When did it become ok to be ignored?

An individual being ignored by others.

I came up with the idea for this post when I saw a TikTok video about an individual who had applied for over 400 jobs but had only managed to get a small handful of interviews from those applications. But before I address this, I want to take a minute to explain Attachment Theory and why it plays a part in the difficulties for some people.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of Attachment Theory, it is a theory which explains how humans form strong emotional attachments to important individuals during childhood and how the strength or weaknesses in these attachments help shape our behaviours and thought processes into adult life. That's not to say that these behaviours and thought processes are completely rigid, but for some, they remain the same throughout adulthood.

Does anyone remember their childhood and when they were naughty? Not necessarily naughty on purpose, but more in the category of general childlike misadventure! When this happens (and I am stereotyping here!) your caregivers might do one of two things, the first one is get angry and shout. Whilst there might have been a caring element to it, maybe it was because you'd put yourself in some sort of unknown danger, you very quickly learn that anger is bad. When you reach your adult years, it's possible that regardless of circumstances, when someone is angry at you, there is an automatic assumption that you've done something wrong. Even if you haven't.

But for the purposes of this post it is the second thing your caregivers might have done that is of greater interest to me. When you were naughty, your caregivers might have given you the silent treatment. The length of the silent treatment may vary from person to person, or situation to situation. For some children, this way of being punished can be very difficult to deal with. Our connection to our caregivers is put at threat and we move into a survival or rescue state to try and preserve that connection. As children, one of the most common ways to repair the rupture in the connection is to become the perfect child, being overly nice and helpful in order to obtain forgiveness. In adult friendships or relationships, those who were cared for in that way may then struggle with prolonged periods of silences in relationships, automatically assuming that the other person is being silent due to something we've done. Having this kind of thinking pattern can be exhausting as it can lead to extended periods of anxiety.

Now that I've given some context, I want to move towards the main point of this post which is.....

'When did it become acceptable to be completely ignored when applying for a job?'

As a disclaimer, I'm not completely ignorant to the way things are in the country at the moment. Things are more expensive, jobs aren't as readily available as perhaps they were 5 years ago, more people are applying for these fewer jobs and employees are expected to do more work disproportionately little pay.

That said, have employers considered how difficult it is for those who apply for the jobs? You are often asked to submit a CV or a lengthy application form which can be challenging as you are expected to (in some cases) write a number of short essays which are all about you and your skills. I would guess that a fair majority of people find it really difficult to sell themselves and as such these applications can take a substantial chunk of time, emotional commitment and anxiety.

Now some job adverts are at least marginally more thoughtful because they add the line 'if you don't hear from us then tough shit' (not in those exact words!) but for the rest there is silence. Some may argue that this is just the accepted pitfall of applying for jobs. But I think it's wrong. It's wrong because for some of us, it could spark memories of our childhood relationships where silence means anger, blame or the feeling of having done something wrong. Let's face it, people shouldn't have to feel angry, anxious or upset for trying to better themselves or earn a living.

I understand that offering individual feedback to every applicant is going to be too time consuming, even though ideally that's what I'd like. After all, how are people supposed to improve and develop without some kind of feedback or direction. But could we at least start to have the decency to send out an email, even if it is a generic two line one, to those that have applied and aren't successful so they aren't sat there wondering all the time. If this rejection by ignorance system was to be adopted in other areas of life, it wouldn't take long for us to have a miserable and highly anxious society.

For those applying to jobs, regardless of circumstances, I encourage you to show yourselves some self-compassion. You are making an effort and I'd like to think that one day that the effort will be rewarded. Also, let's face it, if someone can't make the effort to communicate with you in a healthy way, would you really have wanted to work for them? Your application might not have been suitable or not exactly what they were looking for, but in the absence of feedback, you aren't to know that so it is kinder to maybe lean towards it being a them problem as opposed to a you problem!

Here at What's Next Counselling, I try and model for clients those positive behaviours in order to help them though their issues. As a therapist I'm not afraid to ask for feedback as to how we are working during sessions and I am also happy to challenge clients in an empathetic and constructive way when their thought processes or behaviours might be causing themselves or others harm.