Dear Dee,

Despite having some deep childhood wounds which I am aware of, I know I have a lot of people who love and care about me.

That’s wonderful!

However, it seems to me that there was a particular person (or more of them?) who didn’t love you and didn’t care enough for you in your childhood? More specifically, they didn’t want to get to know you. I say this because you mentioned several times the pain of your work colleagues not putting an effort to get to know you:

They barely ask me anything personal like how was my weekend or birthday and I feel like no one has put in effort to really get to know me or care.

I want to feel connected in a team and know I’m part of a work family.

And then I blame myself for being upset that they don’t like me because I’m not showing them who I really am.

How I do let go of all this fear and constant craving of external validation? Especially from co-workers who don’t truly know me?

My guess is that you are re-experiencing the pain of rejection, or perceived rejection, by a particular person or persons in your childhood. You would like to be liked and accepted by your work colleagues and be a part of a work family. But your colleagues don’t seem to accept you into their family… in your eyes, they don’t even want to get to know you. As a result, you feel rejected and you freeze (I am extremely reserved at work and almost get social anxiety), not being able to act spontaneously and “not showing them who I really am“.

Does this sound plausible to you?

Hello Dee,

First of all, I would like to say that feeling this way is NOT pathetic and definitely not just a first world problem! I am from a third world country, and I too felt this way at work, so I relate very much to whatever you have said. You spend most of your day at work, so it’s only natural to want to be surrounded by positive, friendly coworkers. I came here to read the suggestions from others, so I don’t particularly have any advice for you. People have given good advices here, and @anita has pointed out a key aspect here. I do agree that when one becomes habituated to the same group of people for a long time, they wouldn’t feel comfortable opening up instantly to a new-coworker. BUT, if it were me, I would make sure to let a new-comer at work feel invited and would never let them feel totally invisible or left out. So, IMO, your colleagues were in the wrong for making you feel that way.

I maybe wrong, and I totally don’t want to burden you with negative thoughts, but I think that there’s more to this than meets the eye. The fact that they are making you feel totally invisible whenever you try to say something , is pretty disturbing and feels like a  red flag for me. Making someone feel invisible indicates a lack of respect towards that individual. As I stated earlier, I was in a similar situation as you, it all started off the same way, with them not being outright toxic, but there were many subtle signs of being discriminated against, which I couldn’t pin-point exactly back then. My gut was telling me that something was not right. With time, their bullying became more and more apparent and by the time I realized that my gut instincts were right and that I was being bullied, I was already stripped-off my self-esteem and entered into depression. Ultimately, I had to leave that work environment to maintain my own sanity.

Again, I’m not telling you that this is exactly the case with your colleagues, but I suggest you to not blame yourself too much and fall into the cycle of self-doubt. Maybe try to keep a clear perspective and keep an eye on their behaviour towards you. If they keep making you feel invisible and left-out, then it’s time to leave that place.

You also stated that you are a “bubbly social female”. So, I hope that you are being “positively social”, acting within the limits of what is respectable towards others. The reason I’m stating this is because I was on the other side of the coin too, a victim of a “social” new-comer’s harassment. Back then, a new colleague had joined our lunch group and the way she behaved towards me from day1, was pretty rude. She tried to boss me around, maybe because she saw that I was a non-confrontational person and an easy scapegoat, and that made me feel extremely uncomfortable around her. She also started turning my lunch-mates against me one by one. I had to leave that group of people eventually. So, make sure that you are not offending your colleagues when you approach them. Talk to them in a non-authoritative manner. Just make sure that you don’t come-off as too bossy or clingy.