Feeling like you don’t fit in? You don’t.
A Sunday morning journey through bold statements, a smidgen of history, radical acceptance and (don’t worry) some concrete suggestions to cope with the existential despair this post might trigger. You might want a cup of tea for this one.
People who resonate with the work we do at Teach Me Self Care, in my experience, often struggle with the feeling that they just don’t fit within the system or institution they work in.
Many of us (myself included) spend lots of time, emotional energy, and headspace trying to figure this out. We ruminate about why the fit seems off, whether it’s us, how we can change, and how we can fix it.
My bold statement for this Sunday morning: It’s true. You don’t fit. And it’s okay.
(Don’t despair! I will end this post with suggestions for finding a fit. See that gif above? The baby eventually says f%$K this and lifts the lid. That’s what we can do too.)
Most institutions do not value self-care.
I’m assuming that because you’re reading this, you do value self-care.
There are lots of values that often accompany a desire for self-care that you might hold too. Like kindness, balance, wellness, slowness, calm, autonomy, diversity, and respect, for example.
That automatically puts you in a values conflict with institutions like higher education, medicine, the law… I could go on and on. Those institutions do not value wellness.
This feeling you have of being a square peg in a round hole probably comes down, at some point, to the fact that you have values that are not shared by the system you work in.
Who does fit in academia?
I know there are readers from other systems on this mailing list, but I am confident this example extends to your institutions as well!
The simple answer is academia is a good fit for the people academia had in mind when it was developed. Which is these people:
This is Raphael’s The School of Athens. I am going to make another bold statement:
Very few of us find ourselves reflected in this image.
In other words, academia was not built for… *checks notes*… yep, most of us.
The role of radical acceptance.
Radical acceptance is a skill from dialectical behaviour therapy. It means noticing and accepting the way things are, ideally without judgment. (Easier said than done). Radical acceptance means accepting reality as it is right now. This past year I have been reflecting on academia as a harmful space.
Radically accepting that academia continues to value the people it was built for and that I do not fit the characteristics of those people has been healing for me. I hope it might be helpful for you too. Now, whenever I feel not fitting in academia, I picture the image above (or alternatively, monks in an 11th-century castle) and remind myself that academia wasn’t built for me, so of course I don’t fit.
Finding a better fit, even within your system.
Wow. So this was blunt. First, apologies for any existential angst this might have triggered. Take a moment to sit with those feelings and refill your tea.
Second, the wonderful part of radical acceptance is letting go of our struggle to change that we cannot. We can put down all that emotional labour of figuring out if we fit, why we don’t, and how to change it. We can accept that academia was built for a specific group of people to which we probably don’t belong – for many reasons but in this context, because we value self-care and academia does not.
Then, we can use that energy we just gained back (woohoo) from using radical acceptance and redirect it to efforts that will be worthwhile for us. (We can be that baby who takes the lid off the shape sorting toy rather than continuing to try to ram ourselves through a hole that doesn’t fit).
Here are some ways, as an example, I’ve been able to redirect my energy:
- Finding my “zone of influence,” where I do fit with others and can enact my values, like my lab, Teach Me Self Care, my writing group, and certain service activities
- Being more productive during my work hours because I’m not busy thinking about how I don’t fit
- Taking more time for myself to rest and pursue other interests. Focus on how I want to live my values in other domains of my life.
What might you do with the energy you can reclaim through radical acceptance?
In self-care solidarity,
P.S. Thanks for all your wonderful replies about how you define work! I will be getting back to those with next week’s post. Feel free to reach out and tell me more