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When a highly sensitive man feels like he doesn't belong... (INFJ / INFP) · Lightbearer's Library

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, dear soul.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if as a highly sensitive man you've spent so much of your life feeling different that you have stopped expecting to ever feel like you'll belong somewhere, anywhere, that you'll always be the outsider.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to explore this a little bit because this week in on the community post, I asked you if um what helps you feel you belong somewhere.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And there were lots of different answers, but I just get the sense that there's this feeling that there m may never quite be a sense of belonging, and and maybe that's true, and maybe it's not.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'd like to think about this.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that we I think it starts when we're when we're children for most of us, the feeling that there's somehow we're somehow different.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm a highly sensitive woman and an INFP, so I I have a unique perspective in a lot of ways from from my peers.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And while I never felt like I didn't belong, I had a small group of friends all throughout my school years, and I'm lucky that way.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I think for some, there's just the being different feels like it comes from the high sensitivity of perhaps noise and bright lights and scratchy clothes and whatever that might be for you, or it could be just you know, you were had different, a different kind of intelligence than your peers, or just feeling more deeply, more intuitively than than others, seeing things that others couldn't.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that creates a a divide in some ways, and you know, can lead to being self-conscious about those differences, and in some ways, learning to adapt ourselves to the situations that we find ourselves in.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that's very necessary to kind of be able to get along as well as possible.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: But as many of you know, it's not easy to hide those things around others, and I think that goes to like the last video I published about, you know, being bullied as as young men.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, I know that's a lot of people's experiences, and it's hard to hard to not be yourself when you're when you're a kid, and I think maybe that ability to adapt, you can get better at it, but it's it's it's not being true to who who you are under that.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that sometimes that adaptation, and we you can call that whatever you want, you can call it masking or you know, edit self-editing um or burying parts of yourself.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of the words I've heard from from you is um that we can think that that's us over time, or that we we you know that we find belonging through doing that, through masking.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think there's somehow this this thought of wondering why why we still feel like outsiders, you know, even when you're maybe accepted by a group of people and or or never feeling able to open yourself up to a group of of perhaps even similar-minded people, because there's always this fear of of showing your true self, because when you when we were kids, showing that part was really scary.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: It could mean, you know, it could mean bullying, it could mean all sorts of things.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's about exploring exploring these parts of ourselves that you know potentially weren't acceptable when we were younger or still aren't acceptable, and and that we maybe find belonging first and foremost within ourselves that we embrace and unbury and and find all those pieces we left behind in childhood, or wherever along the along the the road we left them, and start to, you know, yeah, understand ourselves a little bit better and belong to ourselves.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that can be that can be hard.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: I also think belonging, so so that's that's my that's my first part is that we we need to find find comfort and belonging within ourselves.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's embracing our high sensitivity, embracing the things that make us different, and um so that we can inside feel safe and we can work on our nervous system, you know, that that high anxiety that perhaps we have, or um all sorts of different different things within our body that, you know, alarm systems that go off.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because as I think a human being, we we are social creatures.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, in the past, when we didn't belong in a group, we were ostracized and outed into the into the wild, and we weren't gonna survive out there alone.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: So there is this instinctual self that that feels like we we want to belong, we need to belong.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think we can often trade have a big trade-off of trading off parts of who we are for that belonging.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that's what I don't I don't want to do that.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I don't think that's what we should be doing.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's it's about yeah, so the the nervous system starting with our ourselves.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I know for me, I've had um in the last number of years the experience of being ostracized by community, by family, for decisions that were in alignment with my own values, my own thoughts and ideas about the world.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it was it's it's the most painful experience I have ever been through.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And but I am a stronger person inside with myself because of it.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: I had to rely on my own self and as opposed to wanting the community and friends or family to accept me for those those things that made me different or um that they didn't accept and um it was it was physically, it was a physical um like my physical health suffered because of it, my mental health suffered because of it, my whole being suffered.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I think part of the reason why I talk to you as highly sensitive men is because I when I think about groups of people in our world that are the most outsider, outsiders, the the outsiders of the of the world are those are our highly sensitive men, are and and this can look all sorts of ways, right?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: We can think, you know, men who really think for themselves and you know feel for themselves, and men who are curious and ask why, and men who, you know, like all sorts of for all sorts of reasons.