It felt like an itch I had no way of scratching.

I recently joined a group where I felt very judged. And no, it wasn’t in my head. It was made known to me — not directly, of course, but in that passive-aggressive way that somehow makes the itch worse. There’s something about indirect judgment that gets under your skin more than a direct confrontation ever could.

When I saw an email addressing something I had only asked about in private, I wanted to disappear. I wanted to be done with it entirely. But I had to see these people again. And I knew — I knew — they were talking about me, because I had heard them talk about other people before. That wasn’t a guess. That was fact. It wasn’t even that I had made some obvious mistake. The email itself was shaming. Scathing, even.

The Itch Beneath the Itch

One of the issues people bring into my office, over and over, is this nagging desire to be wanted. There is something almost unbearable about knowing — or even just suspecting — that people are talking badly about you behind your back. And so often, they do know, because they’ve heard it themselves, directly or through the grapevine.

Have you had this itch before?

I believe this is part of why the Bible urges us so persistently to be kind to one another. It’s because we are all sensitive. We are all a little undone when someone doesn’t like us, when someone is unkind to us. This isn’t a character flaw. It’s part of being human, made for connection, wired for belonging.

So how do we deal with it?

A Framework, Not a Formula

This isn’t a comprehensive guide. It’s simply a framework that has helped me and might help you process through a situation like this.

1. Be kind to yourself.

My first instinct was to turn on myself: Well, you brought this upon yourself. You silly duddy. Honestly, I can’t even write down here some of the words I actually said to myself and maybe that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? The voice we use with ourselves in these moments is so often crueler than anything anyone else said to us.

2. Be kind to them.

Most of the time, people who are passive-aggressive and mean-hearted toward others are the most critical of themselves. It’s the only way they know how to deal with frustration, disappointment, or conflict. These ladies could have addressed me directly, in private. Instead, they chose a route that left me feeling embarrassed and shamed. I have to assume that’s simply the extent of what they know how to do and the ceiling of their maturity, at least in this moment.

3. Be aware of your stress response.

There are multiple temptations here, and naming your fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response can help you catch yourself before you act from it.

• Fight: Confront them — “Hey, you should’ve handled this differently.” It can escalate the situation far beyond what it needs to be.
• Flight: Stop showing up. Ghost everybody.
• Freeze: Do nothing at all, and let it fester.
• Fawn: Over-apologize, over-explain, try to earn your way back into their good graces.

None of these are sins in themselves. They’re instincts. But naming them takes away some of their power over you.

4. Talk to God about how you’re feeling.

Talk to Him about the embarrassment, and ask Him to help you carry it. Talk to Him about the hurt and the injustice of it. Ask Him what you actually need from Him in this moment. Not what you think you should need, but what you truly need.

5. Recount a similar past situation.

Has something like this happened before? Check whether that old wound still feels sore. Sometimes what we’re really reacting to isn’t just today’s slight. It’s every other time we’ve felt this exact way, stacked on top of each other.

6. Accept the situation.

People will talk about you. That is simply the reality. Accepting that might also mean forgiving them. This does not mean letting them get away with their behavior. It means accepting that we live in a world where people will, at times, treat us unkindly because we live in a fallen world, and that is just the reality of it.

(A necessary disclaimer: this framework is not meant to apply to abusive behavior. Acceptance is not the same as tolerating harm.)

7. Treat them with the love they could not show you.

This is where “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” stops being a verse on a coffee mug and starts being something you actually need. Because on your own, you cannot love someone who has shamed you. But you were never meant to do this on your own.

8. If the itch still won’t go away, let someone in.

Sometimes you walk through all of this. You pray, you extend understanding, you accept the reality of a fallen world and the itch is still there. It hasn’t quieted down. It’s still showing up uninvited, days or weeks later, tugging at you when you least expect it.

If that’s you, this might be your sign to bring in a friend or a counselor. Not because you’ve failed at processing it on your own, but because sometimes an itch that won’t let up isn’t really about the email, or the group, or the ladies who chose silence over honesty. Sometimes it’s a smaller, older wound that this moment happened to press on. The current situation is real, but it may also be a doorway into something that’s been there far longer: a pattern, a memory, a belief about yourself that was formed long before this group ever existed.

A friend can offer you comfort and perspective. A counselor can help you find the actual root — the thing underneath the thing — so that the next time life brushes up against it, it doesn’t send you spiraling all over again. There is no shame in needing help to find it. Sometimes it takes someone outside the situation to see what we cannot see from inside it.

This is not a comprehensive guide. It’s a framework and something to hold onto the next time that itch shows up, and it will. But you don’t have to scratch it alone.