We need to believe in something, and we need to feel like we belong. Sometimes we will compromise what we believe to be right in favor of our attachment to a person or group.

As Gabor Maté once wrote, “strong convictions do not necessarily signal a powerful sense of self: very often quite the opposite. Intensely held beliefs may be no more than a person’s unconscious effort to build a sense of self to fill what, underneath, is experienced as a vacuum.”

Beyond Your Confines
Chris Warren-Dickins