Integrated Belonging: How Integrity Overcomes Loneliness
by Anne Marie Vivienne
Is Belonging the Antidote to Loneliness?
“[Researchers] compare the craving of company in socially isolated individuals to hunger states that trigger the search for food. Since different neural circuits are involved in the consumption of food because it is yummy, or because we are hungry, they hypothesize that a similar situation applies to social interactions, and speculate that different neural circuits may be at play when the subject wants social interaction because it is either rewarding (yummy), or because they feel lonely (hungry)”
We crave belonging like we crave food. We need regular, varied, and meaningful human connection as much as we need food––for survival. A healthy human cultivates and feels belonging just as they nourish their bodies with nutritious food and exercise. Our loneliness drives us to look for connection. If we have a sense of belonging, we don’t indulge in isolation, or, on the flip side, in fitting in. In this sense, belonging is the nutrients that we need to thrive and be healthy; fitting in is the quick-fix sugar indulgence.
Real belonging can satiate loneliness. Just as many of us in the developed world have more than enough food, many of us have more than enough connections––maybe too many with social media punctuating our every thought and desire. Many of us fear physical hunger and overeat to numb emotional triggers. We do the same with connections––we fear solitude and misinterpret it as loneliness, so we consume a social cookie and grasp for interactions that aren’t really feeding our souls.
Real belonging can sustain a sense of love and acceptance. Hunger and solitude can make a meal and time with a friend that much sweeter. Real hunger is a heart-breaking and devastating global problem, but for most of us in developed countries, a little bit of hunger is good for us. Perhaps a little bit of solitude is similarly good for us. Frantically reaching out to fit in might not be the best way to create belonging when we’re feeling lonely. If we can feel like we belong, solitude becomes the biological self-care that allows us to integrate whole-heartedly with courage and integrity.
Is Evolution Against Belonging?
“As we have said from the beginning, we think people are built to maximize their own pleasure and minimize their own pain. In reality, we are actually built to overcome our own pleasure and increase our own pain in the service of following society’s norms.”
Just like we’re built to crave sugar, fats, and salts––often to addictive levels––we are built to want people to like us. Having a group to belong to is essential to our survival. The trouble is, just like we have so much food at our fingertips in our developed countries, we have so many groups we try to “fit in” with: family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances, strangers on social media, etc. We end up indulging in so many connections, trying to make everyone like us, only to be starved of real nourishing and meaningful relationships that actually create a sense of belonging.
Is biology and evolution against us as we try to cultivate integrity within ourselves? Perhaps it’s not that our biology wants to keep us from belonging, but that we have more opportunities than ever to connect in our modern and global world? Most middle-way dietitians would say that sugar, fats, and salts won’t kill you if you consume them in moderation. Belonging, sustaining personal integrity to contribute to the group, is a mindful practice when pursued with clarity and intention.
Perhaps our evolution is more selfless than we thought––if we stopped worrying about ourselves and wondering if people accepted, valued, and loved us or not, we might find out who we are and what we can contribute by simply showing up whole, complex, and complete.
Evolution asks us to contribute, not to fit in. Figure out who you are and what you have to offer, and you might be surprised that you already belong.
The Paradox of Belonging
“Belonging is not what we think it is. It’s not having a big posse of friends, having crew, or rolling with a bunch of people...Belonging is being something bigger than yourself, but it’s also the courage to stand alone and belong to yourself above all else...It’s in the research: the opposite of belonging is fitting in––assessing a group of people and changing who you are. True belonging never asks us to change who we are, it demands that we be who we are. If you fit in, you’ve betrayed yourself.”
According to Dr. Brown, if we want to feel that we belong within our families, our circle of friends, and our communities, we first have to belong to ourselves. We have to show up whole, complete, and with integrity. To live integrated lives of belonging we must bring together the parts and elements of ourselves that resonate most purely in order to bind ourselves in right and clean relationships that aren’t forced or corrupted by efforts to fit in.
