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“The opposite of belonging is not alienation – it is fitting in.” ~Bren Brown
One of my earliest memories comes from kindergarten.
My mom had bought me a new pair of navy-blue corduroy pants for an event at school. We didn’t get new clothes very often, so this felt important. But what stayed with me wasn’t the pants or the incident — it was the way I felt wearing them.
I remember standing there, already stressed, afraid that the other kids would think I looked stupid. Afraid they won’t want to play with me. Fear that being different, even in something small, will mean I don’t belong.
I didn’t have words for it at the time, but the feeling was clear: If I stand out, there’s something wrong with me. And if there was something wrong with me, I wasn’t good enough.
That feeling has quietly followed me into everything ever since.
As I grew up, I never knew what I wasn’t good enough for or what standards I needed to live up to in order to finally find my place. So instead of questioning the feeling, I tried to resolve it.
I tried to be the funny guy in school. This brought laughter but also troubled the teachers. Then I moved on to being popular – paying attention to my looks, my energy, how I came across. Later I became a bodybuilder who didn’t care about anything else except the gym. Back then, the lone wolf with the perfect routine, perfect grades, perfect body, and a life that looked disciplined and impressive on the outside.
Each of my versions felt like a serious effort. Everyone came with this hope it That would finally be the thing that made me feel okay. None of them did.
Each identity worked for a while, until it didn’t. The effort of maintaining something that wasn’t truly mine became overwhelming over time. And when it became too much, the whole thing would collapse.
After each fall, I would numb myself. In the early years, it was food. In my teens, alcohol and drugs became involved. The feeling of being down – this feeling of simply not wanting to exist – was crushing.
The irony was that the more I tried to avoid this feeling, the worse it became. Each new version of me had to be more extreme, more confident, more airtight than the previous version. And each fall hits harder.
Eventually, I began to believe that the problem wasn’t what I was doing – the problem was who I was. No matter how hard I try, I’ll always fall behind. Perhaps some people were not meant to be good.
I tried to get help. Therapists helped me understand where these feelings might have come from: losing my father early, being bullied, unstable circumstances growing up. His explanation made sense. They gave me things to try.
But even with that understanding, the sentiment didn’t change. I still felt empty. It still felt as if I was failing some invisible test. Insight explained the pain, but did not loosen its grip.
In my mid-twenties, I met my girlfriend. In the beginning I felt lighter and more secure. For a while, the feeling of not being good enough faded into the background. Then I really started loving her.
And with that love came a familiar fear. I’m scared she’ll see who I am In fact Was there and gone. That she would realize I was a fraud. This relationship would become just another entry in a long list of evidence that I wasn’t worth being in.
That fear permeated everything. My studies were affected. My work seemed heavy. I retained the few anchors I still had — eating relatively well, staying active — because they gave me something solid to cling to.
Then we went to Thailand.
The move was exciting on the surface, but underneath it all, I was exhausted. I didn’t admit it to myself at the time, but I had been pretending for a long time – pretending that I could handle the stress, the uncertainty, the pressure to keep working.
Once we arrived, something inside me came out.
Without making a conscious decision, I abandoned the last routines that had kept me stable. The feeling of not being good enough came stronger and faster than ever. Within a few weeks, I was convinced that my girlfriend would leave the moment she met someone better, which felt like almost any other person. I was convinced that my work would show that I was not in my role and that I would be replaced by someone who actually deserved it.
Over time, that fear became my new normal.
I stopped wanting to do anything. It was difficult to think. Getting out of bed seemed impossible. People around me became frustrated seeing me withdrawing and wasting time. From the outside, it probably looked like laziness or lack of discipline.
Inside, I was using everything I had just to pretend that I didn’t know what I believed about myself. I remained like this for about a year.
Then I went home for a short vacation.
One day, sitting alone, I looked back at the year I had just lived. And eventually something became impossible to ignore. Almost every decision I made – my job, where I lived, the way I spent my time – was made for someone else. Not a specific person, but an imagined audience. A version of life that seemed acceptable. Respected. Safe.
I didn’t choose those things because I wanted them. I chose them because I thought they proved that I deserve to exist.
As I sat with him, I began to see the same pattern everywhere. Growing up, I was friends with people I didn’t really like. I dated people I didn’t really gel with. I studied and worked in fields that never felt right. Even the way I treated people was based on how I thought I should be, not who I was.
I remembered a little thing from my childhood: I loved reptiles. I also had snakes. But when I found out that people thought babies with snakes were weird, I sold them. After a while, I began to fear snakes myself.
That was the pattern. Over and over again, I gave up pieces of myself in exchange for approval. And every time I did, the feeling of not being good enough tightened its grip.
What gradually became clear was this: This feeling may have arisen from loss and hardship, but I was the one keeping it alive. By constantly trying to live up to what I thought others wanted, I was never able to live in a way that respected myself.
I began to see that I was failing not because I was incompetent, but because I was shaping my life based on being accepted. After realizing this I suddenly didn’t feel any better. Nothing went right. But something changed.
I started making changes that didn’t seem impactful on the outside. I quit a job I hated. I went back to working on what really mattered to me. I returned to taking care of my health – not to make myself perfect, but to give my days structure and joy again.
A lot of people disapproved. I earned less. My choice seemed risky. I was encouraged to take a more traditional path.
But for the first time, I started feeling like my life.
The feeling of not being good enough didn’t go away. It is still visible. Sometimes in the form of anxiety. Sometimes in the form of panic. But it doesn’t run my life anymore. It has been turned from driver to background noise.
I can sleep at night. I’m waiting to wake up. And when I’m unsure about a decision, I don’t ask whether I would find it acceptable. I ask if it leads me to a life I can stand behind – and who exactly am I doing it for.
For a long time, my biggest fear was that I wasn’t good enough. Now, my biggest fear is living a life that isn’t mine.
About Paul Hagen
Paul Hagen writes about personal growth, direction, and building a life that really matters. through your work Hagen GrowthHe searches for lasting ways to change the way we live, work, and make decisions – without shaping our lives around approval. You can find more information about his writing here hagengrowth.com.
