Finding my own circle

On masking, connection, and why belonging can look different from what we were taught.

Is it strange to admit that I have never really felt like I fit anywhere?

For a long time, I thought that meant something was deeply wrong with me. If I could not find belonging even among my own people, then surely the problem had to be me.

But I have been sitting with that feeling long enough to start questioning it. And the more I look at it, the more I think it is both more complicated and more common than we tend to admit.

So if you have ever felt like you were too much for one world and not enough for another, this is for you.

Even "Your People" Might Not Feel Like Your People

I have worked in spaces that are supposed to be neurodivergent-friendly. On paper, that should feel like relief. In practice, I still spend so much time drafting messages to join the conversation, second-guessing myself, and quietly deleting them before I send.

The energy can feel loud, fast, and casually intense in a way I cannot quite match: conversations I do not know how to enter, humor that makes me uncomfortable, and a social temperature I can never seem to read correctly. I have been told I come across as “too professional,” as if that were a flaw I was supposed to correct.

I sat with that for days.

The neurodivergent community is vast, and the spectrum is real.

Two people can both be autistic and still experience the world so differently that conversation feels like translation.

What one person finds freeing, like the chaos, the noise, or the no-filter energy, can feel completely overwhelming to another. Neither person is doing it wrong. We are just wired differently, even within the same broad category.

And yet, knowing that does not fully soften the sting of still not fitting, even here.

The Masking Doesn't Stop Just Because the Room Is "Safe"

Here is the part I did not expect: I mask everywhere. Not just at work. Not just with neurotypical friends who have never quite understood me. Everywhere. Even with the people closest to me.

The thing about masking for most of your life is that it stops feeling like a choice. It becomes a reflex. And then one day, you realize you are not even sure where the mask ends.

There is always a version of me doing the math: calculating how I am coming across, monitoring my tone, deciding whether to share something or swallow it. Performing a version of myself that feels just slightly off from whoever I actually am underneath all of it.

And when you finally say the honest thing, whether that means setting a boundary, giving real feedback, or telling someone how you actually feel, it does not always feel like relief. Sometimes it feels like waiting for the impact.

You said it.

You meant it.

And now you are replaying it on a loop, wondering if you said it wrong, if they took it badly, if you damaged something that cannot be repaired. The spiral starts before they have even had a chance to respond.

Your nervous system is not bracing for no reason. That is what happens when you have spent years learning through experience that honesty has a cost. That the real version of you is a risk. Of course your nervous system prepares for fallout. It is trying to protect you the only way it knows how.

Sometimes the only place it feels safe to be unfiltered is somewhere with no immediate social consequences: a journal, a voice memo to yourself, an anonymous corner of the internet. Not because you prefer distance, but because those may be the only places where it feels safe to be fully yourself.

That does not mean you are choosing isolation. It means your nervous system has learned where it does and does not feel safe. If this is where you are right now, it is okay to admit that.

So yes, I have been in ND spaces and still felt like an outsider. I have been in rooms full of people who were supposed to understand, and I still felt the distance. Not because I was doing something wrong, but because safety is not always enough to undo what years of not fitting in have built inside you.

Being "Too Much" and "Not Enough" at the Same Time

Outside of work, I have neurotypical friends. And there is always that person: the one who somehow makes me feel small without ever quite saying anything outright. The one who talks over me when I share something, who does not quite meet my eyes, who leaves me feeling like what I said was not worth the air it took to say it.

I spent a long time around them hoping something would change. Or maybe hoping I would eventually realize I had been wrong for feeling that way. Anything to disprove the insecurity I felt.

But eventually, being with them started to feel strangely isolating, even when there were six of us in the room.

I rarely spend time with them anymore. When I do, I become the friend who is “too busy,” the one who “prefers to be alone.” And maybe part of that is true. But part of it is protection.

It is also a quiet admission that I still have not found my tribe.

