What to Do When You Feel You’re Being Ignored

If you communicate with people throughout the day—basically, if you’re human—then you, like me, sometimes find yourself “following up,” “circling back,” and generally coming to terms with being ignored, especially considering all the other instances in your life in which you might go unheard. (No response to a “let’s reconnect” DM to an old friend; crickets when you ask your landlord to renew your lease; no answer from the doctor’s office, even three days later; hello, barista?) At a certain point, feeling invisible can begin to take a toll on your mental health.

In fact, Kipling D. Williams, Ph.D., a professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University, found that being ignored literally hurts—it triggers the same part of the brain that registers physical pain. Technically, you’re experiencing ostracism. You may think of ostracism as the stuff of black sheep and outcasts, but it basically means you’re being excluded from group dynamics or otherwise feeling ignored. The person or people ignoring you might not even know they’re doing it. They may not have received your message, might have been on vacation, or just haven’t had time to respond. “It’s hard to know what they were thinking. But it doesn’t really matter. From your perspective, you are perceiving that you’re ignored and excluded, and it has its effects on you, whether or not it was intended to be that way,” Williams says. That sensation of being invisible feels so bad because it threatens some basic human psychological needs. And it works quickly. In experiments, Williams and his team watched what happened when some people were left out of a virtual ball-tossing game with strangers—about as low-stakes an ostracism scenario as you can imagine. They saw that those people being ignored reported elevated feelings of sadness and anger after just a few minutes.

Research has found that most people experience these feelings at least once a day. As a journalist who cold-emails contacts, a college professor who lectures aloof adolescents, and a morning person who texts his friends way too early, I have a rate higher than that. Which helps explain why I started this morning the way I’d begin any other: I set yesterday’s hurt feelings aside and reached out, followed up, and circled back with the people I needed to speak with today. Then, around lunchtime, a sensation washed over me that felt like a bitter blend of sadness, exhaustion, and complete helplessness. I convinced myself that I had just wasted time sending even more messages that wouldn’t get responses and almost went back to bed. Instead, I’ve discovered that one key to managing ostracism and moving on from it is understanding the nuances of the feeling itself.

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Why Silence Hurts So Much

Being ignored shakes us because it threatens our basic needs for belonging, control, self-esteem, and meaningful existence. No matter the circumstances or severity of the situation, “it’s a very primitive response in us,” Williams says—even if the person we’re getting the silence from had no real obligation to respond to us in the first place. Our sensitivity to silent rejection is likely more a product of evolution than entitlement. “Evolutionarily speaking, being ostracized led to death,” Williams says, “so there’s probably some kind of hardwired mechanism in us to detect it quickly . . . maybe even over-detect it.”

Usually, the first thing you do when you perceive you’re being left out is “try to regain the needs that have been threatened,” as Williams puts it. “You might reach out and say, ‘Hey, can you text me? I want to be sure my phone is working,’ ” or do something else to get attention, be included, or be acknowledged. If you keep trying and you still get nada, and if you don’t have good strategies for coping, you can end up where I did—resignation—which doesn’t feel any better. You might become especially sensitive and go on high alert for anything, anywhere, that makes you feel like you’re being rejected. But there are ways you can cope.

At Work: Change Your Expectations

First, have compassion. Think about what might be going on with someone that could explain why you’re not getting a response. Maybe they have urgent deadlines in addition to answering you. Or maybe they have an illness in the family. Or their computer fatally crashed. Or all of these. Give them a little slack and consider that the lack of an answer might have nothing to do with you. If, for instance, someone ignores the question you just asked, it’s possible that they didn’t hear you because they had earbuds in. Understanding that is going to help you get over the feeling faster than if you think that they’re mad at you or that you’re not worth looking up for.

When you’re not in person, normalize not receiving an answer at all, especially if you have a job with a high rate of unresponsiveness (salesperson, journalist, canvasser, publicist). Recognize that answers are a numbers game and the rate of responses is going to be low. In other words, shift your goal from nailing every shot to simply aiming for a decent average. If you think you can nail more shots, look at the non-responses as opportunities to learn, says Erika Urgiles, a communications executive who basically tries to get people’s attention for a living. Don’t use the silence as evidence of failure; use it as a launchpad for new experiments in reaching out.

In Your Personal Life: Distract Yourself

When you’re looking for a response from a family member, a loved one, or anyone else who claims to care about you, you can’t really get away with having low expectations for responsiveness. That’s when being ignored sucks the most and can send you into a tailspin of rumination, wondering if you said the wrong thing or did the wrong thing or have suddenly become really annoying. “If you simply think of all the reasons why the ostracism [may be] occurring, you’re reliving it; you’re keeping it alive and fresh in your mind,” Williams says. And you’re not offering yourself the opportunity to recover from it.

To stop the rumination wheel, find a distraction. In one of Williams’s ball-toss experiments, he and his colleagues had some of the excluded people think deeply about their experiences in the study, then fill out a survey that would reveal how ostracized they felt. Others were purposely distracted before taking that survey. Some were asked to take a moment to select an area of life important to them (friends, finances, etc.) and write about why it meant so much to them. Others, who identified themselves as belonging to a religion, prayed. Then they took the mood survey.

Those who responded to the survey immediately after the game reported feeling more rejected and disconnected. “If we offer people opportunities to do anything…think of things they’re good at or think of people they belong to, then they get over it more quickly,” Williams says. The best distractions are ones that fortify the needs that are threatened. So you might think of groups you fit into (which restores belonging) or skills you have (helps with self-esteem).

In Your Social Life: Take Control

You have more control than you think when you’re being ignored. Urgiles, for instance, uses deadlines to change up the dynamic. “We all have group chats where plans never happen,” she says. “It always starts with ‘Let’s hang out,’ and no one ever ends up making plans. I’ve started saying, ‘Let me know by this time if I should make reservations at this restaurant.’ ”

Deadlines inspire urgency and allow you to get past it mentally if you still don’t get a response. You’re free to assume either they’re just not interested or what you’re offering doesn’t fit their schedules. You divorce yourself from the pain and the hope of a response, and you get to move on.

This article originally appeared in the April 2023 issue of Men’s Health.