What Do You Do When Your Thoughts Don’t Fit in the Box?

Have you spent a lot of your life believing that your inner thoughts are a problem and need to be “taken captive”? Many people who have grown up in strict religious spaces have had their curiosity and differences discouraged from a young age in order to keep everyone around them comfortable. 

After all, if your thoughts and questions don’t fit into a tidy little box, how will your parents, pastors, and leaders be able to give you their cookie-cutter answers? But questions and thoughts that don’t fit in the box don’t just go away because you stop acknowledging them. 

So what do you do when you can’t ignore them anymore? What would it look like to approach them with curiosity, rather than fear? 

The Desire to Belong 

Humans are fundamentally motivated by a need to belong. For many of us who grew up in religious spaces, our sense of belonging hinged on our ability to fit the mold. To blend in. To make it “easy” for those around us to engage with us. 

When your need for belonging isn’t met, you can experience real and devastating consequences. It’s no wonder that as children and young adults, folks in these spaces often do their best to squash their innate curiosity and “different-ness” that could cost them their sense of belonging. Unfortunately, the cost of forcing yourself into a mold that doesn’t fit also has painful consequences. 

When Fitting In Hurts 

The desire for belonging and meaningful connection with other humans is a normal, positive thing. However, when you spend a lot of time changing or stifling yourself in order to fit in, you can become angry at the parts of yourself that don’t naturally fit that mold. This dynamic can cause a lot of tension between your curious, exploratory side and the side of you that focuses on survival by fitting in at all costs. 

Add to that the message that many church kids got that your inner self is fickle at best, evil at worst, and it’s pretty easy to start living in fear of your own thoughts, feelings, and questions. But what would happen if instead of “taking your thoughts captive,” you let them out and gave them some room to breathe? What would happen if you started to ask the questions you’ve been afraid to ask? 

Asking Questions Makes You Human 

If your thoughts and questions often make the people in your life uncomfortable or angry, your questions themselves are likely not the problem. Even infants have an innate sense of curiosity starting as early as the second week of life. When caregivers dismiss or discourage that curiosity, it is often a sign of the caregiver’s overwhelm, rather than a sign that a child is being “too much” or “too curious.” 

If the leaders in your life discourage questions or have a line of what’s “too far” when it comes to expressing your curiosity, consider that you might need to go outside of your comfort zone to look for answers. If you feel safe to do so, try looking up some resources that come from people who don’t share your background or views. 

Questions Aren’t the Enemy 

If you have been told your whole life that your “heart is wicked” or that your differences make you unworthy of love and belonging, asking questions can be scary. Or rather, the answers you might find can be scary. Remember that innate need we all have to belong? If you have been working your whole lives to fit into a certain environment, the idea of asking questions that might put cracks in that foundation can be an overwhelming thought. 

However, questions aren’t the enemy. If following your own sense of curiosity could jeopardize your sense of belonging, it could be time to consider the cost of staying in such a rigid environment. Often, we stay with what is familiar and predictable because it feels safer than the unknown. And yet, being able to understand the pain we are experiencing in a familiar place doesn’t actually make it any less harmful in the long run.  

The First Thought That Didn’t Fit

Consider the first time you had a thought or question that didn’t fit the mold of what you were taught to believe. Maybe it was the first time that you had a crush on someone you “weren’t supposed to.” Maybe it was the first time you saw a logical flaw in the narrative you were being told and couldn’t ignore that something about it just didn’t make sense. 

How many of these thoughts have you tried to shove aside over the years? Is there one big, persistent thought that you haven’t been able to let go of? Or has it been a series of little things that have built on each other over time into something you can’t ignore anymore? 

For some people it’s finding out that someone they care about doesn’t quite fit into the “right” mold. For many, it’s realizing that they themselves don’t fit. For most people, it’s in some way realizing that what they have been told all their lives isn’t quite lining up with their lived reality anymore. 

Maybe It Was the Box’s Fault All Along

For many pastors, leaders, and religious parents, the structure of black and white thinking provides them a paradigm that helps them maintain a sense of control over their lives. If there are clear rules to follow, it is easy to know who should belong in their group and who shouldn’t. 

When you have questions and thoughts that don’t fit that paradigm, it might be easy to try to shove them back into the box of “right” or “wrong.” But the world is actually full of colors, and your curiosity could be the first step towards creating something beautiful. 

So if you can, consider for a moment that maybe your thoughts don’t need to be taken captive or tamed. Maybe your questions don’t need to be silenced and maybe your curiosity doesn’t have to be shoved into a box. Maybe you were never the problem. Maybe, just maybe… It was the box that was the problem all along. 

A Safe Space to Ask Questions

If you resonate with the idea of having thoughts, questions, and feelings that don’t fit the mold, I would love to chat with you about supporting you on your curiosity journey. As someone who had to fight to allow myself to start asking my own questions, I understand the unique struggle of wanting to know all the things, while also fearing what the answers might mean. 

You can contact me here to see if I would be a good fit, or ask for resources to get you started.