You’re Holding Yourself Back—Here’s How to Stop Being a Ghost in Every Room

Let’s Talk About Your Stupid Purity Standards

You’re not being excluded by the world—you’re excluding yourself. Every time you look at a community, you’re holding up some cartoonish checklist: ‘Do I have the tattoos? The right skin tone? The correct number of piercings?’ Congrats, kid. You’ve just wasted your life playing a game with no rules but your own fragile ego.

The Tribal Lie

People don’t belong to groups because they match a Wikipedia profile. Communities exist because everyone in them is weird in their own way. Metalheads don’t need corpse paint to scream Black Sabbath. Hipsters don’t require Y2K-era flannel to appreciate the Pixies. Your art doesn’t need a Brooklyn loft aesthetic to be valid. You’re looking for a tribal membership card you think can only be stamped on bodies that fit some TikTok template. Fuck that noise.

You’re Not a Fraud—You’ve Just Been Overthinking This

Here’s the truth: Every single person in every group you admire is faking it to some degree. That guy at the gym? He’s nervous as hell. The ‘tatted up’ metalhead? He spent $500 on ink he copied from Pinterest. That cosplayer? She’s terrified someone will ask her to act like Harry Potter. The only difference between them and you? They stopped caring what ‘authentic’ looks like.

Therapy Isn’t for ‘Bad Enough’ People

You act like mental health groups are only for people who’ve ‘earned’ a seat. Newsflash: Survival isn’t a race to see who got hit hardest. Your body image issues are valid. Your autism is valid. Your loneliness is valid. You want to join a support group? Go. The people in those rooms don’t want to hear about your purity crisis—they want someone who can stare down their own demons with you.

Stop Pretending You’re the Only Loser at the Party

Let’s call out your fallacy of comparative suffering. If you’re waiting for someone with cancer to bless your anxiety, you’ll be dead before you get help. You don’t need permission to be broken. You just need permission to fix it. Men don’t dominate body image groups because they’re ‘more masculine’—they’re underrepresented because they’re too ashamed to admit their skeletons. Walk in there. Be the first guy to say, ‘Here. I’m a disaster. Can I stay? Please?’

The Real Exclusion Game

Communities that demand conformity are already dead. The thriving ones? They let people show up and prove they care in their own damn way. You think you can’t be a metalhead unless you look like a corpse? Show them you can scream along to ‘Iron Man’ instead. Think you can’t be a ‘real’ artist unless you live in a warehouse? Paint in your garage. Cosplay? Photograph. Build sets. Babysit other cosplayers. The essence is the entry fee.

Build Your Own Tribe

You want to belong? Make people want you. Every culture, every support group, every fandom started as a ‘screw you’ to gatekeepers. One dude said, ‘I want to draw? Let’s grab coffee and do it.’ That’s how a tribe forms. You want to find your people? Start by being a human being who’s unapologetically you. Bring your weird. Bring your anxiety. Bring your half-finished D&D character sheets and your $5 gym protein shakes. The right crew won’t ask you to be a carbon copy—they’ll celebrate the jagged edges you brought to the table.

Enough With the ‘Pure’ Crap

Every time you tell yourself you’re not ‘enough’ to belong, you’re just repeating the same insecure bullshit that people use to wall themselves off. The only purity that matters is your commitment to show up. You think you’re not a metalhead? You’re at the show. You think you’re not a fan? You bought the hoodie. You think you’re not an artist? You made something. Shut the hell up and stop trying to gatekeep yourself out of your own life.

This Stops Now

You’ve spent years acting like belonging is a trophy you can only win by dressing in shadowy cosplay or matching the exact mold of some fantasy ‘authentic’ identity. You’re done. The world isn’t a closed-door bar where you need the right keycard. It’s a damn buffet. Take whatever the hell you want. Eat it however you damn please. And sit the fuck down at the table with everyone else. You. Are. Enough.