What Causes a Lack of Belonging?
Have you ever felt empty or uneasy while things were good? Those moments when you sensed something was missing but couldn't identify it. You got free of this feeling how? Or could you? To avoid becoming enslaved by this emotion, do you stay busy?
If we're confused, start: How do we feel like we belong and know we don't?
A person belongs when they feel accepted and build strong relationships in a social group. In early adulthood, this sense of belonging and the yearning for meaningful connections might lead to “reaching out to someone else who understands you.”
Following the simplest notions of belonging, not belonging is just as complicated. Belonging is influenced by many factors and feelings, making it hard to describe and experience. That makes it hard to explain. Like our initial human predecessors, let us construct a story to describe this journey that began with man.
Imagine riding the tube home from work and feeling lonely and alienated in the crowd. Your loneliness and alienation may make you feel different from others. Everyone is rushing to get somewhere, yet you feel alone.
Some tube riders are on their phones, others are reading books. You feel detached from everyone, but they all appear connected.
If you can empathise with this circumstance, have integrated with the story, or are at a point in your life where this feels exactly like this, your bittersweet emotion of not belonging.
Many psychologists, including William James, Paul Ekman, Richard and Bernice Lazarus, have constructed emotion systems 1. Robert Plutchik's 1980 emotion wheel is one of the most popular studies on emotions.
In his wheel of emotions study, Robert Plutchik categorised emotions into 8 groups and 3 levels. These basic emotions are joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, contempt, rage, and expectation 2. None of the three breakdowns show belonging. Why did Plutchik, who correctly articulated emotions, omit belonging?
Because Plutchik's wheel shows basic emotions and combinations. Belonging generally involves multiple basic emotions. Thus, many emotions and subcategories share a sense of kinship.
Can we combine belonging with other emotions and subcategories on this wheel? Trust, joy, sadness?
Indeed, belonging is a condition of well-being that goes beyond these sentiments. Belonging involves deep emotions like safety, love, acceptance, value, acceptance without judgement, emotional support, emotional connections with others and places, and a respectful environment. The absence of any of these emotions might make a person feel alienated and question their identity.
The family is a person's first social context, safe haven, and place of belonging. The family, where people form their first relationships, loves, and trusts, is crucial to their sense of belonging.
A safe, loving, and welcomed environment fosters belonging. However, not feeling this in the family leaves lasting impacts on the individual. A lack of belonging in the home, where an individual forms their initial social connections and identity, can cause serious life issues.