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's just this this outsider.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I think my heart, having had the experience that I've had, feeling that that fear and that pain and the intensity of that and feeling like I didn't belong and I and and it's a fear.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's I have a heart.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I have I have so much love and compassion for the highly sensitive men.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Plus my husband is one, so I have a highly I love I love him, but I just I think there's there's very few groups that that um yeah feel as as um you know yeah, outsiders as that.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I think I asked my husband this question earlier today.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Where where where's a place that you have felt like you belonged?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he without thinking about it, he was just like, oh, like in the tattoo community.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then he was like, Oh, that's interesting.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never really thought about that or felt about that.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think I asked him why that was, and it's because you know, for him, the the tattoo community, especially in in England, um, he when he lived there was he it was like four people that were outsiders, and so when he would go to the tattoo conventions, he felt like he belonged there because it was a bunch of outsiders.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I kind of feel like that's where how we're like Light Bears Library is kind of this this grouping of of outsiders.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And when I when we talk in the in the men's groups each week, there's that beautiful just yes, there's a sense of nervousness, a sense of do I belong here, a sense of what what is gonna happen.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that comes along with our nervous systems being on high alert just in general in our lives.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's unfamiliar coming into a space that says, you're safe here, and and it doesn't mean that we're all going to agree.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's another thing.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I think, I think us we we can kind of we understand what it's like to be ostracized and outed, and I think we're a little bit more aware of, at least I am.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if this is maybe you, but I just feel with ideology in the world, all the ideologies, I'm like I don't, I don't want to care.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to put people in boxes and and ostracize them because of what they think or believe.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we're all human souls, and why can't we connect on the things that are truly human about us and our relationships and the pain and the wounds that we have and just see one another for that?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's been really helpful is to really create a space where we connect on that human level of the things that are happening for us and leave ideology at the door.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's like because I just feel like that's such a painful thing to because these things are constantly shifting and changing, and then it's like, oh, you're out because of that or out because of that.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's so exhausting.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: All of that is so exhausting.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: So um I forgot my train of thought.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the men's groups, yeah.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I just I feel like that's been a wonderful space to just dip our toes into seeing if we can calm our nervous system being around other outsider men, other men who also feel like they don't belong in a lot of the spaces in their lives.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And whether it's with family or with work or in their community, and it's it's um, yeah, it's going to be, I think, wonderful moving forward as we build more and more connections between men as you know, men show up that have been before and new men that come.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's weaving this web of a beginning of a sense of I could belong here, or I I I can feel like this is a place where I can start to bring out some of the pieces that some of the parts of myself that I hide elsewhere.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what I'm finding is really beautiful and really human.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you've been wanting to join the the men's group, I I would welcome you.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we've I've put a new time up for next week's Wednesday men's group that is more accessible to Europeans um and to the UK, so and Ireland, I suppose.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that uh if you if it's been way too late, I have had men come from at two in the morning yesterday.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: At two in the morning, he put his alarm on and got up.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it's dedication, really.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, so I've I think maybe I'll we'll kind of go back and forth between those two times, um, the evening here in North America and then the one that's a bit earlier there.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we'll see how that goes.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you're you're warmly invited to that.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um yeah, but let me know in the comments what what more about what your thoughts are about your feelings of being an outsider, whether you've had moments in your life of feeling like you belong, or what you where you have felt like you belonged in in a what kind of group or or yeah, yeah, just any thoughts that you have, I would love to hear.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that the the comments are such a wonderful opening for a lot of men, you know, reading each other's comments and going, oh, that is how it you're putting words, you putting words to your experiences help other men to go, yes, that helps me to know, like I I resonate with that, or that has been in my experience, but I could never put it into words.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's such a beautiful place to help one another, and I I'm loving that and witnessing, witnessing is the witnessing is the healing, and that's what we're we're doing here.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: We're not fixing one another, and uh, we don't have to fix ourselves, it's just about witnessing.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so yeah, I'm so glad that you're here.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, and I wish you so many blessings.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Signing up for now, XOXO Kate.