Have you been shut out of group work (at seminars etc.)?

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Have you been shut out of group work - mainly as an adult, at things like seminars, workshops, labs, and the like?
I can say it's happened to me at least once...basically, as soon as they detected there was something abnormal about me, I was "frozen out" - they didn't use directly hostile language like "No, you're a f****ng loser and a freak, we don't want you, nobody does" but was non-verbally said... just pretending that I wasn't there, very passive-aggressive, hoping that I'd "take the hint" I suppose...even though I had to participate in SOME group work (guess it wasn't "their problem").

Even though I've always had a gifted IQ and had brilliant suggestions and feedback, it was still hard to overcome certain prejudices - and I suppose having the high intellectual smarts but low emotional intelligence (and practical smarts in some ways) conjured up a certain undesirable archetype in their hive-mind.

Both in school and at seminars that has happened to me. I was also always the one left without a partner in school when the teacher would tell the students to partner up.

Aw that's very sad

Yeah it's happened to me as well

And the thing is, you can't start making a stink about it, or start any sort of righteous indignation rant about your predicament...since that will just make others think that you're "more mentally ill than you really are"

At school we were supposed to work in pairs for practical chemistry, but there was an odd number of kids and I was somehow the one who ended up partnerless. So then I'd ask the teacher what to do, and he said go and join another pair. But the pairs I asked weren't happy about that, and when I did get into one they didn't keep me in the loop about what they were doing, so it was a bad experience. Don't know if it was me or them that was the problem.

I was annoyed when I got my school report and for chemistry the teacher had put that I "preferred to work alone." I've no idea what made him think that. I was always open to the idea but if I'd just been given a partner instead of being left to fix it up for myself, I don't think there'd have been a problem.

Apart from that I wasn't shut out of anything, though there wasn't an awful lot group work in my life to be shut out of. I've sometimes felt a bit alienated in groups in mainstream society, but the "alternativists" such as I met in the Co-operative Development Agency and in hippie communes were always friendly and inclusive.

I've also experienced something that's been called "the bureaucrats and the bored" where some people in a group (the "bureaucrats") will dominate the whole thing and exclude the others (the "bored"). One of the reasons I'd want to get out of jury service, if they tried to draft me into that, is that I'd expect a few jerks would take over and exclude people like me. I suppose I must have got that idea from experience of work groups.

There are many known problems with the dynamics of groups, so it's probably not surprising that an individual doesn't often feel completely included, and it's wrong to imagine it's necessarily all the fault of the individual. A lot of people seem quite happy with shutting others out and elbowing them out of the way. I suppose it's all part of the crappy competitive society we live in. If an individual is a real problem because they're dominating or being destructive to the group, then it seems to me that most people don't want to directly challenge them about their behaviour, so they just quietly sideline them instead.

I hadn't.

Instead people are quite drawn to me.
As in "everyone gets quiet and listens to me" drawn if it's my turn.

I still don't understand how or why or what. If it's school or work or elsewhere.

If I want a particular role, people just adjust to that.
And I prefer to solo.

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Modern form of gaslighting/exclusion. In the playground the little girls will gather around and one says "we shouldn't talk to Jenny anymore, cos she's weird" and the rest say "yeah"!. And so little Jenny is left confused why nobody wants to talk to her anymore. My daughter is going through this in tech college.

Adults in the workplace don't need a written or verbal contract, they know automatically to ignore Mr/Mrs Strange if there's even a little a bit of divergence from normal. the exclusion extends beyond the workplace and includes not being included socially outside of work.

I can only hope that these sorts of passive-aggressive exclusion tactics are more common in high school than in university/college - I wouldn't know b/c when in uni back in the 90s, I did social sciences not natural sciences or engineering. It was actually in large part b/c of foul treatment in science class, that I didn't do well... since, as you can understand, it's based on group work and partnership.

Going to the teacher to explain your dilemma is not a bona fide solution, either, because even if he/she TELLS a group or two partners to include you, they will verbally agree but then non-verbally not comply. I think that's gotta be a really tough predicament for an autistic student, where even if you SEE negative non-verbals, you can't really "take the hint" because you've got nowhere else to go It's like you're one of the Dalit, the lepers, the great unwashed, the "crazies", whatever. I'd also feel a certain sense of guilt from "letting them" do most of the lab work, where you just take notes and do a report best as you can, despite the fact that you were frozen out of the work

Yeah, a while back I was on a training course and we all had to pair up. Guess who couldn't get a partner?

When I was in my early twenties, I was at an employment conference and was seated at a round table with people I didn't know (and who didn't know each other). We were told to make up groups of four. Instantly the other four at the table made up their group, leaving me out. How did they know how to do this?

At various times in high school we would be told to partner up and I would be the odd one out. I'd have to partner up with the teacher. That happened a lot. Very uncomfortable.

I never felt worthy of being included anyway so I think I just accepted that that was the reason
I can't remember feeling any other way
I don't actually think it bothered me that much and I'm still the same today

I remember the class narcissist would make sure I was always left out of the group by going with my friends when the teacher asked us to pick our groups. One day I got fed up and pushed her in drama class. She made a huge fuss and I got into trouble. She knew deep down that she deserved that but being the narcissist that she was she carried on deliberately excluding me then playing the victim whenever I retaliated.

I remember when I told my older brother about her, and him and his friends confronted her and told her to stop making me friendless. It didn't work. All she did was play the victim and told me that she was traumatised by my brother and that it ruined her whole summer. There was no way that was true, because my brother didn't exactly terrorise her, and she had no idea that she actually ruined my school life.