Navigating 70 Years of Struggle, Resilience, and Identity in Pursuit of Belonging

I’ve never quite felt like I fit in. At first, I thought this was a failure of mine, a personal weakness, and I tried but mainly failed to fit in where I could. Over many years, I have learned to accept my uniqueness and, more recently, view it as a strength.

The beginning age 4

My first day of having to go for school dinners found me in a meltdown. I was fine with the daily routines of the classroom, my calm and ancient teacher, the wooden jigsaws, the tiny bottle of milk at break time, and the fresh flowers in the window.

I went home for lunch for the first few months with one of my three elder brothers. It was a five-minute walk to the safety of the big dining room and the warm stove. Dad would tell stories of his day so far, and Mum would flit in and out to the kitchen with the day’s main meal.

Today, the routine changed. I was due to go to the canteen with most of the other children for lunch, but I refused. I sat down in the classroom, cried, and would not move. I didn’t belong in a noisy canteen with older children picking on me. I belonged at home with my family.

Eventually, somebody phoned my father. My father came into school and asked me if I had a friend I wanted to sit by. He then took my hand and led me into the canteen, which had 100 children and crazy acoustics you’d expect in a tin shed. He installed me next to a girl I felt safe with and continued with his day. I felt safe with him; he could help me fit into that canteen culture.

Throughout my first decade of life, I received messages that something was wrong with me. I was too sensitive and too needy, and I should man up. I didn’t fit in with my family, and at school, I was the posh boy (probably gay) who lived in a big house and had the Bishop round to tea.

Medical abuse at age 11

Around the age of eleven, I received official recognition that I didn’t fit in and that something was wrong with me. Mum took me to the doctor because I was hyperactive, appeared anxious, and suffered from stomach aches, which others may have viewed as bogus.

The doctor prescribed strong barbiturates as I transitioned into Grammar school. These had a devastating effect on me. My achievements at school began to plummet. I changed from the annoying, noisy, engaged, bright spark to a lethargic daydreamer.

It was clear that the school could handle this drugged, sedated version of myself much better than the creative, free spirit that I knew was lurking inside. When I came off the drugs, I had learned my lesson. I spent the rest of my school career daydreaming and fitting in by being disinterested.

When I got home and was in my head during the day, I was still the creative, free spirit I recognized myself to be. I wrote songs, music, and stories and became absorbed in drawing and painting. I can count the times a teacher recognized my creative spark on the fingers of one hand. It didn’t fit in with the curriculum, so it was invalid.

Finding a life-work balance; leaving home at age 18

I scraped through a single A Level in Maths. Dreams of drama college or any further education disappeared. Most of my friends went to university. I took my guitar to London with the idea of becoming a rockstar.

Working in factories, I clearly didn’t fit in. My aura of poshness set me apart. I couldn’t fit in with the accepted racism and misogyny of the workforce. I was lonely. I had nothing in common with the people around me. I no longer had contact with my group of friends from school.

My life split in two. I moved into office work because I was good with numbers and, alongside that, became part of the London Jazz scene. Over a period of ten years, I moved through five jobs that were only there to support my music career. I sought out Jazz musicians I admired and asked them for lessons. I played in a Function band for one or two nights on most weekends.

Moving to Bristol, I slotted into the jazz scene there and gigged two nights a week to support myself through university training to be a teacher. Education and music were the two threads that sustained me through the rest of my life.

A sense of vocation age 28

I chose teaching because it allowed me to combine work and music. I developed a passion for child-centred education. I loved everything related to cooperative learning, problem-solving, and discovery approaches.

I found my niche briefly working in a residential therapeutic community for 50 boys who had nowhere else to go. It was a unique organisation that combined a psychodynamic approach to therapy with a child-centred approach to education. I could wear rainbow-striped jumpers and jeans to work, which suited me well.

At this point, my working life became my passion, and I abandoned my musical career just as it was about to take off. I had found a sense of vocation, but how could I make it work?

The job didn’t fit in with my family life, which included two small children. I left, and we all spent six months in a campervan, looking for somewhere to live and fit in.

