Why Being Unrelatable Is Actually Your Greatest Strength

The Real Fear Behind "Being Unrelatable"

On a mentorship call, one of the participants shared how she was excited to pivot her business from copywriting to include more of what she loved: astrology and spirituality. But at the same time, she said, she feared being unrelatable; that her interests in the esoteric would be too weird for her audience, that people would not understand her, and that she would feel like the odd one out.

I remember experiencing this fear. I feared if I spoke about my passions, esoteric and ‘weird’ as I perceived them to be, I would be unrelatable, misunderstood and seen as strange. In particular, I felt these fears about applying my way of seeing the world - through a spiritual, unconventional lens - to the topics I was skilled in - career shifts, personal development, the business arena.

Except those fears of being unrelatable or misunderstood were not my actual fears, and they were not my colleague’s actual fears either. What I was truly afraid of was being “cast out”; thrown from human society for being too odd, too disruptive, or too much of a problem.

Shame as a Survival Mechanism

Back in 2019 I sent an email newsletter to my audience about shame. It featured 10 blocks to creativity I had stumbled upon in a student’s work. I identified 50% of those blocks were about the shame of being cast out: of not fitting in, of being seen as different, and being punished by the collective for that stance.

This shame is a survival mechanism. We need each other to survive, whether that’s as a child needing our caregivers’ nurturing, or as an adult needing respect, connection and community with others. To survive physically and thrive psychologically we require each other, and to do anything which is perceived as risking the security of those relationships is - understandably - given short shrift by our psyche.

How the "Village" Shaped Our Fear of Difference

Being unrelatable runs the risk of being cast out, at least by those people who once thought they understood you, knew you, and were on the same page as you. It is to remove relationships - to ‘un-relate’ - and that means removing yourself from a network that could help you survive and thrive. 

And while our first understanding of this network is our immediate caregivers, it soon expands to encompass more family members, friends, then our local community. It becomes a ‘village’ to which we belong. For tens of thousands of years this village would’ve been a physical location as well as a network grouping. I grew up in a village; I recognised nearly everyone within that small area, and knew many by name. I knew every kid in my class, and their siblings; I knew what their parents did; I knew what was expected of us as we grew into our teenage years.

I knew as well what it was like to be singled out as different in that village - to be unrelatable. I have a distinct memory of sitting in our primary school leavers’ assembly and my name being given specific mention because I was going to a secondary school no-one else would attend. I felt all eyes on me; I went hot, then cold; I felt tears forming. It was a small incident, and yet so many of us have these moments where it becomes clear to us, internally or otherwise, that We Are Different. There should be no shame in that - but there it is, a survival mechanism hanging around to protect us from losing our network and the precious resources it provides through accepting and caring for us.

When the Village Goes Global: Unrelatability in the Social Media Age

And now, we have a ‘village’ that far outstrips Dunbar’s number or any other manageable conceptualisation of community. You can rapidly gain a following of hundreds, thousands, millions of people on social media; what you say and do can be seen by people across the world; you do not have the option of moving a few miles down the road and beginning again if your ‘village’ decides to drive you out with flaming torches. The network from which we may be forcibly removed for our difference has expanded, and so too has the fear of breaking relationships that can help us survive and thrive.

Our awareness of the scale of humanity, the sheer numbers of people who may have an opinion on what we say, think, and do, is compounded by our increased awareness of all the times in history and contemporary society where people perceived as different have been cast out and punished. The European witch trials explode into my mind, or the ongoing casual oppression of our Black, Indigenous, trans, and queer siblings all over the world. As a small child in a little English village, the most frightening experience I had was of being singled out in a school assembly; now, watching the news, I witness threats, beatings, violence, and murder of those who are deemed ‘unrelatable’ by a community that may have been meant to love them. We know, in our bones, that by expressing our difference the risk is high and the threat of losing our network is real; ask any queer friend who has come out who they lost in the process and you will be saddened by the answer. Our fear of being unrelatable is grounded in witnessed and lived experience of how people who hate difference in themselves treat those who they perceive as different, and so shame tries to protect us, make us stay the same, keep the peace, and remain in the status quo.

