Creative Inclusion for Jolly, Productive Holidays

Holidays are often anticipated and experienced as jolly and joyful.

However, they can also often be fraught with frustrations over strained or estranged relationships, with social activities you may or may not want to attend but feel obliged to, with having to dress and participate in activities that are not your usual choice of how to spend time, and also by NOT being invited to certain activities. This can leave you feeling left out, unpopular or ostracized.

I just read that the definition of ostracize comes from writing the name of those people the community wished to banish on ‘ostraca’- shards of a clay pot- those smashed, jagged pieces that were once part of a whole artifact. Those so identified were then exiled or given the ‘silent treatment’ or ‘cold shoulder’.  Think about those terms, as they reveal how we behave in either side of the process of being ostracized.

In our modern times, consider the recent phenomenon of social media, where people spend hours online to rack up large numbers of so-called friends, fans and ‘likes’. This is seen to indicate your social popularity, when in fact it could just mean you play by a different set of rules, or play in that sandbox less often. Or consider how a mere ‘look’ from a passing stranger can set someone off on hours of self doubt, fear or mounting negativity.If it were as simple as a person feeling slighted in passing, we could easily address the issue within a certain range of positive solutions- sympathetically say ”sorry” or “don’t take it personally” and move on, or just include them. But research also shows that rejected people can display a tendency to react with hostility- either directly or down the line with someone else they lash out at. (Think road rage and school shootings….). This may affect not only the personal health and well-being of anyone within striking distance, but also corporate morale, productivity and type of group identity or gang mentality. Herein lies one irony- ostracized people tend to seek inclusion in some other group, which may or may not be in their best interests since they selected that group for reactive reasons.

Now you are talking serious implications of something that on the surface seems innocent, unintended or even goes unnoticed.

How would you handle such a situation, either when y0u see it happening to someone else or you are on the short end of the stick? At what stage might you intervene? How have you seen such episodes play out, for better or worse?

It’s bad enough when feeling excluded by people you know, but research shows that when people feel ignored even if they aren’t officially connected to those doing the shunning, they register the same sense of lower self esteem, sadness, anger and even physical pain.