‘You can’t sit with us.’ How squads and cliques show up in adulthood

Even though I love the movie Mean Girls, it does reveal some uncomfortable truths about the way we exclude others socially. I also adore Taylor Swift, but her penchant for assembling beautiful people in the form of a ‘squad’ takes me right back to the misery of teenage cliques.

There’s an interesting study out of the US that shines a light on how being excluded affects us on a deep level.

Researchers at Ohio State University got 5000 participants to play a computer game in which they were told to only ‘pass the ball’ to certain people. The players who were excluded ended up with elevated blood pressure and stress hormones. The isolation effect also triggered the part of their brains that processes pain – so being excluded literally causes people pain.

I’m no scientist, but I’d imagine those effects happen because our body recognises the danger of being cast out of the pack. In evolutionary terms, our very survival depended on being part of a tribe so we weren’t attacked by wild animals nor left to fend for food on our own.

There are emotional effects too, obviously. The researchers concluded that when we are ostracised, our self-esteem plummets (boo!). We lose a sense of belonging, which, they noted, is extremely important to emotional well-being. 

I’ve noticed the rise of the hashtags #squad and #squadgoals on social media, and this trend bothers me because it smacks of elitism. That underlying exclusivity really raises my hackles. What you are saying – and this is only my opinion – when you describe a group of people as a ‘squad’ instead of simply ‘friends’ is, essentially we’re a club – you do not belong. You can’t sit with us.

I wrote recently about how a desire to fit in with the tribe sometimes shows up for me (click here for that post). The fear of being excluded is still real, well beyond my high school years. But perhaps that’s because I've always felt like an outsider.

A few years ago I was absolutely devastated when I logged onto Facebook and saw photos of my (now former) best friend’s baby shower – an event I had known nothing about. All of our friends had been invited. To be fair, we had been drifting apart for some time, and I am not particularly maternal so I’m not an ideal baby shower guest. Still, the fact that everyone else in our circle had been included, and I had not, was excruciating. The sting of being excluded by a group of people I had cared about made me burn with shame.

I would like to think that as I become more comfortable with being myself I will become less concerned with how other people perceive me, and consequently how they might treat me – i.e. by exclusion or acceptance. I’m aware that as a highly sensitive, introverted person who works in the spiritual realm, I am even less likely to fit into the mainstream now than I was in high school.

If no one wants to sit with me, because they perceive themselves as better than me or just because they don’t like me, I need to learn to be fine with that.

I’m fairly confident that being excluded does not mean I’m in danger of being trampled by a mammoth. 

Why being lonely is so dangerous

There’s a fairly well-to-do woman in her early 60s living underneath me, who keeps ‘accidentally running into me’ when I exit the lift. Her favourite thing to do when she pounces is to run through an ever-changing litany of complaints, which may include: the way the man living on the level above me waters his plants (too overflowy!), the jazz music the pub down the street plays on Sunday afternoons (too jazzy!), a water pipe between my unit and hers (God knows what her issue is with that – it’s not even leaking). Eventually I figured out her complaints are not borne of dissatisfaction but a more powerful and very dangerous emotion – loneliness.

Research shows that loneliness is as ruinous to your health as smoking. It raises your blood pressure and cholesterol, suppresses your immunity (making you vulnerable to disease) and increases your risk of heart disease, because your body is under constant stress. 

It’s estimated that more than 40 per cent of us will feel the pang of loneliness at some point. And being in a long-term relationship is no protection – research shows that more than 60 per cent of lonely people are married. I can’t imagine the misery of being in a relationship with someone you feel disconnected from.

The common thread that underpins loneliness is a lack of connection. That might be geographic – moving to a city far away from your loved ones, for example – or it might be emotion driven – feeling like your friends don’t understand you, or that everyone around you is having different experiences to you (such as having children when you’re unable to). 

For me personally, the threat of loneliness has always been far more damaging than the emotion itself. Being an introvert, I’m actually pretty content with solitude. But the idea that having only myself for company could be enforced rather than a choice has, at times, gripped me with terror. This has resulted in some poor choices – going out on dates with men who bore me, remaining friends with people who I have nothing in common with, to name two.

This fear is not as strong for me now because as I’ve grown older I’ve come to understand that being alone does not equate to being lonely. And at an age where most people’s social networks are reducing as they focus more on their family units, I’ve made a conscious effort to expand my circles of friends, because I’ve realised how much these connections add to my life. This includes volunteer work at retirement homes, joining a social club and, yes, this blog – which has made me realise I have a great deal in common with a great deal of people. I think, too, that becoming more comfortable with being myself has helped me connect with people on a deeper level while also developing an awareness that isolation is really an illusion. 

For all these reasons I don’t give my whingeing neighbour the brush-off, although I can’t say spending time with her is a joy. And I’m not sure that me feigning interest in her chatter out of a sense of obligation is beneficial to her. But I try to keep in mind that loneliness is a miserable emotion and it can make us do unhealthy and unhelpful things – like complain (which tends to repel people). I can only hope that having some understanding of the mechanics of loneliness will help me to be more proactive about taking steps to prevent it when I get to her age and beyond.