Have you found your people and your tribe or someone else’s?

In my practice, I often notice a pattern or a trend in sessions. I may have a day when I see similar clients. Have similar discussions. Experience similar feelings coming up in the sessions.

It’s often just a coincidence, but at times it can reflect something that is happening in society, or an expectation or pressure that we can all find ourselves feeling in our daily lives.

One such thing has been coming up a lot with clients recently. Many different clients; many different situations; but a common theme. A common topic.

It is hard to pin it down to a pithy phrase or word, but we know it when we feel it, and we certainly know it when we are not feeling it. It’s the feeling of being heard and seen; being accepted; being able to be ourselves. Not being judged. Being held. Being loved for who we are. Belonging.

This idea of belonging - being part of something - can be experienced in many ways and can take many forms, including being in a relationship; part of a community; a workplace; a family; a friendship group; or a club. But the critical thing is not the structure or the form this belonging takes, it’s the people. It’s the people and the human connections we make. It’s not the organisation or organisational structure that can offer us acceptance and the space to be ourselves. It’s the people. The tribe.

We all deserve to feel this. To feel like we are enough. We are good enough. Who we are, and how we are, will always been enough. And yet, as many of my discussions with clients tell me, we don’t always feel this, or at least we don’t feel it as often as would be helpful to our mental health, wellbeing and happiness.

For me, this is not just about clients and my practice but my own life, my own feelings and my own experiences. This is something I have given a lot of thought to over recent years and something I have done a lot of work on - more of that shortly.

I think the question for us to consider in our lives is whether we have that sense of belonging now. Do we experience acceptance and feeling heard and seen by the people in our lives right now? Stop for a minute a think about it. Think about your family. Friends. Colleagues. And the other people you have regular contact with.

Do you feel you have to change who you are to fit in with them? Do you have to act differently to be accepted or to avoid awkward questions or being put under pressure by them? Do you find yourself biting your tongue a lot when with them? Editing yourself or your views? Agreeing with them or smiling along to their views and comments more often than is comfortable? Sharing only the parts of yourself that will be welcomed? Do you find yourself justifying yourself and your decisions or choices? Do you say things in your head when with them that you don’t feel you can say out loud? Does it feel like you are putting on a face or a mask when you are with them? Do you feel like they don’t get you?

Don’t get me wrong, we all have to say and do things from time to time to rub along with others - to make the world go around - especially in the workplace. This sort of pragmatism is about social norms and isn’t damaging or dangerous. But if we have surrounded ourselves with people who don’t see and hear us, and don’t accept us for who we are, we run the risk of losing ourselves in our attempts to fit with others’ needs and expectations. In being part of someone else’s tribe.

During my initial recovery from my breakdown I spent a lot of time thinking about the situations that caused me stress and/or feelings of not being good enough. I then reflected on the people in those situations and asked myself were they helping me or hurting me. Were they part of what made those situations stressful or difficult for me? Were they part of the problem? If the answer was yes, I made one of two choices.

I reduced the amount of time I spent with them, or I cut them out of my life completely. That sounds brutal but if I was serious - and I was deadly serious - about prioritising my mental health and wellbeing - and finding more spaces and situations in which I could be 100% myself without making excuses, explaining myself or feeling that I had to edit myself - then these were not my people - not my tribe - and they had to play a smaller or non-existence role in my life.

This has included with some of my family. Just because we are born with the same genes or name as someone else, it doesn’t mean they can all meet our needs and it doesn’t mean that they can’t hurt us. It also doesn’t mean we can’t make different choices about the role they play in our lives. The loyalty and guilt that can come with difficult feelings about these family relationships - feeling that we have to accept things that hurt us because we are joined by some invisible bonds - can weigh us down. But like all heavy weights we carry, we can choose to remove the weight and lighten the load.

During my recovery, I did an inventory of the people in my life - friends, family, colleagues and others - and I keep this under review regularly. I drew some circles to show how close they were to me (a stick person in the middle of the page). I plotted the people on the picture and considered whether I wanted them this close to me - having this much regular contact with me, based on how authentic and accepted I felt when with them. It led me to phase some people out and/or reduce the time I was in contact with them - including some family members - and focus my time on the people who were truly accepting of me. These are the people I speak to, message and see. The others, not so much.

If we want to be seen and heard - if we want to be truly accepted for who and what we are - we need to be around people who have the capacity to do that - not occasionally but all the time. We need people in our lives who get us and don’t try to change us, or tell us we are wrong, or that if we only thought and felt differently about something, we would be fine. We need people who take us as they find us and cherish us. Hold us. Not hinder us.

Most of us know the difference between real friends and our Facebook-only friends. Most of us know how it feels to have a sense of belonging - to feel part of something that makes us feel good. And yet most of us hang on to some relationships through habit and history and not because these relationships are helping us be ourselves and helping us thrive.

We all deserve to be seen and heard; to be accepted; to be loved. The best way for us to experience that is to find our people, our tribe. To make time and space in our lives for the people who have space and time for us and us being us.

Maybe it’s time to check you are spending time with your tribe and not someone else’s.