Well stated. Intelligence magnifies this. I've always felt this way, even when I am ostensibly part of a group.

You will always feel like an outsider until you find your own group...and then you are once again, "normal" within that group.

I think every person feels like an outsider in the wrong group. It is part of our human and collective angst...

As we get older, we learn to adapt, assimilate, and accept our uniqueness as just being part of life...we are individuals thrown out there to find those like us...

The drive to express our individuality and to think of ourselves as outsiders is common. Accepting that we are even close to common can be a trigger to fight against it.

I feel like an outsider every single day of my life.

Everyday I sit and look around at people I just don't seem to fit with. It's nothing really negative about them. I just feel different.

I also keep in mind that it's my perception though. If that makes sense?

There are always pros and cons of deviating from the norm.

All the time. I was always told things like "you're too intense" or "you're too sensitive" or "you think too much." I've found connections that have made me feel better about who I am, but a lot of things still stick from when I was younger.

I'm an atheist in Arizona I know I'm an outsider.

I feel this way most of the time.
Partly because I’m a flaming introvert, and I’m a liberal in a very conservative line of work (oilfield).
Most of the things I’ve liked and the views I hold are generally out of step with what’s popular.
I guess I’ve learned to pick and choose my friends and battles. I’m pretty mellow and try not to internalize the things that I find bothersome.

I know exactly what you mean. To make it even worse I was living with a black man. Now as you may have discovered women here in these rural towns are known for who their husbands are, not as they themselves as a woman. Every one in town knew Norm but must did not know he and I were a couple. I was still working on the west side to support the house building project. By 1995 the printing industry was going digital and I was out of a job. I started doing pottery and while I was not making the Union scale wage I had been making I was paying the bills. People around town liked my work and I was selling at the Ellensburg Farmers Market. But then the locals in town found out I was with a black man and I never sold another pot in town. THEN we had huge land and water issues and I joined up with 2 different groups to get our county commish to be compliant with the GMA and the permit exempt well laws. The fact we won at the Supreme Court level in Olympia made the groups even less popular. So I'm a loner and really do not care if they like me. I have always felt sort of the odd one out. Not so much when I lived in Seattle but certainly on the east side and for sure in NJ were I grew up. There are some Dems here in the apartment complex but I was really glad to find agnostic.com.
I speak up if asked a direct question and if fox stupid is on the TV in the clubhouse and they go off with their false statements I WILL point out the truth. They now will change the channel if they see me walk in LOL. The word pedantic comes to mind, I can intensely try to make the facts known.
Lastly, at some point I want to get up to the Pybus Market to sell some of my jewelry.

You've got it all wrong! (At least from my perspective and how I feel!)

I AM THE INSIDER!

It is EVERYONE else that is the outsider!

I don't feel like an outsider, I am an outsider, and that's okay. It gives me a different perspective, and sometimes that's what the world needs.

My family moved to Lyon France when I was 10 years old, halfway through second grade. We lived in Lyon for three years, then moved to Geneva, Switzerland, two houses in two years, then to Brussels, Belgium, where we lived until 1969. In between, I was in Valley Forge Military academy for my ninth grade school year, and finished high school, 11th and 12th grades, in Lancaster, PA, where we started from. With moving ever couple of year to a different country, and the friends I made in the American Schools over there were constantly moving, I learned to make friends quickly, and get over them just as quickly. You also learned not to depend much on others, since you don't know them all that well in such short periods of time.
So I am a loner. I have many acquaintances, pretty much no really close friends. I've been married three times and blame at least some of that on not knowing how to deal with people on a long term basis. I am not unfriendly, quite the contrary. I smile and say hello to strangers I meet when walking my dog, stop and talk to neighbors when they are outside, and help anyone who asks.
What I don't do is join groups, in fact since retiring from bus driving, I avoid groups as much as possible. For 42 years I had to be nice and put up with people talking to me or at me on the bus and be pleasant no matter how I felt or who they were. And in general, I liked my passengers, but I didn't get to choose which ones I dealt with. No, I can choose! Well, sort of. My mom moved up to Lancaster two years ago and she is not a great socializer either, so when she has nothing going on at her "village", she comes over and hangs out with me, or wants me to come over there. I left home when I was 17 and have never been back, and I am quite comfortable being alone. My house is usually quiet, I don't need a radio or the TV on 24 hours a day like mom and my sister do. I actually spend most of my time on Facebook or on this site, my major form of communication, since I control how much time I spend doing it and what conversations I become involved with.
I thought that finding a wife would provide me with that "best friend" I had always wanted, but that never worked out quite the way I hoped. So, I go into my twilight years by myself most of the time and not feeling terrible about it, just a bit disappointed that the one thing I wanted most, intimacy, will forever elude me. But I have my pup, live in a great house, feed myself well and get around with not problems. That puts me ahead of a great number of people my age. And when I see some of the people I know and their constant bickering and complaining, I often feel maybe I am better off being alone and self sufficient.

I'm an Air Force brat. We moved 14 times in 17 years. I honestly never had anything in common with the kids I went to school with. Moving to Omaha was the worst though... followed by Abilene Tx. In both cities I knew kids who had never been outside their home town. Very insular. Very weird places. But every place we moved I never really fit in.

I've always felt like I didn't really fit in, but the older I get I realize a lot of that feeling was brought on by being a little to self critical.

I have felt that way rather a lot, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's because I'm too intelligent. Probably more because I'm too socially inept.

Yep...I don't belong on this planet, but I'm Rh positive, so as a monkey man, this is home... just call me the Outcast Monkey.... lol

Well, at times I feel like I don't belong with what is expected, as an outsider, but I feel I have something to offer and can possibly gently help a bit of change for the better.

Alienated? How about Vulcan? I always feel like I'm from another planet, down here studying the Earth Creatures!

My graduate advisor once told me "You're alienated. To be a good sociologist you have to be alienated."

I can identify with your words because I have always felt like an outsider. I agree with what you are writing here and the big diff that I see is I know you have more energy than I do. Otherwise I tend to think like you do on many things.

Hi my sweet..

I felt like more like an outsider when I believed in religious bs. I guess I didn't requirements to fit in with the fools. I feel more at peace since I decided to an atheist and support from community is very helpful. I have mention this in a number of posts, but I wish I raised atheist or decide to be one earlier in life.

I am proud to confront these ignorant jackasses!

An outsider? Not really. A minority? Yes. I live in the Bible belt so it's to be expected but luckily live in the small island of blue in an ocean of red ( Nashville is super liberal). So at least I get to meet all kinds of interesting folks.

As an outspoken atheist and Democrat locked in what I have dismally accepted as the substandard - intellectual quagmire norm of theotards, I am very much an outsider. Where I work, I am the ONLY adult that is not a theist. Of those I know in town, I run into just one other person that is rational (atheist) and until recently, she was also submerged in the world of theistic make-believe peddled as (Truth). Youtube and sites, like this one have exposed the reality that other rational people exist.