"I didn't have words for it back then, but the feeling was clear: if I stood out, something was wrong with me. And if something was wrong with me, I wasn't good enough. I remember standing there, already tense, afraid that the other kids would think I looked stupid. Afraid they wouldn't want to play with me. Afraid that being different, even in something small, would mean I didn't belong."
"As I grew up, I never knew who I wasn't good enough for or what standard I was supposed to meet to finally earn my place. So instead of questioning the feeling, I tried to solve it. I tried becoming the funny guy in school. That earned laughs but also trouble with teachers. Then I shifted toward being popular-obsessing over my appearance, my energy, how I came across. Later, I became the bodybuilder who didn't care about anything except the gym."
An early childhood fear of standing out created a persistent belief that being different meant not belonging and not being good enough. Growing up, that belief drove repeated attempts to earn acceptance by adopting roles—funny guy, popular kid, bodybuilder, lone wolf—each role offering temporary relief but ultimately collapsing under the strain of maintaining an inauthentic identity. The cycles of adopting identities and eventual collapse increased the emotional burden. After each collapse, numbing behavior followed; in the early years that numbing took the form of food. The pattern left the person unsure which standards mattered and exhausted by ongoing effort to fit in.
Read at Tiny Buddha
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