Square Peg, Round Hole: The Journey to Self-Acceptance

Have you ever felt as though everyone else seems to know how to fit into the world, while you’re standing on the outside wondering what you’re doing wrong?

I know that feeling very well.

For much of my life, I felt like a square peg in a round hole.

I could be surrounded by people and still feel completely alone. I could join in with conversations, smile, laugh and appear perfectly fine on the outside, while inside I felt as though I didn’t truly belong anywhere.

For years, I thought the answer was to try harder to fit in.

I changed parts of myself. I worried about what people thought of me. I questioned myself constantly and wondered why things that seemed to come naturally to other people often felt so difficult to me.

What I didn’t understand then was that trying to fit somewhere you’re not meant to fit can slowly make you lose sight of who you really are.

It has taken me many years to understand that being different was never something I needed to fix.

Have You Ever Felt Like You Don’t Belong?

Feeling different can be incredibly lonely.

You might walk into a room and immediately feel as though everybody else belongs there except you.

You may watch other people form friendships easily and wonder why you find it more difficult.

Perhaps you’ve spent years thinking:

What’s wrong with me?

Why can’t I just be like everybody else?

Why do I always feel different?

Why does nobody seem to understand me?

I’ve asked myself versions of those questions many times.

And when you repeatedly feel as though you don’t fit in, it’s very easy to start believing the problem must be you.

So you begin changing yourself.

You become quieter.

Or perhaps louder.

You hide certain interests.

You agree with things you don’t really agree with.

You become whatever version of yourself seems most likely to be accepted.

And after a while, something strange happens.

You may become so focused on being acceptable to everybody else that you stop asking whether you’re being true to yourself.

The Exhaustion of Trying to Fit In

Trying to fit in is exhausting.

I know because I spent years doing it.

I would analyse conversations afterwards and wonder whether I’d said something wrong.

I’d worry about whether people liked me.

I’d notice the slightest change in someone’s behaviour and immediately wonder whether I’d caused it.

And sometimes I would change myself simply because I thought that was what I was supposed to do.

Looking back, I can see how much energy I spent trying to become somebody I thought other people might find easier to accept.

But the more I tried to fit in, the further away I moved from myself.

That’s the problem with pretending.

Even when people accept the version you’re showing them, somewhere inside you know they’re not actually seeing all of you.

And that can be incredibly lonely.

I Thought There Must Be Something Wrong With Me

There were times in my life when I genuinely questioned myself.

Why did I feel things so deeply?

Why did I sometimes feel uncomfortable in situations that seemed completely normal to everybody else?

Why did I have this feeling that there was something more to life than what I could physically see?

Why did I feel as though I was searching for something without knowing what I was looking for?

When you don’t understand yourself, it’s easy to assume you’re somehow getting life wrong.

I spent a long time doing exactly that.

Today, I understand myself much better.

I’ve learned to trust my intuition more. I’ve developed spiritually. I’ve experienced difficult relationships, grief, healing, enormous change and periods where I’ve had to rebuild myself almost from the ground up.

Those experiences have taught me something I wish I had understood much earlier:

Feeling different doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you.

The Childhood Feeling I Never Forgot

One memory from childhood has stayed with me throughout my life.

I was about six years old, standing in my mum’s kitchen, and I remember very clearly thinking:

“I want to go home.”

But I was already home.

Even as a child, I remember being confused by that feeling.

If this was home, where exactly was I trying to go?

I couldn’t explain it then.

As I grew older and developed my own spiritual beliefs, I came to interpret that feeling differently. For me, it became connected with a sense that there was something beyond this physical life — a deeper feeling of home that wasn’t necessarily about a house or a place.

That’s my personal spiritual understanding of that childhood memory.

I don’t believe everyone who feels different is necessarily experiencing a spiritual awakening, and I wouldn’t want somebody to think that loneliness or not fitting in automatically means something spiritual is happening.

Sometimes feeling different simply means we’re still discovering who we are and where we feel most comfortable being ourselves.

But for me, spirituality eventually became an important part of making sense of my own journey.

When I Stopped Asking, “What’s Wrong With Me?”

One of the biggest changes in my life came when I gradually stopped asking:

“What’s wrong with me?”

and started asking:

“Why am I trying so hard to belong somewhere that doesn’t feel right?”

Those are very different questions.

The first assumes you’re the problem.

The second allows you to consider whether perhaps the environment, relationship or group simply isn’t right for you.

Not every room is your room.

Not every person is your person.

Not every friendship is meant for you.

And not everybody is going to understand you.

That doesn’t mean you have failed.

You Don’t Have to Be Everyone’s Cup of Tea

I actually find this quite freeing now.

I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.

And neither are you.

Nobody is.

There will always be people who misunderstand you.

Some people won’t like your personality.

Some won’t understand your choices.

Some may think you’re too quiet, too loud, too emotional, too spiritual, too independent, too different or simply not their kind of person.

That’s okay.

You don’t like everybody you meet either.

Why do we put ourselves under so much pressure to achieve something that isn’t even possible?

Self-acceptance doesn’t mean believing everybody should like you.

It means reaching a point where you don’t need everybody to like you in order to like yourself.

That distinction changed a lot for me.

Being Different Isn’t the Same as Being Broken

I think many of us grow up receiving messages about who we’re supposed to be.

How we should look.

How successful we should become.

What kind of relationship we should have.

What our lives should look like by a certain age.

And when our lives don’t follow that pattern, we can start believing we’ve fallen behind.

