How to Handle Being Excluded — Needy AF #6

Sometimes you gotta walk alone; it’s a fact of life

Take-Home Point — We all get excluded from things, everyone does. It’s a fact of life. As a Needy Person, we have to work hard at not letting exclusion be a reason to enter an anxiety spiral. To handle exclusion well, we must recognize the futility of being upset and we must train our Needy brain to ignore and move on from these types of minor issues.

Actions to Take —

• Do not make it a big deal. You may feel left out, banished, ostracized, and forgotten; but if you try to make others feel guilty then you are likely going to be left out again.
• You can’t (and shouldn’t) always go. It’s not healthy to be at ALL activities of a friend group. Build an independent side to yourself.
• Show care and respect for your friends by being ok when left out. Non-Needy People love to know that when they leave us out we are cool with it (even if we don’t feel that way).
• It’s an Opportunity…to build yourself up. Make yourself interesting to yourself and automatically you’ll be interesting to others. Being left out is an opportunity to work on you. Interesting people are invited and included more often. Take advantage of it!

There it is, the Facebook post I’ve suspected was coming but dreading to see. It was a beautiful day with seasonally comfortable temperatures and bright, sunny skies. It wasn’t any surprise that my two best pals would’ve wanted to go kayaking at the lake that day. And it wasn’t. It was just that I wasn’t there. I wasn’t invited. They went without me.

I know that they like me as a person and enjoy my company; they’ve said as much. But they seem to do more things without me than with me. That’s been a theme over the past year and I’m unsettled by it. As a Needy Person who struggles to keep my neediness under control, it has become a Sisyphean task to not let the evidence of their adventures consume me in an anxiety spiral.

To make it worse, I’m a red-blooded, hard-working, outdoorsy dude. I’m supposed to be sanguine about buddies doing things without me, spending tons of time alone, and being the captain of my ship. So not only do I feel wounded by being left out, I encounter shame that I feel wounded in the first place.

As Needy People, we put great value in approval and inclusion by others. It’s our lifeblood. A way of determining our worth to others and determining our worth to ourselves. In truth, after I saw the FB post I couldn’t sleep and I tossed and turned. I imagined how they talked about how much better it was I wasn’t there. And then I wanted an explanation! To Needy People, you know what this is about. To relieve our anxiety spirals and “fill in” the missing data, we attempt to guilt those who left us out. We will demand an explanation or make it clear we are hurt. As if guilting people is going to result in a positive outcome.

This isn’t a way to live our lives. The hurt feelings, the reading of other people’s minds, and the attacking of myself and others for being inadequate are not productive. How can we as Needy People handle the casual exclusions that can happen in our day-to-day life? How do we not let others’ pairing off, whether intentional or not, become a negative spiral of anger and shame?

I’ll outline a few strategies and thoughts I employ to manage the spiral. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to permanently expunge the woundedness I feel when excluded, but these are occasionally successful pathways to stop the anxiety spiral and give me back my equanimity.

What’s Wrong with Them

• They are Oblivious. As a Needy Person, I’m acutely aware of anything I might do that may make someone feel excluded. But we have to recognize that not everyone is as sensitive to others as I may be. More often than not, it hasn’t even occurred to them. Perhaps they had texted about something else and the park trip just came up and they didn’t think about inviting others. They simply didn’t take your feelings into account because they didn’t take ANYONE’s feelings into account. Don’t let their casual avoidance wreck your day, no one else in their circle is!
• They Are Actively Excluding You/Others. Ok, so this one hurts. The reasons could be endless up to and including that they just didn’t want you there. As Needy People, we think we hide our behaviors pretty well, but the likelihood is that we don’t. Close friends see it. Sometimes, they need a break — if just for few outings. No one wants to feel like they have to act a certain way around you all the time. Needy People can be exhausting. Instead of telling you they need time apart, they do the shitty thing and play games of exclusion. Adults don’t always act like adults and will go to great lengths to avoid conflict. So if their choice is to pretend to forget to invite you, recognize the behavior for what it is. Let them have their time apart. You want to be there, but they don’t want you there. Remind yourself that it is probably temporary. Also, commit to yourself that you will restrain from acting that way in the future to others. You don’t have to be the childish one.
• They Aren’t Really Your (Close) Friends. As Needy People, sometimes we get that deep friendship rush after just one or two activities. In that fulfillment, sometimes we ignore the obvious. That they are your friend much more than you are their friend. You’ve been invited to a few things so you’ve built up this deep and meaningful relationship in your mind. But the other person hasn’t. They like you well enough, but you haven’t been put deep into their circle of friends. You’ve just convinced yourself you have. What needs to be done here is tough — and that’s stepping back and looking at your friendship from a different perspective. Have they included you in a lot of activities? Were you inviting yourself a lot? Were you planning everything and they just came along? Needy People become quick friends but others may need much more time to develop deeper feelings, if they ever do. They simply don’t see the problem with not inviting you.

