Revised Version: Who Needs to Feel Special?

All over the world people can be found getting together in groups to share their lives with each other. There is a reason that we pick a certain group to spend our time with. There is a reason that we are all attracted to a different type of community. It is because there is some aspect of that group that makes us feel accepted, understood, and most of all special. In all cultures people gravitate towards the communities that will satisfy their inner desire to have this need of feeling special fulfilled even if that community is oppressive or even destructive.

In the phone book there are support groups, community groups and church organizations that are listed covering a wide scale of diversity from Alcoholics Anonymous to the Boy Scouts. On the internet there are web sites in unimaginable numbers to which a person can join and become a member and interact by blogging. This is confirmation of the vast numbers of people in the world who are actively searching for something, a need that needs to be filled. People are going to search and search until they come to a place where they feel that they have found a safe sanctuary where the big bad world cannot inflict its universal pain on them.

In a perfect world this would mean that these groups can provide a safe environment that is positive and protective of its members but in reality it does not. There are dangers that are imbedded in these societies even though they might provide emotionally what is desired. They can foster a negative and destructive force that can be responsible for oppression or even destruction of those who seek it.

Mim Udovitch describes in her essay, “A Secret Society of the Starving” a world where girls and women seek out membership and friendship on the internet with others who are living with eating disorders. The general attitude is that these sites exist to help heal these girls who are potentially dying. The reality is the exact opposite where the sites offer advice on how to make their disease easier to manage. Udovitch explains this reality as “A kind of a perverse support group, a place where a group for the most part very unhappy and in some part very angry girls and women come together to support each other in sickness rather than in health”(Udovitch).
There is a reason that these impressionable girls and even experienced women are attracted to this site. It is their need of feeling unique, a feeling of superiority over everyone else in the world so that they do not feel so bad about any inner demons that they are consumed with. Udovitch uses the example of this with a quote “Contrary to popular misconception, anorexics possess the most iron-cored, indomitable wills of all. Our way is not that of the weak…If we ever completely tapped that potential in our midst…we could change the world. Completely. Maybe we could even rule it” (Udovitch).

Marriage is a perfect example, on a more intimate level, of a person’s desire to feel special. I have been married for ten years and one of the main reasons, apart from love, is that my husband makes me feel special. We can boast to each other about our successes and we are present for the big things as well as the little things that help us to fulfill each others inner desire to feel special. From watching other married couples I realize that there can also be an oppressive or even destructive side to marriage and that is evident in the divorce rate in this country. I believe that this inner desire to feel special is one of the main reasons why married people commit adultery. Adultery can be very oppressive and destructive to both members of this community but in many cases they stay together probably in part because they want to feel that they are special again.

The universal theme of needing to feel special is not anything new but it is nonetheless very relevant today to people all over the world. These groups, communities, and organizations do fulfill the needs of people to feel special. People are going to search out and find a way to fulfill this need even if it leads down a destructive or oppressive path. There are ways to fulfill this desire in a way that is not harmful as I have found in my marriage. We are innately motivated to pursue this inner need to feel unique and whether we do it the right way or the wrong way is all up to us.