I have been that weird kid before: the one who did cosplay in high school, who openly loved anime before that was acceptable, who got bullied for the exact things that made her happy. You learn quickly which parts of yourself are safe to show and which ones are not.

So I tried to stop doing everything that made me “weird.” I became so allergic to that word that I started hiding my interests because the world had taught me they were embarrassing. For years, I felt like I had to mimic what other people liked while quietly longing to meet someone who got it. But when I finally did meet those people, I did not always know how to approach them. I had spent so long pretending not to care that I no longer knew how to admit that I did.

And that hiding does not stop with friends.

The version of me that my family sees is years out of date. They still think pink is my favorite color. Not just a shade of pink. Anything pink, no matter what it is. Every Christmas, I pretend to love these things, then convince myself they are practical. They mean well. I know they do. But there is something quietly exhausting about being loved based on who you used to be rather than who you are.

There is a particular loneliness in being loved, but not quite known. Because somewhere along the way, I should have said my favorite color is purple.

And when they go, “Eh, same thing,” I just go, “Yeah.”

It may sound small from the outside, but to me, it says a lot. It is not just about the color. It is about the quiet dismissal of a detail that mattered to me.

I think a lot of us carry this in small, ordinary ways: the feeling of being seen in broad strokes, but never quite in full.

Putting Yourself Out There Is Already the Brave Part

I sometimes feel like people who “fit in” do not have these problems. Like there is a whole group of people moving through the world without doing this much mental math, as if they were given instructions I never received.

But I do not think that is fully true. I think they may not notice the friction as much because the world was built closer to how they operate. The rest of us feel every mismatch because we have had to. That awareness has a cost, but it also means something.

And here is what I want to say to anyone who is still searching: the fact that you are still trying is not nothing.

It would be so much easier to stop. To decide connection is not for you, build walls, and call them preferences. A lot of people do. But if you are still here, still reaching, still hoping that the next group or the next person might finally feel right, that is courage.

Quiet, unremarkable, under-appreciated courage.

Finding your people is not a single event. It is a long process, and like most real processes, it involves some dead ends. Some people who seemed promising, but the connection did not quite land. Some spaces that looked like home and turned out not to be. That is not failure. That is just how it goes.

And yes, it will get frustrating. Even when you do find people who seem to get you, things will not always be smooth. Good intentions do not prevent misunderstandings. Friction in a relationship is not proof that it is wrong. Sometimes it is just two people figuring out how to meet each other.

One Person. A Little Distance. Less Noise.

Society has a very specific picture of what friendship looks like: weddings, bar nights, group chats, community gatherings, and whatever the latest social thing everyone seems to be doing together. And if you are not in those pictures, it is easy to feel like you are failing at connection somehow. Like a good friend would have shown up. Like a normal person would have just gone.

But the format of friendship is not the same as the depth of it. Some people’s version of intimacy is a long message at midnight, a voice note on a random Tuesday, or a friend in another city who just gets it. That counts. That is real. It just does not photograph as well.

Here is what I have learned about myself: put me in a group, and people start talking to each other while I become a witness to the conversation rather than a part of it. When someone tries to pull me in, I usually feel put on the spot.

When the spotlight is on me, I run multiple scenarios in my head, and people do not always have the time to wait for me to find the words. By the time I know what I want to say, the conversation has usually moved on.

These situations almost never happen when I am with one person. That is how I realized I do better when I interact with one person at a time.

Some of the people I feel most like myself with are friends I rarely see, people who live in other cities, people I talk to more through messages than in person. There is something about the distance, the slower pace, and the one-on-one nature of it that makes it easier to actually show up.

For a long time, I thought that was a limitation, because people often make it seem like struggling in group settings means you are failing socially. Now I think it is just useful information. If connection is the goal, then it matters to know what kind of communication actually lets you be present.

Quality over quantity is a real preference. And for some of us, it is the only approach to connection that actually works. One person who does not require you to perform. One friendship where your particular shape is accepted as the shape you are.

