Alienation and Ostracism is a covert trauma. Simply put it means being excluded and ignored. Whether it’s by family or your environment.
This article will be updated with further research and sources soon.
Sources
DEVELOPING THE COVERT TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE SCALE (COTES): A RETROSPECTIVE EARLY PSYCHOSOCIAL TRAUMA ASSESSMENT TOOL
Tiffany E. Vastardis PhD, LMHC, CCTP, CMHIMP
Clinical Education Specialist • Florida Residential Clinical Training Liaison • Mental Health Researcher • Licensed Psychotherapist • Clinical Trauma Specialist • Integrative Medicine Practitioner
Ostracism and Alienation
A cross-cultural study of family ostracism, or “being excluded and ignored,”
(Yaakobi & Williams, 2016, p. 162) has been linked to the development of an avoidant
attachment style in individuals hailing from both collectivist and individualistic cultures,
as such serves as a protective factor in the face of threats to an individual’s sense of
belonging (Yaakobi & Williams, 2016). Social ostracism has also been linked to the
onset of eating disorders, namely Binge-Eating Disorder, in a sample of AfricanAmerican females (Hayman, McIntyre & Abbey, 2015). A reciprocal pattern has been
linked to experiences of ostracism, wherein, victims of ostracism often become
perpetrators of ostracism (Poulsen & Carmon, 2015), exhibiting disagreeableness (Hales,
Kassner, Williams, & Graziano, 2016), and even aggression in social contexts (Ren,
Wesselmann, & Williams, 2018).
Alienation in the context of a family is considered a form of emotional abuse.
Alienation can also take place in various other settings and can bear severe consequences
on the mental health of an individual. In family therapy, the term, alienation, “is used to
indicate that a child has been rejected by a parent without a reasonable or valid reason—
that is, for weak, trivial, frivolous, or absurd reasons,” (Reay, 2015, p. 197). In regard to
the latter-mentioned contexts, peer alienation has been linked to anxiety sensitivity,
pathological worry, and the onset of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
symptomology in an international sample of adults who self-reported past experiences of
alienation during childhood (Curzik & Salkicevic, 2016). Behavioral inhibition (BI), or
the expression of reticence and negative affect in the face of novel peers and situations
has also been linked to the experience of social alienation (Lahat et al., 2014).
