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The yearning to belong arguably begins at birth for humans, but how can we all make progress on that need? An enormous new study with college students suggests a partial answer.
Seeking ideas there makes sense. College can be a hard time for young people, and it may be a useful model of challenging times generally. Think about what students face: Leaving home, or at least leaving old roles. Entering new rooms. Risking rejection. Trying on identities. Asking for help. Making friends. Handling the stress of possible failure. Dealing with financial pressures, perhaps for the first time. Sitting with loneliness. Walking into a club meeting where everyone already seems to know each other. Speaking in a seminar while your heart pounds.
We’ve long known that if students can develop a sense of belonging, college is much more likely to be a good experience. Without that sense, you can be sitting in a classroom, walking across a campus amidst people who seem to be having the time of their lives, and feel as if there is a sheet of glass between you and the world. Everyone else seems to know the rules. Everyone else seems to have found their people. Everyone else seems to have gotten the memo.
You are the odd one out. You don’t belong. Even if you aren’t a student, doesn’t that sound familiar?
And then the mind starts doing what minds do: “What’s wrong with me?” “They don’t want me here.” “I’m behind.” “I’m too different.”
I’ve spent a lifetime studying how human beings get trapped inside painful thoughts and feelings like that, and how we can learn to carry them differently. A new study of over 16,000 undergraduates at 104 U.S. colleges and universities gives us a useful clue about at least one thing we can do about it.
Students who were higher in psychological flexibility reported a........