[Steel Magnolia]

Hello 4s,

I have a 4-fix, and for the longest time in my life, I have felt like I was "created differently." I think I've had this belief from a very young age. Whenever people have said things like, "Everyone in this world is different", I would often say, "Yeah, but I'm really, *really* different. I don't think I'm normal." These same people would often say, "What is normal, anyway? There's no such thing as normal." My thought was, "Normal is what you are." I often saw myself as a misfit, and was very misunderstood. I just knew, always knew, that I stood out like a sore thumb. I wanted friends, but only those who were willing to understand and accept the real me, just as I am. I knew I was seen as a "freak", and yet I never gave into peer pressure to compensate for being a "freak". Not once that I can recall.

Does anyone else here feel the same way, that they were born fundamentally different from everyone else? I have only just remembered how pervasive that idea has been for all these years, despite knowing it all this time.

 

[Mizmar]

Four is my heart fix too, and I relate to everything you said in the first paragraph except the part about sticking out like a sore thumb. I've tended to be invisible to people, which is just the way I like it. Much of the time people forget I'm there or never noticed I was there in the first place.

 

[goodgracesbadinfluence]

Whenever people have said things like, "Everyone in this world is different", I would often say, "Yeah, but I'm really, *really* different. I don't think I'm normal." These same people would often say, "What is normal, anyway?

My best friend ALWAYS used to say that exact line to me when I was 13/14 and felt super out of place! Ha!

But yeah, I feel super different too. My emotions, thoughts, interests, passions, etc. are really different from others'. I've always (from what I know) been seen as weird, but somehow people liked me nonetheless. I've been really lucky in that respect, but I've had difficulties forming deep bonds over meaningful activity or even finding friends similar to myself. In every group of friends I have, there's always something I have to hide.

 

[Subtle Murder]

Hello 4s,

I have a 4-fix, and for the longest time in my life, I have felt like I was "created differently." I think I've had this belief from a very young age. Whenever people have said things like, "Everyone in this world is different", I would often say, "Yeah, but I'm really, *really* different. I don't think I'm normal." These same people would often say, "What is normal, anyway? There's no such thing as normal." My thought was, "Normal is what you are." I often saw myself as a misfit, and was very misunderstood. I just knew, always knew, that I stood out like a sore thumb. I wanted friends, but only those who were willing to understand and accept the real me, just as I am. I knew I was seen as a "freak", and yet I never gave into peer pressure to compensate for being a "freak". Not once that I can recall.

Does anyone else here feel the same way, that they were born fundamentally different from everyone else? I have only just remembered how pervasive that idea has been for all these years, despite knowing it all this time.

Yes. This pretty much sums up exactly how I've always felt. Especially the bit about being a misfit and feeling misunderstood. However, I don't see my being different as a negative, necessarily. Maybe when I was in high school, because I could see how I didn't fit into any one social group. But as I have gotten older I've come to embrace this feeling of being different (whether or not I actually am different is another issue entirely, but I've had people tell me they were perplexed by me because they couldn't figure me out) because I realise that I don't really want to feel the same as everyone else.

 

[Transcendence]

Totally relate to the entire OP post. Born into the wrong family, went to the wrong school, everything I did was wrong, no one understood my personality and so on. Nothing felt like it fit.

I've accustomed myself to it now, but it doesn't mean that I'm fully content. Not yet anyways.

 

[RepairmanMan Man]

Speaking as a 4-fixer, yes, painfully so, but I'll qualify that by saying that I didn't feel this way until I suffered from mass peer rejection grades 3-6. My mother exacerbated this by telling me, "You don't want to be just like everyone else, do you?"

I really felt the pressure to be the "freak" and eventually took pride in how unlike everyone else I really was. It was to the point that even looking at myself in a class photo or something would elicit, "OMG, I look like such a bizarre monster". Decades later, I have no idea why I saw that.

I don't know if that created or simply activated my 4-fix. I can recall a time when I felt happy, un-self-conscious, and eager to interact with others; being "normal" wasn't part of the picture. That's kind of why I figure I'm not a Core 4.

 

[heaveninawildflower]

I can relate to some of this. I never seen myself as a freak though. More of a misfit. Because my parents were so absorbed in their addictions and fighting I had to learn to fend for myself so I took on a very tough girl image. So most kids left me alone in school. I felt different in that I felt that I got stuck with a cursed life and everyone else had a normal life. I felt like I was the parent growing up and I never got to be a child. But I learned how to survive the chaos and I became strong because of it.

 

[Steel Magnolia]

Totally relate to the entire OP post. Born into the wrong family, went to the wrong school, everything I did was wrong, no one understood my personality and so on. Nothing felt like it fit.

I've accustomed myself to it now, but it doesn't mean that I'm fully content. Not yet anyways.

That is so me!!!!!

These days, I'm okay with being different- for the most part. But when I see people getting things that I've always wanted, and that I've worked very hard to attain but have been unable to get, then I am envious of those people. I want health and happiness, like others get to have. And I despair that I will never get either one of those things. In those areas, I want to be like "everyone else."

 

[unico]

I didn't feel different when I was really young, other than assuming I was stupid. I was autistic and didn't really compare myself to others other than noticing I was criticized more and rewarded less. When I came to see how different I was I sometimes emphasized it, but more just playing with different elements of myself for my own sake. I didn't really care if others thought I was different or not. I knew I was, sometimes it seemed like a good thing and sometimes it seemed like a bad thing. I find human beings amazing and fascinating creatures so to me everyone really is unique and different and I don't mean that as a platitude. I feel confident in my differences and still feel I'm alike enough to confide in some open-minded people and to have intensely close relationships and that's good enough for me.

