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Have you ever felt excluded, or abandoned by your friends and the people you love? How do you usually react?
From my clients, I notice that one of the most common reactions to feeling excluded does not involve engaging in polemic protests but results in a surprising action of self-exclusion.
The Paradox
What I call the "paradox of exclusion" often stems from traumatic experiences. Past traumatic experiences can lead one to feel abandoned. This primal exclusion may then trigger a deeper form of self-exclusion that the sufferer inflicts upon themselves.
In other words, the same person who has been excluded might then "exclude" themselves from their own intimate space by detaching from their inner life and starting to live a life according to others' expectations and an external social script. This dynamic can happen not only on a personal level—often leading to emotional numbness and eventually depression—but on a social and biological level as well.
From Self-Exclusion to Numbness
The problem often generated by this self-excluding reaction is a pervasive feeling of numbness. Though the individual wants to avoid being excluded or abandoned again, they in fact exclude themselves and stop living their feelings in a genuine way.
This often results in them perceiving their environment as a set of expectations rather than a given reality. They live an exhausting life. "Being themselves" feels dangerous because they perceive their own inner life as the shameful cause of the original exclusion.
Hence, the paradox of exclusion: Detachment from one’s own intimate life turns into a "beige" feeling, a sense of emotional numbness that has the power to distort one’s sense of reality to the point that even the reality of one’s own body can disappear.
Emotional Numbness
Feeling something is often considered better than feeling nothing. Yet it is quite difficult, if not impossible, for many traumatized people to allow themselves to do so.
In order to defend themselves from painful feelings, they instead close the door to their feelings. Any intimate connection with their inner self is impossible; consequently, the fertile soil of life does not have the chance to nourish them with energy. As a result, any vitality that emotionally numb people experience is weak, even nonexistent. Yet despite the lingering sense of desperation from which they want to escape, they do not feel they have enough energy to open the door to their trauma and acknowledge their feelings.
The trauma excludes them from the affective circle of their family, society, friends, and personal intimacy—and they, in turn, exclude themselves from their own intimate life and, accordingly, from a beneficial connection with their emotional and geographical environment. A witness—their intimate self—remains, but in the form of a stranger that looks at life from an external point of view.
Inclusive Solutions
To avoid falling prey to this paradox and its consequent beige feeling, it can be helpful to keep these steps in mind:
- Wait for actual rejection, not just the feeling of rejection.
- Try not to take rejection personally but as an opportunity to try new avenues that have not yet been explored.
- No one can fit everywhere. Finding the right fit at work, among friends, or in our private life is a stroke of good luck.
- We can give ourselves the right to choose where we think we will fit better and give this freedom to others without taking anything away from our self-worth.
