Help for People Who Feel Like They Don't Fit In

• Do you have a pervasive nagging sense that you don't belong–at work, with your family, with friends, or just about anywhere?
   
• Do you come from a family who never understood you? Did you learn early in life to hide who you are, what you want, and even your higher wiser self?
   
• Do you stay late at work, avoid saying no, and generally work harder than your colleagues so that no one will ever know how inadequate you feel?

• Have you have embraced the feeling of being an outsider, yet still compare yourself to your more conventional sibling, best friend, or co-worker?
   
• Were you bullied as a kid? Have you learned to hide the vulnerable and tender parts of you so that the adult bully at work, at the gym, or anywhere else will leave you alone?
   
• Do you feel like an imposter in many situations?

Sense of Not Belonging

For most people, the sense of not belonging begins in our original families. It can be hard to trace these feelings back to a single incident. Even small statements and seemingly insignificant gestures can add up and leave you feeling like you don't matter. Sometimes a parent or someone else who loves you can have the most impact on your self esteem. Or maybe this sense of not belonging came from a change in your life such as your parents divorcing, the death of a parent, or a move to a new town. 

Often the sense of not belonging originates in childhood but is later crystallized in school. You might even have specific memories of being unsure about where to sit in the cafeteria or dreading recess because you didn't have a group that you always played with. In middle school you might remember watching other boys approach girls with an ease and grace that you could only imagine. And high school may be a collage of painful memories of dances not attended, sitting alone at football games, or standing back and watching your peers have fun.

As an adult you may have gotten better at hiding your feelings, but they still exist. You might appear to others as successful, but inwardly you feel that something, deep down, is fundamentally wrong with you. 

How Therapy Helps

Countless research studies and my own experience have shown that the most powerful element in helping people make profound and lasting change in their lives is the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist. This relationship—not a theory, technique, or anything else—is what makes the most difference. Working together we will form a relationship that provides a solid foundation for healing.

The pain of not fitting in is rooted in difficult and painful relationships. So healing needs to take place in an affirming and positive relationship. I can provide this experience. 

My work is grounded in attachment theory. This theory is based on our need for safe and secure relationships and how to cultivate them. I also use IFS, a gentle, non-pathologizing approach to get to know the part of you that feels anxious. Together we will be curious about this part of you and what it needs to heal.