And when you find that, hold on to it. Because even good relationships take work.

They need honesty when things get awkward. They need showing up even when it is easier to disappear. For those of us who have spent so long protecting ourselves by going quiet, choosing to stay and work through something is its own kind of practice.

The right friendships make room for repair, honesty, and change.

Sometimes that means stretching beyond what feels easiest, like showing up in a setting that makes you uncomfortable because it matters to someone you love. Sometimes it means extending patience to friends who have disappointed you because the friendship is still worth tending to.

Still, I Wanted a Circle

Knowing what worked for me did not make the longing go away. I still wanted the group feeling. Not the loud, fast, figure-it-out-yourself kind. The kind I kept returning to in the stories I loved.

In those stories, I started noticing a pattern. There was always a circle of people: quirky, mismatched, occasionally clashing, but grateful for each other. Aware of what each person brought. No need for constant explanation, just room to exist.

I kept reading those stories because I had not lived it yet.

I tried. Different groups, different spaces. And sometimes there was common ground. But the groups I found already had their inside jokes, their shared history, their rhythm. I was always arriving late to something I had not been part of building. The setting was already shaped around other people’s preferences, and the mask went straight back up.

I did not want to arrive late to something already built.

I wanted to build it from the beginning, with people who were also still looking.

So I made a circle. And I left the door open for people still looking.

You Are Not Alone in Feeling Alone

I have been here for three decades. I have gained people I can call friends, but I still have not fully found my people. I am still doing the math more than I would like. I am still, sometimes, erasing the message before I send it.

But I know now that this is not proof that I failed at belonging. It is proof that I am too complex to fit neatly into a box: not the neurotypical one, not the neurodivergent one, not any single community or category.

And I know that somewhere out there, someone is reading this and recognizing themselves in it.

You are not the only one sitting in a room full of people who were supposed to understand, still wondering why it feels like this.

If you feel the same way I do, please hear this clearly: the problem was never that you needed connection differently. You may have needed a different kind of space, a different kind of pace, a different kind of person, and spent a long time in rooms that were never shaped for you.

Your people may exist in smaller, quieter, less obvious forms than you were taught to look for. Finding them might take longer. It might look different. It might be just two people. A little distance. Less noise.

The strangest part? I am a psychologist. I know what masking is. I can explain the spiral, walk you through the neuroscience of why belonging feels the way it does, and sit with someone else while they process exactly what I have described in this article. And I still feel all of it anyway.

Knowing the map does not mean the terrain stops being hard.

If anything, the gap between what I know and what I feel has been its own quiet source of shame for a long time. The idea that I should have this handled. That insight should translate into immunity.

It does not.

And I think that is worth saying out loud, not as a confession, but because if it is true for someone who does this professionally, it is probably true for a lot of people who wonder why understanding themselves has not made things easier yet.

That is part of why I built Unawa Circle, and why I built it as a community rather than a therapeutic center. Because what I kept finding, both in my own life and in the lives of people around me, is that what we needed was not always more clinical language or another framework to apply to ourselves.

Sometimes what we needed was a room where we did not have to explain ourselves from the beginning. A place where the baseline assumption was already, “I get it,” instead of “prove it to me.”

Therapy has its place. But belonging is something different.

For a long time, I could not find a space that offered that. Not a session. Not a structured support group. Just people who were still figuring things out together.

So I made a circle.

It can get easier. But knowing why something hurts does not always make it stop hurting right away. You are allowed to still be in the middle of it.

And in the meantime, you are not alone.

Hindi ka nag-iisa.

Unawa Circle is a free mental health learning and community platform for neurodivergent adults. We are not a clinical service and do not offer therapy. The information in this article is for general educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please reach out to the NCMH Crisis Hotline: 1553. If you are in immediate danger, please contact your local emergency services or hospital emergency department.