What’s Wrong with Us

• Do not make it a big deal. You may feel left out, banished, ostracized, and forgotten, but if you try to make others feel guilty then you are merely asking to be left out again. Guilt trips work on the Needy Person, but they don’t work on others. Trying to make others feel guilty will corrode their positive feelings towards you. No one wants to feel like it’s a responsibility to have you there. Like it or not, you have to find another way to defuse the pain you feel — exercise, TV, hobbies, another friend group — so that you don’t damage the relationship. By doing this, you will begin to train your Needy Brain to accept exclusion as what happens sometimes and not a reason to fall apart.
• You can’t (and shouldn’t) always go. It’s not healthy to be at ALL activities of a friend group. Friend groups (and other relationships) need space and room to breathe. By always saying yes, the message to others is that you have no other outlets for your time. Perversely, this makes some people feel less inclined to want you along. I don’t advocate for playing games and turning down exactly 33% of activities — that’s immature. But, if you find you’ve been excluded from something, you should recognize it as a windfall of emotional oxygen that probably helps the relationship. And you CAN count that as one of your turn downs! Other times, if you aren’t genuinely excited about an activity; respectfully decline. Non-Needy People won’t generally take offense (don’t decline weddings, etc.).
• It is showing love and respect for your friend. Admit it, sometimes you want to go to a thing because you want people to see that you care about them. So you cajole or shoehorn yourself in. I’m guilty of “inviting” myself (or agreeing) to uninteresting activities because I was concerned that if I wasn’t there, the friend would think I don’t want to be around them. But for Non-Needy People, that’s unnecessary. If you turn them down, or better yet, not even ask them to come, you’ve released that friend from emotional work. In waiting for our invites, we are showing those we care for that our lives don’t revolve around them nor are we willing to change what we like to suit them. For many people, this is relieving and builds a greater amount of trust with us. It’s an opportunity to show others we can be respectful of boundaries and they don’t have to include us in everything. Non-Needy People love to know that when they leave us out sometimes that we are cool with it. Strangely, they then want to invite you out all the time. I know, non-Needy People are weird.
• It’s an Opportunity…to build yourself. Think back to why you were attracted to your friend/friend group in the first place. It’s likely one of the words you would have used to describe them is “interesting”. Maybe they had some interesting hobbies, or spoke and read about interesting things, had interesting viewpoints, or simply seemed comfortable in their skin. These are highly attractive qualities in all types of relationships so it’s no wonder you were struck by the friend truck. But, you owe it to your friends to be as interesting to them as they are to you! If you do everything they do and agree with everything they say you become less a friend and more of an acolyte or worshipper. Friendships should be two-way streets where both add to the relationship. Use the “exclusions” as productive times to build hobbies of your own. Sharpen the saw on your relationship skills. Develop another friend group (you can have more than 1!). Make yourself interesting to yourself and automatically you’ll be interesting to others. So being left out is an opportunity. Take advantage of it!

No one likes to be left out! Even introverts like being invited even if they eventually turn it down. It’s up to us as Needy People to not let the occasional exclusion lead us down an anxiety spiral. We owe it to ourselves and our friends to not allow our Neediness to dictate our lives.