If you have a unique personality, you most likely have felt misunderstood. Which doesn’t feel good for anyone.
This might have been something that happened a lot when you were younger and you had to find ways to cope. Maybe you’ve just accepted it as reality.
As someone who can relate, here are 7 signs you’re built a little differently and how you can feel a little less limited in your corner of reality.
1) You over-explain yourself
Let’s get the obvious out of the way!
We’re all prone to overthinking – some more than others – but let’s reflect on what exactly you overthink for a second.
Do you spend some of your time thinking of all the ways you might not make sense to others? And then some more on how to avoid it? Are you hyper aware of everything that you do?
Those might be little signs that you haven’t felt as understood as you could’ve been.
Once you’re aware, try to gravitate towards people that don’t make you feel like you have to write an essay explaining everything you do.
Or people that inspire you to be more like yourself and not overanalyze everything, if that makes sense.
It’s normal to want understanding, but it’s a two-way street. Sometimes, trying to be understood by closed-minded people is a dead-end street.
And feeling understood by the right people makes a huge difference in the way you perceive yourself.
For me, it helped with my self-esteem a lot. I no longer felt like “the weird friend.” But rather, just a friend!
That being said, over-explaining yourself brings a silver-lining, which is that…
2) You know yourself like the back of your hand
And it probably was a journey on its own.
You have to meet yourself in the middle, too. My life changed when I started investing all that time into understanding myself.
I started realizing all the ways I had accepted certain labels that made me question my feelings or intellect. And it was because I would value others’ perspectives more than my own.
We all have different triggers and things we are sensitive about. And if you don’t speak up for yourself, you might subconsciously surround yourself with people who take advantage of that.
Or maybe people who just don’t care at all.
I had to change my relationship with myself to reflect my awareness of this pattern. Mostly by flipping the script on my inner critic.
With time and practice, it became second nature to me to like who I was and validate my own life. And I guess because I changed my mindset, the way I saw people changed as well.
So I started attracting people who appreciated that I liked myself.
When you do this, it also becomes easier to do this next thing…
3) You don’t define yourself based on societal labels
I think labels are a great tool that helps us find common ground between communities. It helps us understand one another in a general sense, so that it creates a foundation of respect.
But I don’t think they are supposed to define you wholly as an individual. Especially if they just make you feel more trapped.
So another sign that you have a unique personality is if you’ve never felt like you could identify as one thing. Perhaps you feel like a blend of everything. Or nothing at all!
In other words, you just do your own thing without a manual and it works.
I’m a believer of having virtues. Because there is a difference between who you are, and how you treat others.
But I also always tell myself that one person’s madness is another person’s grace. So I take every opinion with a grain of salt.
It’s been a balancing act trying to figure out what I value and what I want in my social life. But being open to change and patient makes all the difference.
Related: 14 phrases that instantly make you more likable
4) You live in the present moment
I find that the present is the only place and time where you can be whoever you need to be. Because when you keep up with yourself, time moves with you.
Combined with not needing external validation, I think being present can bring a lot of uniqueness into your life.
And if you’re like me and have ADHD (or any other neurodivergence), you might have had to learn how to stay present for your own sake.
The way I process information and socialize is different. If I had to describe it, I’d say I’m physically a hermit, yet emotionally the world’s biggest social butterfly.
Which can be overwhelming because my needs aren’t consistent. I would often stray from the present so that I could criticize myself elsewhere for being different.
And confusing!
What I’ve learned from being caught in the middle, is that being misunderstood is just as much a part of life as being understood. It’s unavoidable.
So might as well start doing what honours your needs so you can focus on what’s real. Which is the present!
Because I’d rather be weird to everyone and actually like myself, than seem normal and think I like myself.
5) You have a rich inner world
Speaking of something to celebrate, I think the idea of a unique personality can be used to describe someone who wholly accepts themselves more than anything.
And that can create a wonderful friend and universe within you.
In your little piece of heaven, you might have your own variation of a language, routine, or anything else that might confuse people that don’t live inside your head.
And this most likely bleeds into your external life in the form of a unique style, or a sense of humour where you laugh at your own jokes.
And where you don’t speak, you make up for it in listening. Or should I say, observing.
Or creating! There’s a reason why so many artists have such interesting personalities.
Whether it’s a million different hobbies or investing in one-of-a-kind experiences, you’ve found a safe haven to come home to in yourself.
6) Where people don’t understand you, animals do
Nothing says peculiar like feeling more understood by creatures that don’t even speak your language.
Jokes aside, I find that in a world where we are surrounded by industrial innovation and social niceties, what’s natural can seem foreign. And what’s unspoken can be intimidating.
But then when I look at my dog’s face, why does it feel like I can speak to him telepathically?
Maybe it’s because when you’ve learned to love yourself unconditionally, it feels like animals are the only beings that reflect that. And they don’t require you to conform or perform.
In most cases, I find that they’re the only living beings that can seamlessly fit into my complex inner universe.
Same goes for nature in general. Have you ever felt like trees give the best advice?
Or ever been humbled by the way that the ocean moves?
If you can relate, it’s a sign that you have a strong intuition that seeks to understand through feelings rather than words. It’s like being able to understand without needing to comprehend.
Because an ocean doesn’t need to tell me that it could take me 1 on 1. It just shows me and I get it.
Related: Classy AF: 4 zodiacs who are the epitome of elegance
7) You have an affinity for the truth
For me, a huge part of accepting myself was educating myself on why I felt so strange in comparison to others. A large part of that included deep diving into humanity’s history.
Because there’s a reason why everything is the way it is!
For example, the way the beauty industry is skewed and capitalizes off your insecurities by selling you Eurocentric beauty standards. It gave me a whole new way of perceiving my physical form.
Or how colonization has shaped the way we perceive anything out of the norm to “other” certain groups of people.
Our fast-paced society and the media’s neverending spread of information can make this feel pointless or tedious. And going against the norm can be labeled as difficult instead of empowered.
But as history proves itself correct, that’s an expected response to power. And many of the ways we’ve achieved positive social change is through challenging what’s normal.
In whatever form your desire for the truth takes, seeking beyond what you’re told is a huge sign that you have a unique personality.
Because to be frank, we’re all weird and unique, but it’s those that seek change and embody themselves fully that get labelled as strange.
So perhaps being misunderstood is a sign that you’re doing something right.
Having a unique personality can start off feeling like a death sentence. And I think something that all unique people have in common is that it took time for them to accept themselves.
Because ironically, a part of embracing your “uniqueness” is realizing that you don’t need to feel all that different.
Sometimes, it’s a matter of understanding yourself more than anyone else and allowing that solidarity to push you to be someone bold. Whatever that means for you.
So that you can say maybe I’m different to you, but in my universe, I’m whoever I need to be.
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