8 Subtle Habits That Make People Ignore You

Are people ignoring me? Why are they ignoring me? Does it feel like people aren’t listening or paying attention to you? Being ignored is a painful feeling, especially when it’s coming from people that you know and love. It can be confusing as to why it’s happening. Regardless of who it is that’s giving you the silent treatment, you might want to understand why and do what you can to remedy it. So here are 8 subtle habits that make people ignore you. 

1. You’re Trying Too Hard

We (mostly) want to make connections with people who we find interesting and are intrigued by. We know that that requires initiating and maintaining contact, and allowing a connection to grow over time. 

When you’re forcing interactions and connections with people, it turns them away from you. They can tell how disingenuous you’re being by changing your personality around whoever you are, for example. While it’s true that your relationship with friends is not like that with your colleagues, when you’re trying too hard to be someone you’re not, people can sense the desperation and might pull away. 

2. You’re Selfish

Even though the word “narcissism” has a bad reputation and origin story, having healthy narcissism is actually good. It’s self-confidence and a good view of yourself. That’s normal and necessary. 

However when you only ever talk about yourself and steal the spotlight from others in the social setting, that can make people resent your presence because you don’t contribute to the aspect of the group where others share. If you believe that only you deserve the compliments and the limelight and that everyone else must hear about your trip to Paris, they will see that as arrogance and disengage. And if you’re the friend who always conveniently “forgets” their wallet and your friends have to pay for you, oh boy. That might be your last free dinner. 

3. You’re Disengaged

When you’re around friends or even colleagues, engaging in conversations can bring about increased morale or just a time to vent about work or whatever. 

When you’re too socially passive or seem to lack assertiveness, people could see this as aloofness or that you’re not interested in the conversation or the activity/event and start ignoring you. We all really like engaging with people who engage back in return. So the passivity could make them ignore you. 

4. You’re Extremely Negative

No one likes a fun sucker. They are tiring to be around. It’s like running a marathon that never ends. Your energy and will to live is depleted and you just want to get away. 

Being angry and depressed occasionally is normal because emotions are normal. But people will run and hide from negative people often. If you’re a person who is vocally hypercritical of others, never happy and prefers to be miserable, then people will ignore you because the chronic negativity is contagious and no one likes being sick. 

5. Your Body Language Is Repelling Them.

You don’t have to be an expert in body language to be able to pick up on when someone doesn’t like you or is disinterested in your opinion. Because we are social creatures, we generally have knowledge of social cues and what they mean in certain contexts, sometimes. 

If you think that people are ignoring you, a surprising reason could be that your body language is uninviting or defensive. You don’t have to have your arms out all the time to convey openness but the general constriction and hiding poses like folding your arms, frowning and looking away is usually a sign that you’re not interested and people might pick up on that and choose to stay away. 

6. You Don’t Take Responsibility

Another habit that makes people ignore you is being irresponsible and not owning up to it. Being an actual victim is a horrible thing to happen to someone, but when you’re the perpetual victim, people aren’t going to want to be around you. 

If you’re someone who’s never guilty or at fault, even when you are, that behaviour is unacceptable and a reason for people to have no contact with you. You can be a victim sometimes, but you can’t be a victim all of the time. Not taking responsibility for your actions and the consequences from them makes you Undesirable #1. 

7. You’re Too Intense

Passion is a beautiful thing. It’s the driving force of creation and an admirable, attractive trait in a person, especially when they are passionate about something in their life. Their love for something is intriguing to watch. 

The opposite side of that is when a person’s passion leads them to being more domineering and controlling. This fire makes them a social tyrant who wants to micromanage everything that everyone in the group does. They don’t care about the best place for their friends to go to dinner collectively. They will choose one and that’s the end of the story. This behaviour is seen as bossy and controlling and no one likes being bullied into things. 

8. You’re Too Needy

Asking for advice and assurance from friends is normal, especially when you are going through something unique and difficult. It feels good to know that you have someone to lean on.

But if you’re the type of friend or colleague that needs to be constantly validated on their work or needs constant unnecessary outside approval to do something, that can be a downer and is draining for the people around you. If you’re not standing on your own sometimes and constantly going outside of yourself for help, people will see that as being clingy, needy and will start ignoring you. 

FINAL THOUGHTS 

This isn’t a closed list of habits that make people ignore you. It’s just a starting point for figuring out why this is happening to you. It might help to take other factors into account, like how being unable to read and give social cues could be a reason or how having social anxiety can be relevant to this. If any of these points resonated with you and you’re being ignored, I hope they helped you in modifying the behaviours that you exhibit that led to that. Pay attention to the things you say and do around people because those things can be clues on what habits might be off-putting. 

Good luck and see you soon! 

REFERENCES 

*Joyanima. (2021, June, 30). 12 Subtle Things You Do That Make Others Ignore You (Why Do People Ignore Me?) It’s Fixable. YouTube.com. Retrieved October 21, 2021 from https://youtu.be/0-ozkCFDoi4. 

*Keating , J. (2017, March 3). When people ignore you: 10 reasons you may turn people off. LovePanky. Retrieved October 21, 2021, from https://www.lovepanky.com/my-life/better-life/when-people-ignore-you. 

*Kiki, I. (n.d.). 11 reasons why people ignore you. Life Hacks. Retrieved October 21, 2021, from https://lifehacks.io/why-people-ignore-you/. 

*Morin, D. A., B.Sc., V. S., Pedersen, D. R., Jossie, Smith, J., Dennis, Jane, Ana, Chris, Roberts, S., Amy, Sad, Ed, Dz333, Peter, Ash, Kate, B, M., Se, … Sander, V. (2021, July 23). Do people ignore you? reasons why & what to do. SocialPro. Retrieved October 21, 2021, from https://socialpronow.com/blog/people-ignore-me/. 

*Top Think. (2021, October 02). 7 Subtle Habits That Make People Ignore You. YouTube.com. Retrieved October 21, 2021 from https://youtu.be/CqixTTBNwRo