Yeah, brain chatter is a b--uh, female dog. I find that only meds get rid of that for me. Otherwise, it's either constant chatter or the same bit of a song going over and over that I can't get rid of.

What has made me feel un-belonging I think all stems from childhood abuse, and thinking I needed to hide my feelings. In elementary school, kids have an uncanny knack for picking out the kids who are in any way different or weak. Too often, I was one of them. None of the kids knew why I was different, they just knew that I was. Also, children who suffer ongoung abuse, for whatever reason, seem to hold on to a child's ability to look inside others and know their inspoken thoughts and feelings. The word "psychic" is often used to describe this, but it's not a word I like. I was about 9 when I realized that this was something others had lost the ability for (as I believe we are all born with it.)

After that, I never knew what was okay to say and what wasn't, what other people would understand and what they wouldn't. Also, I grew up with no sense of appropriate and inappropriate sexual boundaries. When I thought something was out of place, I didn't know if I was right or not, and didn't know how to handle it.

I think my sense of belonging only came when I was old enough (in my 30's) to understand that it didn't matter if I wasn't like other people or not. I was like ME, and somehow that made my own belonging to self more apparent, and enough.

i'm confused with this thread because it seemed to immediately become a "me too" then discuss group anxiety. i think a lot more people go through this kind of anxiety, even some of those people that "belong" than we realize. pbs recently aired a 2 part documentary called status anxiety, which its whole premise is based on as a society we are always looking to belong the so called "keeping up with the jones" effect. we're creating more anxiety for ourselves when we forget everyone is dealing with anxiety to be a part of, to belong to a social group, or a group that they see as their peers. possibly i am the odd man out here, but i feel this kind of self deprecating thinking makes an actual disease that most of us face so much worse and just creates another reason to stress. anxiety is part of everyone's lives, it's when it becomes so overwhelming that it becomes debilitating that it becomes an illness.

to focus on something our whole society faces, this anxiety (the so called american way) in how it stresses you have to be at this status in life by a certain age or have these things, belonging to this group etc. it really is no longer an just a small section of society it's an epidemic. an epidemic that more people feel than care to admit. it's an epidemic created by environmental factors tough and not chemical imbalances.

maybe i am different in how anxiety affects me (i doubt lt it though), but often times it comes on without reason and without a specific cause, though of course i can get caught up in this type of anxiety and it can spiral my already propensity for anxiety into more than it should.

does anyone here keep a list of the good things in their lives? instead of worrying about what i don't belong to, i pull out my little black moleskine and read all the good things in my life from the minutia to the big things and focus on them, then whether i feel i'm a part of a group or being accepted. the meds don't hurt either ;-) but once you can feel happy about what you do have, it's amazing what can change in your life.

With all sincerity, that's a very candid assessment that many of us can appreciate and identify with here.