Finding My People: The Connection Paradox and the Search for Belonging

What if the thing you've been searching for all along, connection, community, and a sense of belonging, is also the thing you've been protecting yourself from? 

In this episode, I explore what I call The Connection Paradox: the tension between our deep human need for connection and the fear that can arise when we risk truly being seen, known, and accepted by others.

Drawing from my own experiences of feeling like I was on the outskirts, longing for deeper community, and wondering why belonging seemed to come so naturally to other people, I share how I came to realize that part of what stood between me and the connection I was seeking wasn't just what was happening around me, it was what was happening inside me.

Because sometimes the greatest barrier to belonging isn't rejection.

It's the ways we protect ourselves from the possibility of not belonging.

In this episode, I explore how depression, neurodivergence, self-othering, and old relational wounds can shape our experiences of community and connection, plus how healing can gradually make us more available for the very relationships we've been longing for.

In this episode, we explore:

• What The Connection Paradox is and why it affects so many people
• The difference between being around others and true belonging
• How self-othering can quietly interfere with connection
• Why many neurodivergent people struggle with feeling different or out of place
• The role fear and self-protection play in our search for community
• How attachment wounds and past experiences can shape our sense of belonging
• Why finding your people often begins with finding yourself
• How self-acceptance can make connection feel more available
• The surprising relationship between healing and community
• Why creating connection sometimes requires moving toward what scares us

We long for belonging.

And at the same time, we often protect ourselves from the possibility of not belonging.

But maybe belonging isn't something we simply stumble upon.

Maybe it's something we gradually become more available for.

And maybe that's how we find our people.

And maybe that's how our people find us.

If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat! 

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.

Transcript

Welcome And The Longing To Belong

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, and welcome to the When Depression is in your bed podcast. Have you ever found yourself longing for deeper connection while simultaneously feeling unsure about how to find it? Wanting community, wanting your people, wanting to find that place where you can truly show up as yourself and feel like you belong. And yet still finding yourself on the sidelines, holding back, or wondering if there's really a place for you after all. Lately, I've been reflecting on how that dynamic has shown up in my own life. And it has helped me understand something important about connection and about belonging and about the fears that can quietly get in the way of both. I'm your host, Trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you are here. Let's get started.

Defining The Connection Paradox

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Over the last months, I realized something that has helped give me clarity about something I have been struggling with for most of my life. For as long as I can remember, I have deeply longed for community. I've wanted my people. I've wanted that feeling of belonging. I've wanted that group of friends who celebrate birthdays together and go away on weekend trips together, who truly genuinely know each other and support each other. And yet, when I look back at my life, I can also see how I was often so scared to find exactly what I was looking for. And that is what I mean when I talk about what I think of as the connection paradox. In my last episode, I briefly introduced this idea. The connection paradox describes how we as humans who are wired for connection, we biologically need it for our survival and certainly for our ability to thrive. And so we have inside of us a deep longing for connection. Yet many of us also are terrified of connection because it has been in relationship where we have experienced hurt. And so we have this paradox of wanting connection so desperately at times and yet also being scared to actually receive it. And so we can find ourselves in this place of stuckness, somewhere between wanting to belong and also biologically wanting to protect ourselves from being in connection, because if we don't connect, then we don't have a chance of being hurt again. And as I mentioned in my last episode, this can be especially true for people living with depression, neurodivergence, attachment wounds, or relational trauma. And today I want to talk about how this paradox has shown up in my own life. And before I begin, I will absolutely say that the connection paradox completely applies to intimate partner relationships. And I can absolutely do another episode where I talk about how this has shown up between Ben and I. But actually today I'm going to talk about how the connection paradox has shown up in a much broader way in my life and has really interfered in my ability to connect in community in the way that I have really longed

Chasing Proximity Without Belonging

SPEAKER_00 2:33

to. And I also just want to put a little disclaimer here because I have been so lucky to find incredible, wonderful friends along my path. And I have several very dear people in my life for whom I am so incredibly grateful. And what I'm talking about today doesn't in any way discount the importance of those people in my life, but those are more one-to-one relationships that I've been lucky enough to have and maintain. And what I'm talking about today is really a larger sense of community. I have spent much of my life feeling like I didn't quite belong anywhere. Not necessarily rejected or excluded, but certainly on the outskirts of things. In college, I saw my classmates meet and develop friendships outside of class. On social media, I've seen photos of women I know taking weekend trips together or going to college reunions with a group of friends, celebrating birthdays together or doing some fitness challenge in a big group, having the kind of community that I was longing for. And so for years I tried to create it. I organized mom brunches and happy hours and get togethers and tried to plan things for my kids and their friends and invited parents along so I could get to know them. And honestly, most of those experiences were perfectly pleasant. But what I was longing for was not just proximity. I wasn't longing to just be around people. I was longing for a true and meaningful sense of belonging. And those are not always the same thing. For a long time, the story I told myself was that the problem was me. Maybe you can relate. I told myself things like maybe people didn't like me, or maybe connection just came more easily for other people, that maybe everyone else knew something that I just didn't know. And over the years, I collected so much evidence to support those stories. I watched friendships form around me. I watched groups become more close. And I often felt like I was still there, standing on the edge of it

Othering Yourself Before Anyone Else

SPEAKER_00 4:20

all. But what I have come to realize is that I was very often othering myself before anybody else even had a chance or opportunity to do so. I felt different, out of place, not enough. And when we feel that way, we often disconnect before connection even has a chance. That is certainly what happened for me. I deeply longed for belonging. And at the same time, I also protected myself from the possibility that maybe I wouldn't find that sense of belonging. So as much as my mind and heart wanted connection, my nervous system knew that I was terrified about what it would actually feel like to be in that level of deep, meaningful connection. And so it actually jumped into action to protect myself from getting too close. I also noticed that there were entire groups of people that I automatically felt separate from before ever getting to know them. People who had a very calm and grounded energy, people who meditated regularly or had a daily yoga practice, people who appeared to be physically fit, and people who seemed to be financially successful, to name a few. A part of me admired these kinds of people and aspired to be more like them. But another part of me felt deeply intimidated by them. And in different ways, I sometimes even found myself judging them. And looking back, I now realize that those people represented parts of myself that I had not yet fully embraced, parts I was still avoiding, and parts I still felt like I didn't quite deserve. And if I convinced myself that they were somehow different from me, I never had to risk finding out if I actually belonged with them.