Except there is a reason you wish to step into the new and uncharted. There is a reason you, out of all the people you know, are interested in the unusual, the disruptive, the edges of the world. There is a reason you are as you are. 

Why You're Drawn to the Unconventional

There must always be an innovator, an early adopter, a pioneer in every group who reaches out into the world and brings radical ideas back into the community. And maybe, in some instances, that might be celebrated. In earlier times perhaps we would’ve called them pilgrims, adventurers or nomads. Maybe we would’ve identified their role as important if challenging to our ‘village’, perhaps recognising that these pilgrims could obtain wisdom, skills, remedies and power through their adventures that we couldn’t access by staying at home and doing the essential work of tending to everyday life. 

Undoubtedly there would have been tensions, frustrations, heated arguments and hasty letters wondering when this strange young thing was going to return to the fold; but maybe there would have also been a respect for the journey and the unconventional experiences gathered along the way. These pilgrims would have been unrelatable, but maybe that would’ve been useful: they knew things we didn’t, brought inventions we hadn’t heard of, improved our village in ways we couldn’t predict. We would see them as individually successful, in their own way, but more than that we may have identified how their ‘strangeness’ led to collective success through innovation and difference.

I can imagine the closeted pilgrim having the same fears as my colleague and I, the same concerns that they would be cast out and punished for their strangeness. And there would have been these pilgrims who were; who left and did not return, who were chased out, unloved and apparently unrelatable. But luckily that would be the beginning of their story, not the end. 

Because for every village that finds you unrelatable, argues against your being, and casts you out, there will be a village that welcomes you with open arms. Perhaps you’ll be seen as an innovator, bringing valuable difference into the network. Or perhaps you’ll just be like everyone else; a community of unrelatables, waifs and strays who bumped into each other on the road to their new life. 

You Were Meant to Be a Pilgrim

You are as you are because you were meant to be a pilgrim. Maybe you will return to your community, teach them new things, open their eyes to resources and experiences they didn’t have the time or capacity to encounter. Maybe you will discover a new community, a travelling group like those in the Canterbury Tales, who band together for companionship and conversation. I don’t think it really matters. Pilgrims are pilgrims not for the village; they are a pilgrim for their calling, for whatever they call God, for something greater than themselves and the village. While they may appear to be unrelatable to the masses of humanity, they have formed a relationship beyond shame, beyond survival, beyond anything of this material world. They are in relationship with Life itself.

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Being unrelatable isn't a flaw to fix. It's a calling to follow — but callings rarely announce themselves all at once! It happens one step at a time.

If you're ready to reconnect with your spirit and soul, beneath the fear of being cast out, start with Pocket Guru, my free 10-day reset designed to bring you home to yourself. It costs nothing but 10 small moments of your attention - think of it as a small pilgrimage before the bigger one.

If you're ready to build a steadier relationship with your own spiritual practice, Everyday Faith is my 4-week course that helps you weave the sacred into the everyday, so you no longer need permission from the village to believe what you believe.

And if you're ready to stop wondering what your pilgrimage is for and start walking it with a plan, then Wild Success is my signature in-person event that helps you uncover your life's purpose and build the path to live it out loud.

Remember, you are as you are for a reason. These are simply the next steps on the road.

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Who would true valour see,

Let him come hither;

One here will constant be,

Come wind, come weather.

There's no discouragement

Shall make him once relent

His first avowed intent,

To be a pilgrim.

Whoso beset him round

With dismal stories

Do but themselves confound;

His strength the more is.

No lion can him fright,

He'll with a giant fight,

But he will have a right

To be a pilgrim.

Hobgoblin, nor foul fiend,

Can daunt his spirit:

He knows, he at the end

Shall life inherit.

Then fancies fly away,

He'll fear not what men say,

He'll labour night and day

To be a pilgrim.

To Be A Pilgrim, John Bunyan, 1684