Why Do Some Children Feel Different From the Beginning?

As a child, I often felt different, but I couldn't explain why.

Not better.

Not worse.

Just different.

I was not unhappy. In many ways, I had a safe and loving childhood. I had parents who cared for me, a comfortable home, and a life free from much of the chaos many children experience.

Yet somewhere beneath the surface, I always felt slightly out of step with the world around me.

I never seemed to need large groups of friends. In fact, I often preferred my own company. While other children appeared to navigate friendships, social circles, and playground politics with ease, I often found it confusing and exhausting. It wasn't that I disliked people. I simply never seemed to understand the unwritten rules everyone else appeared to know instinctively.

I was happy spending hours alone in my own thoughts.

Looking back now, I realise I spent much of my childhood observing.

Watching.

Listening.

Trying to make sense of things.

I noticed things other people seemed to overlook. I asked questions that didn't appear to interest my peers. Questions about life. Questions about death. Questions about God. Questions that felt far bigger than my small world should have contained.

At the time, I assumed everyone thought about these things.

I later discovered they didn't.

As a counsellor, I often meet people who describe a similar experience. They tell me they always felt different. They felt older than their years. More aware. More sensitive. More reflective. They learned to blend in, to fit the expectations around them, but inside they often carried a quiet sense of not quite belonging.

For many years, I wondered if something was wrong with me.

Now I see it differently.

Being observant is not a weakness.

Being reflective is not a flaw.

Being sensitive is not something that needs fixing.

But when a child feels different and has no language for what they are experiencing, they often create their own explanations. Sometimes those explanations are helpful. Sometimes they become beliefs that quietly shape an entire life.

Children are remarkable observers, but they are not always accurate interpreters.

I certainly wasn't.

There were things happening inside me that I could see but could not understand.

Feelings I could not explain.

Questions I could not answer.

Experiences I had no framework for.

So I carried them quietly.

Perhaps you can relate.

Perhaps you were the child who never quite fitted into the group.

Perhaps you were the one who felt everything deeply.

Perhaps you learned to blend into the wallpaper while secretly wondering why life seemed harder to navigate for you than it did for everyone else.

If so, I want you to know that you are not alone.

Sometimes what feels like brokenness is simply a story that has not yet been understood.

Looking back, I can see there were things happening inside me that I had no language for. Some of them would shape the rest of my life.

The journey of understanding those experiences, and where they eventually led me, is a story I share in my memoir, Standing on the Edge: A Fight for Freedom.