Just as two notes can resonate in harmony, we can join in the music without changing our own note––when it comes to belonging, the goal is harmony, not unison. The integration sounds right because each note holds its own tone, its own vibration, its own resonance.
We often say that if something has integrity, it is “sound.” A building is “sound” if it is constructed with true angles and relationships. If we want to live integrated lives with true and good relationships of belonging, we must show up as we are without any masks. If a builder mistook us for nail when we were really a screw all along, we would not fit where the builders tried to integrate us. Of course we belong––if we show up as our authentic selves.
How to Belong
“Everything co-exists...That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. To be is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing.
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How do you define self? Yourself? The word belonging imbues a sense of ownership––when you belong, you are a member of something greater than you and you are responsible to and for each other. The etymology of the word belong reveals why we might both long for and be confused by our deep desire to belong––it brings up issues of possession, ownership, control, and authority.
To Whom Do You Belong?
First and foremost, you belong to you. You own your self. Yourself. Who is yourself? What do you love and what do you believe in? How do you own yourself, care for yourself, and become your own authority? How do you belong to yourself? When you think of how a family member or a close friend belongs with you, what does that mean? How do you take responsibility for that other? Apply the same protection and encouragement you would give someone else to yourself first.
Use Thich Nhat Hanh’s compassionate mantra for yourself:
My darling, I am here for you.
If you belong to you, you will have compassion, hope, love, and understanding for yourself. Investigate and accept all of your complexities and your ability to evolve moment to moment. If we can do this for ourselves, we can approach our closest human and communal relationships with integrity that will allow us to integrate and belong with harmony. Hold on to your own note––love it, care for it, understand it.
Integrity is being your whole, complete self; belonging is loving and accepting your whole, complete self.
The Delusion of Independence
“We are made up of the same atoms and the same light signals as are exchanged between pine trees in the mountains and stars in the galaxies.”
Scientifically speaking, we only exist in and through relationship––I am made up of atoms, electrons, genes, DNA, blood, sun, wind, and microbes that are both ancient and new. Yes, my body is me, but it is made of human and inhuman parts. If we are made up of everything else, who is the self? Who is you, and how do you belong to the world of happenings? Yes, you are made up of everything else, and yet you are you––trying to discover your place and relationship and meaning in this world.
There are periods when maybe we have worked so hard to fit in that we no longer belong. Relax. Show up as we are. It’s in our DNA to belong. As we go through life, of course we’ll experience all kinds of rejection, places where we don’t fit due to all sorts of conditions that have nothing to do with our worth and value. To go through life as a social creature means that we will have to continually be true to ourselves in order to find the places we really belong.
Social rejection hurts––really hurts. We want to isolate ourselves and avoid the hurt. Even if we don’t physically isolate ourselves after we’ve been hurt, we might put up masks to protect ourselves from getting hurt again––we isolate ourselves emotionally in a social situation. This is how we end up feeling lonely in a crowd. Chronic loneliness can happen to even the most social and extroverted of us.
We have to show up whole and complete with everyone––not that we always immediately share our deepest, darkest secrets (we shouldn’t), but our willingness to show up will open up an entire room. Our experiences, feelings, and atoms are bouncing around in endless exchange.
Belonging Is an Epic Journey Home
We will always seek resolution––we will always be seeking home, our place of belonging where we can rest as we are without proving we are lovable and worthy of people’s time, thought, and energy. We are on a journey to find home because we always want to feel that we belong––that when we lose our job, go through a divorce, say something unkind, get a bad haircut, or have to sell our home, that we will still feel emotionally at home somewhere with someone and our closest of relations.
If we want to find belonging along this path of life, integrating with integrity is essential. Integrating with what we assume people want rather than with what we are will create discord and a false unity. As you seek for the relaxed state of belonging, know that it comes after the long days of climbing, exploring, experimenting, falling, laughing, crying, and showing up even when we feel like failures.
Like all epic stories remind us, we already belong, as we are. Integrity is showing up as our most authentic selves which allows belonging to happen through real integration and harmony.
