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.