Teaching and playing music performed a merry partner’s dance in my life. Age 37
I went back into teaching, but Maggie Thatcher had begun the unstoppable process of turning education into a tool of the state aimed at compliance and uniformity. My heart was no longer in it, and my desire to nurture each child’s unique spark and interests no longer found a place to fit in.

Here began a pattern of being sacked or resigning from teaching jobs. Parents and children loved the way I worked, but I didn’t fit in with the curriculum, school policy or OFSTED requirements.

I would be welcomed into jobs as I showed passion and enthusiasm, and then I would be let go because I didn’t comply. The most difficult times were when I engaged with school management and tried to bring about change. I met with resistance and eventually resigned.

This constant pattern of being welcomed and then rejected took its toll. I thought something was wrong with me and that my inability to fit in was a flaw in my personality make-up.

My first escape route at age 46

I was dissatisfied, not earning enough, and not fulfilling my full potential as a teacher when a friend and business psychology coach fed me breakfast one morning and expressed his frustration at my constant moaning.

Rather than collude with my negative self-talk, he helped me create a vision of my future.

The next day, I handed in my notice, and my self-employment as a freelance musician and motivator in schools and business began.

I was embracing the Maverick

For thirteen years, I embraced the Maverick. I ran a thriving music and team-building business on my own terms. I had begun to see my uniqueness as a strength rather than a weakness. I told businesses and schools how I would work with them without compromise. They wouldn’t book me if they didn’t trust me to deliver what they wanted

I travelled across Europe, working with hundreds of thousands of people of all ages. I created irresistible connections in groups and aimed to instill passion and commitment to life in all I worked with.

A peak moment for me was when I was working with 11-year-olds singing in four-part harmony in a one-hour workshop. The OFSTED inspector came in with her clipboard and began to make notes. She soon abandoned the clipboard and reached for tissues. She was in tears. She remained for the whole session, although she was not required to do so.

She left me with one word as she passed on the way out.
“Wonderful”

All good things come to an end at age 59

The economic climate changed, creative workshops fell out of favour, and I realised I needed to sell my business and move on.

I fell back on my teaching qualifications and started teaching in the supply field, seeking short-term contracts. It was not a great move. I had tasted freedom and the ability to be myself for over 13 years. I needed to give something back and feel a connection to my authentic self again.

The neurodiversity movement calls it masking. It’s exhausting to hold my tongue, pretend to accept the status quo, follow others’ instructions rather than my own intuition, and fulfil others’ needs while burying my own.

I retrained, qualified as a counsellor and set up my private practice. This has mostly given me exactly the space I need. I am self-employed and can work with my clients however and whenever I see fit.

Ongoing Maverick tendencies from age 66

However, what I need to do now is accept that I will never fit in, and that is ok. I go on courses and feel that maverick energy, the one who confronts the one who does it differently, the one seeking the cracks in the carapace.

I can accept that as part of myself. My customers are satisfied; they find my work useful. I no longer need to justify my methods or approaches. I will constantly be creative and innovative in my work, and that is part of who I am.

I am a unique counsellor, and I am sure I am not the only one. If you want a psychotherapist who quotes from textbooks, I would not be your first choice. I will view you as unique as I have learned to view myself.

I have never needed to fit in, but I find it liberating that I can now distinguish where I do fit in and where I don’t. This gives me the ability to choose how to behave rather than being driven by old, stale patterns of behaviour.

The Journey continues for us all.

The drive to discover and live as our authentic selves must be something we are all hardwired to do, but we also face evolutionary pressure to adapt and survive.

My learning is to become aware of those two sometimes conflicting pressures and find a way to keep them in balance. The Maverick expressing the authentic self is not always appropriate, nor is the shrinking violet of the adapted survivor or the masked self.

I am still diving deeper through therapy to discover the subtleties of my authentic self but also to explore my history of masking and how, when, and why my adaptive survival strategies kicked in.

However you approach self-awareness, focus on what makes you unique. This is what the world requires of us.

Humanity is doomed if we all cower in the face of social and cultural pressures and norms. We are creative beings with unique insights and skills, and the world needs that Maverick energy right now.