Dave Kashen explores why being left out of team meetings triggers such strong feelings. He traces it to childhood wounds and belonging needs, then walks through self-reflection, Internal Family Systems, and reframing the stories you tell yourself about what the exclusion means.
So the question is, I find myself feeling very unsettled when I'm not included in every meeting or activity or event. I realize I can't be and I should trust others, but I find myself asking if they don't trust me or value me, etc. So to go to the heart of the matter, you know, there's, um I think belonging is one of the core sort of human needs. And, um, if we perceive like our sense of belonging as— or if, if we have like an experience of life where we don't feel like that need has been met, you know, will tend to be particularly sensitive to it. You know, one of the, one of the things I say to clients is, you know, it's, it's not like we stop being human when we become a, when we become a founder or CEO. So all of our lifelong and childhood patterns, human patterns, show up. So in this case, my guess is there's some kind of, um, remnant pattern about being left out or not belonging. Um, in effect, what happens is we superimpose the past onto the present, right? Maybe in middle school, you know, no one saved the seat for you at the table, and you felt this really deep wound of like being rejected and not belonging. And so, um, first of all, it's just really useful to recognize, am I re— am I responding to the actual situation the situation that's here now, or I'm— am I reacting to some past situation that this is triggering? And this sounds like one where it's really some past situation that's being triggered, because generally, as a founder and CEO, you know, people are not excluding you from the meeting because they don't want you there or value you there— value you. Um, most likely they're just trying to be conscious of your time and, you know, also trying to, you know, step up and be autonomous and not, you know, um, not have you think you need to be in every, in every meeting because they, they can do their job without you, which is their job, um, especially your leadership team. So in this situation, I would probably do some reflecting on, um you know, what does this situation remind you of from the past? Or I might even ask a client like, how far back would you have to go to find a version of you that didn't feel a sense of being left out? And often that can be a real, um, uh, illuminating, like, oh yeah, this is really my, you know, 10-year-old self showing up here. Because it's, it's like It's weird being human. We're almost like a, like a nested consciousness of all of our previous ones. So it's like, yeah, you might be 36 now, but your 10-year-old self is still in you, and it's like, oh, I feel rejected, I feel— and so that one may just need some love from you. You can actually, um, almost like reparent yourself, right? It's like, you know, what is your 10-year-old self need to hear. Or, you know, there's like, you know, Internal Family Systems is an approach where you really kind of connect with these different parts of yourself and listen and bring, you know, self-compassion and love. And so I might, if I was with a client, I might dialogue with this younger self who, who felt left out and rejected and just give them some love and let them know that like middle school kids are idiots and it didn't mean anything about you or your lovability or value. Um, and often if that can— if you can really let that in, it can start to break that sense, you know, that pattern from the past of being, you know, hypersensitive to belonging or, um, being rejected. The other thing, at a more slightly more, um, I guess now approach, is just to question this, you know, recognize this thing happened, like, you know, let's say a team had a meeting without you. Um, that's a fact. The fact is not impacting you. Your mind is generating a story that, that they didn't want to include you, or they don't think you're valuable. And so sometimes really just recognizing, oh, that's just a story that my mind is making up, and then asking, you know, one of two questions. One, am I willing to let go of being right about that story? Or how might the opposite of that story be true? Like they really value me. That's why they didn't include me in the meeting. And often just seeing that can kind of break the hold that that story has on you. And then you could even check it out with your team. Hey, hey, so-and-so, I, you know, I saw you didn't include me in this. You know, if you're willing to be vulnerable, you could say, I made up a story that you don't value me. I just wanted to check, or that you don't, you know, like I'm, my contributions aren't useful. And they'd likely say, oh my God, no, we'd love to have you there, we were just trying to honor your time. Or, you know, from my experience, most of the time the sort of negative fear-based stories our mind generates are either not true or the literal opposite is true.
