The frustrated needs linked with feelings of not mattering include the need for con-nection with other people (see Flett et al., 2022). The link between feelings of not mattering and loneliness has documented in several studies (e.g., Flett et al., 2022; McComb et al., 2020), and we have emphasized the double jeopardy that exists when a person feels alone and also feels insignificant. However, the problems and core themes run deeper when it comes to how feelings of not mattering contribute to suicide. Bostik and Everall (2006) documented key aspects of the process in their study of suicidal adolescents. They emphasized a pervasive sense of having failed to establish not only a social connection but also an emotional connection with signifi-cant others. Bostik and Everall (2006) described suicidal adolescents who felt unloved and unwanted, and this was rooted in feeling that their parents did not understand them and willfully ignored their feelings because they simply did not care.
The sense of being isolated and being alone are quite salient among suicidal people experiencing psychological pain. A qualitative study of cognitive warning signs for suicide led by a team of researchers that included Aaron Beck and Gregory Brown yielded some evidence from client reports that shows the link between a sense of aloneness and insignificance (see Adler et al., 2016). Categories were iden-tified based on cognitive therapy sessions of 35 patients who had attempted suicide. Five cognitive sign categories emerged: (1) state hopelessness; (2) focus on escape;
- suicide as a solution; (4) fixation on suicide; and (5) aloneness. The aloneness category included specific examples that fused isolation with not mattering (e.g., “That I don’t matter to anybody.” “I felt nobody is there for me”) (see p. 538). Given these descriptions, it is not too difficult to imagine just how horrible some people can feel when they feel totally alone and important to no one.
Feelings of emotional and social disconnection can add to the cognitive salience of thoughts of not mattering to other people. When someone is in this state of mind, they will be strongly impacted by negative social interactions and exchanges. Such experiences will be interpreted as reflected appraisals of the self that are “taken to heart” by people who already feel likely they don’t matter to others. These negative social experiences will maintain and exacerbate the felt experience of emotional and social disconnection and result in people saying things like “… if nobody cared, why bother trying to live? In my mind, I was alone. There was nobody” (Bostik & Everall, 2006, p. 277). This mindset likely precludes seeking help in many instances.
Hopelessness About Not Mattering to Others
Research and theory on mattering has thus far focused on current levels of matter-ing, but it is proposed here that the mattering construct has a salient temporal focus that is reflected in expectancies about the anticipated actions and tendencies of other people in relation to the self. At present, research has not systematically explored the mattering construct in terms of future expectancies; for instance, overall, there is limited published research on how mattering relates to optimism and hope even though Rayle (2006) observed that many people enter counseling with profound feelings of hopelessness that seem rooted in a strong sense of being invisible and not mattering to anyone.
It we revisit the themes shown in Box 4.1, it is evident that there is also an ele-ment of helplessness and hopelessness about not mattering that is clearly on display (i.e., I am never going to matter to them). It is as if the person at risk of suicide has developed the depressive predictive certainty described by Anderson (1990), but in this instance, the bleak certainty about the future is built on the theme of never mat-tering to anyone.
One very salient difference between people who feel like they do matter and people who feel like they don’t matter is that those with a sense of mattering are infused with hope while those without it tend to feel hopelessness. Recent research in our laboratory has built on studies showing strong links between mattering and hope; also, feelings of not mattering are associated robustly with hopelessness. Rose et al. (2024) have shown in a sample of university students assessed during the COVID-19 pandemic that scores on the AMS are correlated with score on the Beck Hopelessness Scale (r = .50). In addition, there is a strong link between anti- mattering and scores on the Social Hopelessness Questionnaire (r = .70). Thus, people with strong feelings of not mattering to other envision a bleak interpersonal future that is dreaded. The person with a feeling of not mattering accompanied by psychological pain will likely have a highly negative future orientation. This future orientation will have a general component in terms of pessimism and hopelessness, but it is likely that it also involves beliefs about not mattering in the future. The tendency to become suicidal seems almost inevitable when the person who is experiencing severe psychological pain (i.e., psychache) has had experiences that prime a future life events schema that makes him or her feel certain that she or he will never matter to significant others. If this person feels like a failure from a social comparison per-spective, this orientation can also entail thoughts such as, “I will never matter as much as other people seem to matter.”