The Pain of Feeling Left Out: How to Stop the Shame Spiral

Have you ever been in a room full of people and felt completely alone?

Like everyone else is connecting and laughing and you're on the outside looking in?

I totally get it.

I've been there too.

That's why in this video I'm going to talk about the pain of feeling left out and how to stop the shame spiral.

Because when you can do that,

You're going to feel more confident socially.

But if you're new,

My name is Michelle Ferris.

I'm a psychotherapist and I love helping people create relationships that work.

So feeling left out is a major emotional trigger that most of us have experienced.

And I'm going to share some personal stories about when I felt left out so that you can learn what not to do and what you can do to stop the shame spiral.

So I remember being in a workshop eight years ago and it was all with other therapists and we went to dinner one night.

We were all dressed up.

Everybody was talking and all of a sudden I started to feel left out.

And I was noticing everybody in conversation.

I didn't know what to say.

I started clamming up and I started spiraling.

And maybe you can relate to this.

I'm sitting in a group of women feeling totally alone and I noticed that all of a sudden my thoughts were getting really negative.

Like,

Oh my god what am I doing here?

I am not as good as these other women.

They're so accomplished.

I am not good enough.

All those negative thoughts.

So I tried to hold on throughout the dinner and that was my mistake.

Whenever we deny feelings they always intensify and that's what happened.

During the dinner it took about 20 to 30 minutes and all of a sudden I knew,

Oh my god,

I can't contain my hurt anymore.

So I knew I was going to cry at the table.

I didn't want to.

So I got up and as I was leaving the leader of the retreat looked at my face and she knew.

And she immediately said,

What's wrong Michelle?

And I became a puddle of tears right there in the restaurant in front of 20 women.

I was super embarrassed but actually it was the best thing that happened to me because what we do when we feel left out is we try to suck it in and we don't tell anybody and that's what I don't want you to do.

So what happened was I literally found myself sitting on her lap crying saying how left out I felt.

And ironically I was with a bunch of therapists.

Like I could have said something at the dinner but I just felt like I couldn't because those negative thoughts were gripping me and telling me that I wasn't good enough even to speak up.

Maybe you can relate to that.

If you can say me too in the comments I'm right there with you.

But this is what I want you to do instead.

When I look back on that situation all I had to do was turn to the person next to me and say you know what I'm feeling super left out.

Because often when we do that we break the ice and unless the other person is super inconsiderate they're most likely going to have some compassion towards you and they're going to say oh I totally understand I felt that way too.

Because feeling left out is a very common trigger especially in groups and especially I think with women because women can be really clicky.

This can be much harder because it's super easy to feel left out if there's already existing relationships.

So another example of feeling left out that happened recently was I was a part of a retreat committee and one person sent an email after the retreat saying that she actually left the retreat.

She was from another state,

Sent an email after the retreat letting us know that she felt incredibly left out.

She was brand new,

She was from out of state and she didn't feel welcomed at all.

She didn't know what to do and she sat with it for I think a whole day and she ended up leaving early because she felt so left out.

If she had just been able to speak up or to tell somebody hey I'm hurting she probably would have been able to work through it because it was actually a personal growth retreat and we would have welcomed her.

But that's part of what happens when we get stuck in feeling left out and we tend to take it personally and that's what she did.

She took it personally feeling like something was wrong with her because nobody approached her.

But when you don't tell anyone how you feel that contributes to that shame spiral because here's the next thing I want you to do the next time this happens is check your thinking.

I know for me when I was at that dinner table I was telling myself things like I'm not enough,

These women are better than me,

I don't belong here.

Really nasty stuff.

I didn't realize that that was my negative self-talk.

Now I know when that happens I know to challenge those thoughts but when we're in the middle of it it's really hard to recognize those thoughts as being false evidence appearing real because what we're doing is we're just making negative stuff up about ourselves that isn't even true because negative thoughts tend to come from our history.

Old painful experiences that aren't a true reflection of who we are as people.

So the next thing I want you to do if you find yourself feeling left out is really identify those negative thoughts that are triggering that shame spiral.

Not being enough,

Feeling like they don't like you,

Whatever those thoughts are I want you to start labeling those as your negative self-talk because once you do that it's much easier to start realizing that oh yeah that's just my negative thought.

That's not necessarily the truth because that's what we need to do to prevent the shame spiral is to catch those negative thoughts before they get ahold of us.

And so the next thing I want you to do when you're feeling left out is to normalize your reaction.

So many times when I've taken things personally I blamed myself thinking I shouldn't feel this way or I'm being too sensitive but that isn't necessarily the truth.

Everybody feels left out on occasion and what we want to do is normalize that like it's okay for you to feel what you feel because feeling left out is incredibly common again especially if you're in a large group.

It's really easy to feel like you're on the outside looking in because often this goes back to childhood issues where we never felt a part of and that's why it's important to acknowledge how you feel so that you can prevent that shame spiral because when I was sitting at that dinner and trying to suck it all in that's what caused me to go to shame.

All I had to do to stop that shame spiral is to tell the person next to me oh my god I feel awful right now.

Would you be willing to listen to me?

Because it's really important for you to get support when you're feeling that way.

Isolating yourself only makes it worse and it will definitely intensify the shame.

You might also want to replace those thoughts like I am lovable,

People do care about me,

I am smart,

I am enough,

I am capable because when we're in that shame spiral you're not telling yourself things like that.

You're totally forgetting what's good about you and that's part of stopping that shame spiral is to challenge those negative thoughts and to come up with the positive ones that are really true about you because most of our negative self-talk gets inherited from our family and they're old messages that we really need to let go of so that we can make progress and fully heal.

Now the next thing I want you to do when you're feeling left out is not take it personally.

I know the biggest mistake people make and I've made it too is assuming what other people are thinking about you like oh my god they don't like me,

They don't see me,

I'm invisible,

Why aren't they talking to me?

The more we focus on what other people are thinking the more out of control we're going to feel because if you jump into somebody else's head you're most likely going to be wrong because when we're in that negative space we're going to assume the worst and I don't want that for you.

So when you're feeling left out stop yourself from jumping into somebody else's head because you don't know what they're thinking.

Sometimes people might give you a look that means absolutely nothing but if you assume the worst and think that they don't like you that's just going to keep you in that shame spiral and the way to get out of it is to stop focusing on what you think they're thinking and get back into yourself.

What do you need right now?

What do you need to take care of yourself?

And usually that means getting support or speaking up.

The next thing I want you to do is I want you to find a group where you can start to belong because feeling left out doesn't get better unless we get more comfortable practicing being in groups.

This could be a group for hobbies,

This could be 12-step groups that talk about codependency or addictions or emotions but that's what actually made the biggest difference in my recovery is participating in a group and practicing being my authentic self because once you do that being a part of a group gets easier and that's what I want for you.

But if you never practice being in groups this one is going to be a hard one to heal because you're always going to default to feeling left out being on the outside looking in and I don't want that for you.

So here's what I want you to do.

I want you to speak up when you're feeling left out,

Challenge your negative thoughts and assumptions,

Don't get into somebody else's head and find a group that you can practice being a part of.

Thanks so much.