On Belonging, Otherness, and Finding Our Voice

For many of us, life has carried the experience of not fully belonging. Maybe you were the child who looked or sounded different at school. Maybe you learned to laugh at yourself before others could. Maybe parts of you were kept quiet, hidden, or reshaped to fit in. Over time, these strategies can help us survive, but they often leave behind a quiet ache. A sense that our truest voice has been muted.

I know this terrain personally. My own story has been shaped by experiences of being “othered,” of having pieces of my background used as weapons, and of learning to adapt by blending in. For years, my response was to overperform, to be who I thought I needed to be for others - popular, successful, safe. On the surface, it worked. Inside, though, I longed for something different: a place where all of me, not just the curated parts, could belong.

Therapy, at its best, is that kind of place.

The Work of Coming Home to Ourselves

When we sit together, I’m not interested in helping you become more acceptable to others. Instead, I’m interested in helping you listen more closely to yourself. In person-centered and Focusing-oriented therapy, we pay attention to the felt sense, that subtle, bodily knowing that carries meaning before words arrive. Often it’s in those quiet, hard-to-name sensations that we find the truth of what’s really happening in us.

When we are fully heard, we blossom. Focusing-oriented therapy shows that this kind of listening isn’t just in the head, it’s in the body. Together, these ideas invite us to move away from hiding and toward a deeper authenticity, one that doesn’t depend on performance or acceptance.

Belonging in Relationship

Many of us carry questions like:

• Do I really fit anywhere?

• If people knew the whole of me, would they still want me?

• Am I allowed to stop performing and simply be?

  
  

Therapy doesn’t promise quick answers to these questions, but it does offer something rare: a relationship where all parts of you are welcomed. In our work, your sadness, your laughter, your anger, and your silence all have a place. Slowly, as you experience being received rather than judged, new possibilities emerge.

Healing doesn’t mean erasing the past or pretending the pain of exclusion never happened. It means discovering that those experiences don’t define your worth and that there is a way of being in the world that feels more whole, grounded, and alive.

If you’ve felt like an outsider, or if you’ve grown tired of keeping pieces of yourself hidden to fit in, therapy can be a space to lay that burden down. Together, we can explore what belonging might look like for you. Not as something you need to earn, but as something you already carry within you. If you'd like to have a free, no pressure consultation call, please contact me.