But life isn’t a competition and there isn’t one correct template.

Your path doesn’t have to resemble somebody else’s to have value.

Your personality doesn’t need correcting simply because it doesn’t suit everybody.

Your interests don’t need justification.

And you don’t have to become less of yourself to make somebody else more comfortable.

The world already has everybody else.

It needs you to be you.

Finding Your People

I used to think belonging meant fitting in with lots of people.

I don’t anymore.

I’d rather have a small number of people around me with whom I can genuinely be myself than a room full of people who only know the edited version.

Your tribe doesn’t have to be huge.

It simply needs to be genuine.

The right people won’t necessarily agree with everything you say.

They won’t always make the same choices you do.

They may have completely different personalities, beliefs and backgrounds.

But healthy connection leaves room for difference.

I wrote about this recently in The Colours of Friendship — the idea that we don’t need to be identical to belong together.

In fact, sometimes our differences are exactly what make a friendship richer.

Stop Trying to Earn Belonging

Belonging shouldn’t require you to abandon yourself.

You shouldn’t have to continually prove that you’re worthy of somebody’s friendship.

You shouldn’t have to tolerate behaviour that hurts you because you’re frightened of being alone.

And you shouldn’t have to become whatever somebody else wants simply so they’ll keep you in their life.

I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.

There were times when my desire to be loved, accepted or understood meant I tolerated things I shouldn’t have tolerated.

I ignored my own feelings.

I doubted myself.

I gave people far too many chances.

And sometimes I stayed in situations long after they had stopped being good for me.

That journey — from losing myself to beginning to choose myself again — became an important part of my memoir, Out of the Shadows: From Despair to Self-Acceptance and Love.

Writing it made me realise just how often we can spend our lives trying to earn acceptance from other people while withholding it from ourselves.

Self-Acceptance Doesn’t Mean You Stop Growing

There is something I think is really important to say here.

Accepting yourself doesn’t mean deciding:

“This is just who I am, so I’ll never change.”

We should grow.

We should learn.

We should apologise when we’re wrong.

We should recognise unhealthy behaviours in ourselves and work on them.

We should remain curious about who we’re becoming.

But there is a difference between growing because you value yourself and changing because you believe the real you isn’t good enough.

Growth should expand you.

It shouldn’t erase you.

What I Would Tell the Younger Me

If I could sit beside that younger version of myself — the little girl standing in the kitchen wondering why she wanted to go “home” — I think I’d tell her:

You aren’t going to feel like this forever.

I’d tell her she isn’t strange.

I’d tell her she doesn’t need to understand everything yet.

I’d tell her there will be difficult chapters, but there will also be moments she couldn’t possibly imagine.

I’d tell her that one day, some of the things she feels ashamed of being different for will become the very things she values about herself.

I’d tell her to stop chasing people who make her feel as though she has to earn a place beside them.

I’d tell her:

Your people will find you.

And perhaps most importantly:

You will eventually find yourself.

Your Difference May Be Your Direction

Sometimes the thing that makes us feel different also points us towards the life that suits us better.

Perhaps you’ve always been sensitive.

Perhaps you’re deeply intuitive.

Perhaps you question things other people accept without thinking.

Maybe you need more time alone.

Perhaps you’re creative, unconventional or drawn towards subjects that the people around you don’t understand.

You don’t have to turn every difference into a special gift.

But you also don’t need to automatically treat difference as a flaw.

Get curious about yourself.

What matters to you?

What makes you feel alive?

Where do you feel most yourself?

Who do you feel peaceful around?

What kind of life actually suits you?

Those questions matter far more than whether your life looks impressive to somebody else.

If you’re exploring your intuition or spiritual development, you can browse the Age of Awakening courses, where I teach subjects including mediumship, Reiki, psychic development and other areas of spiritual learning.

But whatever path you follow, I believe the aim should always be greater trust in yourself — not dependence on somebody else to tell you who you are.

Stop Trying to Fit the Wrong Hole

Perhaps the problem was never that you were a square peg.

Perhaps you were simply spending too much time trying to force yourself into a round hole.

That’s certainly how I see parts of my own life now.

I spent years wondering why I couldn’t fit.

Today, I ask a different question:

Why would I want to fit somewhere that requires me to stop being myself?

There are places where you will belong.

There are people who will understand parts of you that others never did.

There will be friendships where you don’t have to rehearse every sentence before you speak.

There will be moments when you realise you’re no longer desperately searching for acceptance.

And gradually, you may discover something even more important.

You don’t need to fit everywhere.

You simply need to stop abandoning yourself in the places where you don’t.

Be Proud of Who You’re Becoming

You are allowed to change.

You are allowed to outgrow people.

You are allowed to discover new interests, beliefs and dreams.

You are allowed to decide that something which once suited you no longer does.

And you are allowed to take up space as yourself.

Not the version designed to please everybody.

Not the version that never says no.

Not the version that hides everything unusual or interesting.

You.

The real you.

You may always be a square peg in certain round holes.

I know I probably will be.

The difference is that these days, I’m no longer trying to squeeze myself into them.

And that has brought me far more peace than fitting in ever did.

With love,

Nikki xx

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Continue Your Journey

If this article resonates with you, you may also enjoy The Colours of Friendship, where I explore belonging, individuality and the beauty of our differences.

If you’re experiencing deeper inner or spiritual changes, read my guide to Spiritual Awakening.

You can also explore the Age of Awakening courses for spiritual and personal development at your own pace.

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