we ourselves give to our own thoughts. Our thoughts then produce the emotions.

It is something worth learning and developing for ourselves, because once you experience the power in this, it will transform how you relate to others and also how they relate to you.

I am alone. But I do not feel lonely. I hope you feel that way too.
I am happy that you have at least one friend to share things with, although it is long-distance. Still there is that sense of connectedness.

Another concept that has helped me get through some things, and also helped me with certain relationships, is the concept of “we are all the same”.
We all started out the same, and so are made up of the same “stuff”. Of course we were then exposed to different circumstances externally, and so “our story” is different from person to person. Our early experiences are different from one another and so we have formed certain beliefs about things. Some things we feel very certain of, and these things cause us to think a certain way, and so we feel certain types of emotions, based on our own belief system.
Our emotions, be it anger, fear, sadness, jealousy, etc are based on our thoughts, coming from our sub-conscious belief system.

Had we had different experiences, in different circumstances, we would be or act a different way than we are now.
Your father and your mother are caught up in their own world, or “belief bubble”, as author Gary van Warmerdam put it.
They have slowly, through the years, dealing with various marriage problems, and many other things, put together their own “belief bubble”. And it causes them to be and act as they do, for the good or bad.

Thinking about things that way, makes me feel more compassion for people, even my own family.

Reading about this also helped me to realize that I too needed to analize what I myself believed, and make necessary changes in my own belief system, when it didn’t serve me well.
We all really want the same thing. To live a happy and full life.
If your burning desire inside is to feel completely at peace/at ease/ and at home, then you will realize that.

For I too sought the same thing. I am alone, at peace, at ease and am at home. But not my original home. I now live on the other side of the planet, but I am still at peace and at ease. Whether I am at home or away from home.
It comes from the inside, and that is where you are truly meant to be.

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by Nate. Reason: had tags

Victoria,
Being with our tribe where they get us is something most of us yearn for especially for people who grew up feeling that they don’t belong.  I can identify with that.

It sounds like you are highly sensory.  I encourage you to nurture that part of you by finding places and ways to bring that to your life.

In my experience I know that I am not alone for my yearning for community.  I have found that there are many people who yearn for that.  I see that from the MeetUp groups/meetings that are in my area.  You may want to explore that if you have access to those groups.  There is a group called “Highly Sensitive People” here that would seem to fit someone like you.  There are outdoor/hiking groups for those who like being out in Nature which seems that you enjoy.  There is group solely focused on authenticity.  There are meditation groups abound here as well.

Take care,
Mark