 

[AngelOnHerFlight]

I felt like an alien in preschool.

 

[lactosecat]

I had always felt that I was just so different from everybody around me, including my friends.
Don't really know how to explain, but it's more similar to feeling like a cat around a bunch of dogs. I never thought that I was a "freak" or a "weirdo", just a person who perceives things in a tremendously different way.

 

[Knight_In_Rags]

Does anyone else here feel the same way, that they were born fundamentally different from everyone else? I have only just remembered how pervasive that idea has been for all these years, despite knowing it all this time.

4s feel like that. That's part of who they are.

 

[emerald sea]

i know what it's like to feel like a misfit everywhere. no matter how well you get along with others, no matter how much people like you, that feeling never leaves you. making friends and getting along isn't difficult but the internal sense of isolation is everpresent. if you're like me, it's a strange combination of liking it that way and hating it that way...you really have no desire to be like everyone else and feel like your psyche would be destroyed if you had to be someone other than yourself, but the outsider-ness really hurts sometimes also. how do you put into words a loneliness that is both grief and strangely satisfying all at once? and then there is just this sense of expectation that once someone really knows you completely, they would not love you; the being called "weird" or "ethereal" (i still don't even really understand what they mean by that word -?!) all the time; and the difficult reality that too often people don't accept you for who you are and always want to revise you to their (what feels 'skewed' to me) image of what a person should be.

this is why the easiest course of action is just to be a private person and keep a lot inside. people can only see a limited version of what all is there, because no one would understand if they saw all of it.

 

[audrey551]

People usually perceive me as withdrawn and quiet. They say that I look like I'm not there, in the moment. Some say that I look more dead than alive...I wouldn't say different...defective would describe it better. Not having the right clothes, the right house, the right face...Being ugly somehow, existing on the margin of things. Envious of the spontaneity of others, of their ability to truly enjoy life. Being ashamed of being ashamed.

There is a part of me that tries to cover this suffering with things like - at least you care deeply about people, you are a sensitive, at least you can do this or that....but it's such a changeable little fart of a thing-such a fleeting image, because I know at some other level that I'm a lame and pretentious little creature....

Don't know if I'm a 4 but it does seem like a big part of my personality. I know I definitely don't take any pride in feeling like this, so I don't identify with that part of the type.

 

[Aqualung]

I spent the first 30+ years of my life trying to assimilate. Trying to be like everyone else. It was impossible & frustrating. I thought something was wrong with me. My personality was not predictable enough for mainstream lemmings so I was either invisible or confusing to them. I've come to realise that for reasons I'll never understand, it was meant to be. I think a lot of us make our own path because there is no other. I'm at peace with it now, one of the perks of growing old I guess. But for the rest of my life I will be reminded how different I am everytime I leave the house.

 

[Chipps]

I am different.

Im not snowflaking either.

I've always felt like I don't belong on this planet.

Like I was made to be apart of a different world.

Like there's somewhere else I'm supposed to be.:sad:

 

[Chipps]

I spent the first 30+ years of my life trying to assimilate. Trying to be like everyone else. It was impossible & frustrating. I thought something was wrong with me. My personality was not predictable enough for mainstream lemmings so I was either invisible or confusing to them. I've come to realise that for reasons I'll never understand, it was meant to be. I think a lot of us make our own path because there is no other. I'm at peace with it now, one of the perks of growing old I guess. But for the rest of my life I will be reminded how different I am everytime I leave the house.

I know what you mean. I used to try to do what other people did thinking that if I did it, I'd become like them and thus "normal". All it did though was make me feel more out of place. More alien. I remember when I was a teenager, I just said "Screw it", and since then, I've been doing my own thing. I also think my tritype contributes to this feeling or being different. CP 6w5 is rebellious, 1w2 is controlled and rigid, 4w5 is misunderstood. Le sigh.

 

[esoterictimes]

I don't know. I have felt this way my whole life but I think it's everyone else that is weird and not myself. Anywhere you go, people are like carbon robots. Not just because they are all similar. We all should have similarities as humans and things which bond us together. These things don't really exist anymore, and that makes me feel out of place more than anything. There is very little joy out there anymore. It's funny that people more and more see themselves as individuated, yet it's not real. They're just becoming more distanced from each other and stick their heads in their phones, computers, and tvs all day rather than talk to a human being. Humanity is really lost right now in my opinion.

 

[Jade99]

I feel the same way. I always felt like no one understood me. I was always called weird, "special", and was told to come back to earth. I'm just so used to being different that I accepted it and embraced it fully. Plus, i'm too old now to feel, think, and do what everyone else in the world thinks of me and how I should be, think, or feel.

 

[voicetrocity]

I didn't "feel" like I was created differently, I KNEW I was created differently. Being born with the genetic disorder I was, made me realize the fundamental differences between myself and others at a very young age. Sure, I noticed it, but it was never a fixation for me. I observed people, made mental notes of the differences and similarities between myself and others. I figured we all had enough in common that I people would just accept me, and developed a "Take me as I am" mentality; which caused quite a bit of confusion when people couldn't look past my scars enough to realize that we weren't all that different from each other, or when my peers would object to some of the less than stellar aspects of my personality. And yeah, I never gave into peer pressure once at all; my whole mentality was, "If they can't respect me enough to not pressure me, then they aren't worth my time; and why would I want to even associate with someone like that, let alone try and "act" like them?".