On Blocking, Being Blocked, and What We're Actually Reacting To

Sometimes the most uncomfortable professional moments happen after the conversation stops.

Over the years, I have both blocked people and been blocked online. Sometimes I blocked because interactions felt unproductive or professionally uncomfortable. Sometimes, because I felt overwhelmed, repeated commentary and strong views arriving during a period of sustained stress left me with very little emotional margin. At the time, it didn't feel dramatic. It was a click of a button. It felt like managing my own capacity.

More recently, I've experienced the other side. Being removed from a professional group without warning. Being cut off — by someone I considered a professional friend — after what I believed was a misunderstanding, because they did not want to hear a different view.

It was more affecting than I expected. The loss of access, the inability to respond, the awareness that something about you is now being held in a space you can no longer enter.

Online, the end of a connection can be instant. Emotionally, it rarely is.

The landscape has shifted

Before the pandemic, online professional spaces were useful but largely supplementary. There were conferences, office conversations, site visits, informal catch-ups. The relationship existed elsewhere first; online was just another channel.

That changed. For many of us, it changed permanently.

I work alone. I have done for some time, and I wouldn't change it — but working alone means that online connections are not secondary to professional life. They are a significant part of it. The people I think with, challenge with, learn from - many of them exist primarily in online spaces. LinkedIn. Group chats. Professional communities. When those connections break down or are severed, the impact is not trivial. It lands in the working day in a way that a lost connection might not have done when there were other people around to absorb it.

This matters more than the profession generally acknowledges. Surveyors working independently, in small practices, or in areas with limited peer networks often rely on online spaces to do the professional community work that offices and institutional structures used to do. The loss of a connection, a group, or a valued exchange partner is not just an inconvenience. For some, it's a genuine professional loss.

What we're actually reacting to

Online professional discussions often reveal as much about how we interpret tone as they do about the words being used.

A comment appears. It's short. Ambiguous. Possibly critical, or possibly not. One person reads it after a long day, and the phrasing feels pointed, familiar. A sense of here we go again. Another person reads the same comment later, in a different mood, and finds it clumsy rather than hostile - worth clarifying, or maybe worth leaving alone. And then someone adds a meme.

Same words. Very different responses.

This isn't unusual. Online spaces compress nuance. They strip out voice, body language, intent, and relationship history. What's left is language doing a lot of heavy lifting, with our own assumptions filling the gaps. Rarely are we reacting to the literal wording alone. More often, we're reacting to what we think sits behind it — criticism of competence, dismissal of professional care, a misunderstanding of role. Those interpretations aren't irrational. They're shaped by experience. But they're still interpretations, not facts.

Sometimes the strongest reactions don't come from what was said, but from where it was said, and who else was watching.

The discomfort has to go somewhere

Being blocked or removed creates a particular kind of discomfort. Not outrage, exactly. Not always anger. More often, it's unfinishedness.

Where does that energy go?

In a professional context, it often turns inward. What are they saying about me? Is there a pattern in my behaviour I haven't examined? Is there something in my tone I need to look at? Those questions can be healthy, but only up to a point. Self-reflection is different from self-punishment. There comes a moment where continuing to interrogate yourself is no longer growth — it's rumination. That's usually the point at which the discomfort needs to be contained, not endlessly analysed.

Part of that containment is recognising what the discomfort is actually made of. Fatigue, past complaints, professional pressure, accumulated responsibility — all of these make certain readings more likely. Emotional temperature often comes from inside the room, not the screen. That doesn't mean ignoring genuinely problematic language. It means knowing the difference between what was said and the story you've attached to it.

When I have blocked someone, it was not because I believed myself right and them wrong. It was because I felt at capacity. If I can be honest about that, I must also allow for the possibility that someone blocking me was doing the same. That doesn't make it comfortable. But it makes it human. We rarely see the private threshold someone else has reached.

When blocking becomes a shortcut

There are situations where blocking or removing someone is the right call. Harassment. Sustained hostility. Private messages that cross a line. In those cases, it is a necessary boundary, not a choice between equals.

But that isn't always what's happening.

In professional spaces, blocking is sometimes used to end a conversation that has simply become uncomfortable — to avoid the difficulty of disagreement, or the effort of working something through. And it doesn't always arrive with any kind of signal. There is no dramatic exit, no final message. More often, someone simply disappears from a group. Or you discover, quietly, that you have been blocked during what you thought was a cooling-off period — a space you were giving them, assuming things would settle. You weren't escalating. You were waiting. And while you waited, the door was closed.

That's worth reflecting on, because the ease of disconnection online doesn't make it consequence-free. It just makes those consequences less visible.

When I have removed someone from a community I help manage, it has never been a unilateral or hasty decision. It is discussed. It is considered. And where possible, there is an explanation. Not because the process needs to be elaborate, but because the person on the other side deserves to understand what has happened and why. That standard feels worth holding — in community management, and in professional relationships more broadly.

If something has gone wrong between two people, or between a person and a group, the question worth asking first is whether there is a conversation to be had. Not always. Not in every case. But more often than a block or a removal might suggest.

Disagreement handled well can strengthen a professional relationship. Disagreement avoided — or ended with a click — rarely resolves anything. It just moves the discomfort somewhere else.

Restraint is not indifference

Surveyors are trained to slow down, qualify, caveat, and consider risk. Online environments reward speed and certainty. That tension matters.

Choosing not to respond immediately is still a decision. So is responding neutrally. So is asking a clarifying question instead of correcting an assumption. Not every comment requires a defence. Not every misunderstanding needs correction in public. None of these choices are signs of weakness. They're signs of judgement being applied in a space where the stakes feel personal.

It can be uncomfortable to accept that someone you once supported — or who once supported you — may now hold a settled view of you. Professional peers are on their own paths. So are we. Sometimes a disagreement lands at a point where the other person is no longer open to dialogue. It takes discipline to recognise when it is time to step back, even when that stepping back feels sad.

That isn't indifference. It is restraint. And it is different from simply disappearing without a word.

Holding the discomfort

Not having the final word is frustrating. So is losing the opportunity to talk something through. It's hard not to wonder whether things would feel different face-to-face, where tone is visible and pauses are possible.

But professional integrity is not proven by winning. Nor is it undone by being blocked.

For those of us working independently, the stakes around online connection feel higher — because they are. These spaces aren't a side channel. They're where professional thinking happens, where peer relationships are built, and where, sometimes, they fracture. That deserves to be taken seriously — by all of us, in how we engage, and in how we choose to disengage.

The harder work is internal: noticing the urge to correct, resisting the pull to rehearse the exchange, and allowing discomfort to settle. But it's also external — choosing to talk rather than disappear, to explain rather than simply close the door. A moment's pause, or a single honest message, can change far more than a perfectly phrased public reply — or a silence that leaves someone wondering what they did wrong.

Until next time, Marion


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