Every so often, kindness leads where cruelty hides.

Janet never seemed to have rightness. Not the right style, the appropriate humor, or the same ease with silence. She was obsessed with carpentry, collected technical pens, and always wore the same oversized purple shirt. She had mastered a smile that, though eager, unintentionally made something twist uncomfortably inside.

Discomfort led us to navigate two worlds. The first one included Janet and was filled with polite, superficial talk. The other was summoned when she stepped away. This was the space to coordinate the real plans, the ones that required a shared understanding of what was "cool."

We told ourselves it was kindness. Janet wasn't into these kinds of things anyway. A simple nod became her way of acknowledging Friday's promise to get together, fully knowing she would be absent from stories recounted on Monday.

It took me too long to see, behind her awkwardness and apparent disinterest, what Janet wanted most was to belong.

Ostracism is the deliberate exclusion from social connection. It requires no words, no confrontation, no explanation.

Surprisingly, the brain processes social rejection in the same regions that register physical pain. When someone stops responding to your texts or walks past without acknowledgment, your brain's pain centers (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) fire the same way they would for a physical wound. Research shows that even the most minimal forms of exclusion trigger this alarm system.

For early humans, exclusion from the group meant death. Today, that same alarm system fires when we're left out of meetings, ignored at parties, or unfollowed online.

What makes ostracism particularly devastating is its ambiguity. Unlike criticism, which at least acknowledges your presence, exclusion offers nothing to process or refute. You become invisible.

An excluded person usually faces a paradox: fighting for inclusion often confirms their outsider status, while accepting rejection feels like self-erasure.

Most surprising is how quickly we adapt to being excluders ourselves. Studies of ostracism reveal a harsh cycle: people who've just been ostracized will immediately exclude others when given the chance. The rejected become rejectors, perpetuating patterns they've just escaped. Silence spreads.

How do we break patterns we can barely see, especially when acknowledging them risks further exclusion?

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Exclusion lives in tiny moments. The group chat you weren't added to. The party that happened without him. The colleague who rushed over her comment.

Notice your impulse when you feel excluded. Do you immediately scan for someone else to exclude? Do you withdraw? Do you overcompensate with forced enthusiasm? The most radical act might be staying open through the silence. I've chosen to walk a path where my capacity for connection is maintained even when it's not returned. I wonder what you have chosen?

Notice the moments when inclusion is yours to give. What happens when inclusion is our default? Maybe we get a chance to discover what makes an oversized purple shirt extremely special.

We all have the power to be the person who says yes when everyone else says no.