My friends keep leaving me out. 

What should I do?

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It is so painful when you find yourself on the outside of anything.  Of course it’s important to first think about what the reason might be – depending on who you are, though, don’t spend too much time here.

If you are a person who tends to blame yourself, spending too much time here can be incredibly damaging to your sense of self-trust.

If, however, you are a person who tends to blame others, perhaps a little time here wouldn’t hurt you. 

Just be as honest with yourself as you can be about yourself and your actions.  If there is something that you need to change, then take steps toward changing that.  But I believe this is going to be the exception to the rule.  Good people get left out by other relatively good people all the time.

Sometimes it’s just oversight.  They simply aren’t really thinking about anybody except themselves and their immediate needs.  Resist the urge to assign too many negative intentions to their actions.  While it’s still hurtful, and doesn’t negate your real feelings of hurt, it isn’t good for yourself or for them if you make up stories about why they are doing it. 

The best thing to do is ask the question.  I understand how counter-cultural this is, and yet, I am suggesting you do it anyway. 

Let’s say you weren’t invited to the school dance with your group of friends.  You are hurt, you might even cry, you might be tempted to tell yourself either that they are horrible people or that you are the horrible person, depending on which way you tend to go on those things. 

But stop for a moment, and remind yourself of the facts.  Maybe the facts are that you were not included on the group text message about the dance.  (Note that I am not saying that this isn’t hurtful.  It is, and allow yourself to feel the hurt.) 

If you know who started the group chat (and you might not), an excellent solution is to go to that person and ask if you can please be included.  Yes, this can be hard to do.  Yes, you might feel like you’d rather die than do this.  But in order to get clarity on the situation, this, or something similar to this, is required.

What this might look like:

• Ask your closest friend who is on the group chat whether they might add you.
• Ask your closest friend who is on the group chat if they know of any reason you might have been excluded.
• Reach out directly to the person that created the group chat and ask them if you were intentionally left out or not.

Whatever you choose to do, remember a few important things:

• Resist the urge to tell yourself stories about their intentions.
• Resist the urge to put these particular people on pedestals.  It doesn’t sound like they belong there.
• Resist the urge to talk badly about them – after all, it’s important to continue to act with integrity even if you discover that those around you are not doing so. (Also talking about them is likely to backfire on you.)
• Resist the urge to become overly down on yourself.

Try to see the situation for what it is.  Ask the question to try to gain clarity.  And then pay attention to the response.  Be as honest as you can about what that response is, neither giving them too much of the benefit of the doubt nor not giving them enough of the benefit of the doubt.  Try to see as clearly as you can (only facts) what happened, and how they responded when you asked about it.

Then you have a choice to make.  Your choice should be made based on only the facts, rather than based on any embellishments at all.  (And others might try to pull you into embellishments.)  In fact, people make up stories all the time.  It might even appear that people like drama.  Most of the time, these stories are told out of fear or sometimes in an attempt to bond with someone.  After all, if I tell you a story (true or not) about somebody that has harmed you, it will likely bring us closer together.  The “Me too!” effect.

Cairn: Resist the urge to bond over a common enemy

Resist this urge for a variety of reasons.  First of all, it’s a terrible reason to bond – it’s a negative bond.  And, if your friend is bonding with you over disliking somebody else, then might they be more likely to bond with others over disliking you?  Possibly.  As tempting as it is to do this, don’t do it.

When you sense that somebody is attempting to pull you into a bond like this, ask them if they are comfortable getting that other person in the room also.  “I’d rather wait and talk about this when John is here.” Much of the time you will find that these same people who want to bond with you over saying bad things about a third person are wholly unwilling to say these same things to that third person’s face.  In fact, oftentimes they will outright lie and deny having said anything about them at all.

Also, if you are bonding over disliking somebody, you might find yourself suddenly on the other side of this dislike.  Especially if the person with whom you are bonding mends their relationship with this third person (the common enemy).  If this happens, they may feel too uncomfortable remaining friends with you. 

Another very important thing to do when you have been left out is to be very careful not to follow in their footsteps and start leaving other people (or even yourself) out.  Now I know this sounds a bit strange, but I have seen countless times where somebody is wronged by another person or even another group of people and then they start doing to other people (or themselves) what they were so angry at the other person for doing to them. 

Maybe this looks like you starting to tell yourself that you don’t deserve to be included in this group of friends (i.e., putting them on a false pedestal), that you were foolish to ever think they would like you.  You can abandon yourself just like they abandoned you.  Don’t do that.

Don’t assume that these people, however much you might revere them, know more about you or the world or anything else than you know. 

And don’t to this to other people.  If you get nothing else from this situation, you can gain empathy for others.

Cairn: Other people don’t always know better than you.

Most certainly this isn’t a problem for some, but I grew up truly believing that other people knew better than me about almost every single thing, even my own worth as a person.  I gave away a lot of my confidence by comparing myself with others and finding myself coming up short.  Don’t do this.  Yes, of course, sometimes others will know better than you about certain topics.  Undoubtedly.  But not all the time.  Sometimes you actually know better.

Don’t put others on a pedestal of your own making. 

Don’t give up your power for anybody, especially people who are not treating you well.

You have as much value as anybody else.  I don’t care who you are – you have value.  So, if you don’t get invited to the dance, don’t tell yourself the story that you aren’t good enough because that implies that the others who are going to the dance are better than you.  And that is not true.

In fact, often it is the opposite.  Often, the more mean-spirited people are the ones who are doing the leaving out – usually in an attempt to build up their low self-esteem or prove their prowess.  Many times it’s because they are experiencing this elsewhere in their lives and this makes them feel better to do it to others.  (Note: This is the exact opposite of what I advise you do.) But when you buy into this nonsense, you are sacrificing yourself.  So don’t do that. 

Sometimes you will have to be honest with yourself that these people (whom you might have been looking up to) aren’t as nice as you wanted them to be.  And sometimes you will have to be honest with yourself that you aren’t as nice as you wanted you to be.  Try to see things as objectively as possible though.

Stay aware and make your choice.  In the end, maybe you realize that you don’t want to spend time with people who don’t value you enough to include you in the group text.  Maybe you can recognize that they aren’t as nice or as great as you once thought.  Only then can you start focusing on others who are generally nicer and more thoughtful. 

So, in summary:

• Seek clarity, listen and watch for the real response (don’t make it better or worse than it actually is) and then choose your next action that honors yourself. 
• Take them off the pedestal that you created for them.
• Don’t follow their lead.

You owe it to yourself to honor yourself every single day.  Don’t leave that up to the world around you.  That can only be entrusted to one person – you.