Neurodivergence Masking And Social Fear

SPEAKER_00 5:52

I also think that my neurodivergence plays a very important role in this conversation. Many neurodivergent people spend years of their life feeling different without ever fully understanding why. And so you learn to mask and adapt and study social gatherings to see if you can figure out how to replicate them. I often felt like everyone in the world got a handbook on how to make friends and belong, except for me. And when you spend that many years of your life feeling different, a part of you starts to believe it as fact that you're never going to find a place where you truly belong. I know that experience well, and I think it has shaped many of my opportunities for connection. I'm very happy to report that the really beautiful thing is that over time these things began to change for me. Not because I finally figured out how to make everyone like me, because realistically, that's not possible, nor is it even probably desirable. But I did begin to learn how to more deeply connect with myself. The more I healed, the more I understood myself, the more I accepted myself and practiced self-care, the more deserving I felt, the less othered I began to feel. And then something happened that really surprised me.

Healing Makes Connection More Available

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Connection became more available because I became more available for connection. I found community through the Imago Professional Organization, which I've talked about on previous episodes. And I found community through my nervous system work and through other healing communities that I'm a part of. And while I still think I am in the process of finding my people, because I'm still very much in the process of finding more and more of myself, I have experienced more belonging in the past few years than I ever have in my entire life.

Podcasting And The Need For Feedback

SPEAKER_00 7:25

I was recently thinking about a part of my podcasting journey from last year, right around the time I had recorded my 40th episode. Now, before I recorded any podcast episodes, I had been in a forum of podcasters and someone had said that she had just released her 40th episode. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, she has 40 episodes, she's a real podcaster. And so last year, when I was approaching my own 40th episode, I thought to myself, I guess I must be a real podcaster too. And if you're interested in hearing more about that journey, you can listen to the episode I recorded back then, which is called Becoming Who You Already Are Identity, Growth, and Celebrating Along the Way. And now, as I'm sitting here recording episode number 74, I realize that I still haven't fully embraced my podcaster identity. And I now know that the reason for that has very little to nothing to do with the number of episodes I've recorded or the number of downloads that I have. It's actually all about connection. I record these episodes, and as I've said before, it often feels like I'm setting them off into a black void. I mostly don't know who's listening. I don't know if the same people come back week after week, and I mostly don't know if people feel connected to anything that I'm sharing. And what recently became really clear to me is that I am longing for connection here too. And now that I have that clarity, I now also have a choice. I can let my fear convince me to stay on the sidelines, which it often has in my past, or I can feel the fear, recognize it, let myself know that I'm actually safe enough, and choose to move towards the connection that I'm really longing for. This doesn't mean that it doesn't feel scary at all, but I know how much it matters to me. And because it's so aligned with who I am and what I truly want, I'm choosing connection. I'm in the process of building a community where people can come together to feel safe, seen, and supported. A place we can come together and work on having a better relationship with ourselves and also with everyone around us. Because the more I experience the healing power of community, the more I'm inspired to help create

Learning To Choose Connection

SPEAKER_00 9:17

it. So I don't think that the connection paradox is something that we can solve once and for all. I think it's something that we can learn to navigate if we become aware of it. We can have greater awareness of when we're longing to experience that sense of belonging and when we're trying to protect ourselves from that fear of not belonging and how we might be acting in ways that are actually getting in our way of what we're truly wanting. And at this point in my life, I'm not sure that belonging is something that we just find or stumble into. I think it's something that we learn to gradually become more and more available for, even if being in connection has hurt us at some point in our past. And I also believe that the more we know ourselves and accept ourselves and take care of ourselves, the more we allow ourselves to be seen, the better chance we have at finding our people and at having our people find us. And I think there's something incredibly hopeful about that. And I hope there's something in today's conversation that feels hopeful for you too.

Take One Step And Closing

SPEAKER_00 10:10

As our time comes to a close, I ask you to keep listening for just a few more moments. Because I want to thank you for showing up today. And I want to leave you with an invitation as you hit stop and move back out into the world on your own unique wellness journey. In order to move from where you are today to the place where you want to be, the path may seem long or unclear or unknown. And I want you to know that if that seems scary or daunting or downright terrifying or anything else, that is totally okay. Know that you do not have to create the whole way all at once. We don't travel a whole journey in one stride. And that is why my invitation to you today is to take a step, just one. Any type, any size, in any direction. It can be an external step that can be observed or measured, or it could be a step you visualize taking in your mind. It can be a step towards action or towards rest or connection or self-care or whatever step makes sense to you. I invite you to take a step today because getting to a place that feels better, more joyful, more connected than the place where you are today is possible for everyone, including you, and even when depression is in your bed. If today's episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you can be notified when each weekly episode gets released. I encourage you to leave a review and reach out to me on social media at trish.sanders.lcsw. Your feedback will help guide future episodes, and I love hearing from you. Also, please share this podcast with anyone who you think may be interested or who may get something from what I have shared. Until the next time we connect, take care of yourself and take a step.