@goteam I've spent some time thinking about this over the last 5 years (and also reading what information is available - it's limited). Luckily the two incidents were a couple of years apart or I would have gone mad!
But people who try to squeeze you out of a group are, in my opinion, The Charming Bully, their response to stress/fear/competition is a hybrid of Fight! Fawn! (Pete Walker CPTSD, but relevant to any perceived threat)
My own reaction to fear, threat or stress is Freeze, so I really have to go against my natural grain not to disappear in to myself and just give up and withdraw when these charming bully types set out to squeeze me out of a group.
The person who did this to me most recently, she in no way could be jealous of me. Literally not possible. She has a better more secure job which she got on her qualifications (I don't even have a degree). She lives in a bigger, nicer house in better area! She's married. She has a child. I'm a single parent! And yet and yet and yet......... I think there's something about my common decency and independence that triggers her. She wants to place me neatly beneath her on a social / intellectual hierarchy that exists in her head. And if I respect this virtual hierarchy that exists in her head, then she can be ok to me, as she is mostly busy kissing UP. (I'm not up). But the outright nastiness started when I defended a small boundary and I suppose that signalled to her that I didn't see myself as clearly beneath her.
This all sounds a bit intense to people who haven't been through it. But although now I do have boundaries, I guess there is something about my demeanour which is still a little apologetic for having a boundary. The Charming Fight! Fawn! Bully will pick up on that.
If you tell people they'll mostly say ''oh she's jealous!'' but it's not that.
It's that combination of you being beneath her on her virtual social hierarchy and so therefore unable to provide her with any validation and yet, having the fucking balls and cheek (as she would see it) to defend a small boundary. They don't see it as defending a boundary. They see it as a threat to their social status.
I feel like I understand this much better now. It tormented me the first time it happened. Somebody sees you as a threat for their place. THEY have ranked themself and they see you as the closest ranking person and therefore you are the threat to them, even if all you want for the group is cohesive harmony and from everybody to feel safe and included.
I don't know what the answer is. I am secure in myself now but there are other people who need a lot of validation from a group or from their friends and if you have a low social capital in their eyes, you're useless to them. Being a single parent I think some validation-hungry assholes see me as unable to give them any status, so I'm ''down''. And if you kiss up, you kick down.
This is eye opening. I cannot people pushing 50 can behave in this way but a few vaccuums are out there living what looks like a very fulfilling life and yet they will still go to strange lengths that compromise whatever integrity they think they have to exclude somebody who poses no threat to them.
I think I handled it better the second time than I did the first and that is a comfort. The first time after a year of her ignoring me but fawning over everybody else I flipped when I was about to sit down at work and she told me ''so and so is sitting there''. So I didn't cover myself in glory. She got to swan about delighted that everybody saw me snap at her!
Second time, I handled it better. I did not challenge her. I didn't get upset. I just thought to myself well god help you, making me the lightening rod for your issues at your age, but i just withdrew a bit, but carried on talking individually to other people.
So relieved that I finally understand the dynamics of this crap now!