Rejection can feel like a punch in the gut and if you’ve ever been rejected, you will probably agree that it can be one of the worst feelings you have ever experienced. Rejection hurts; it’s uncomfortable, debilitating, overwhelming and it can feel like death.
Since we usually take rejection personally, we may believe that when we are being rejected it means that there is something fundamentally wrong with us and this is usually far from the truth. Our deepest desire as individuals is to feel that we are ‘good enough’, and being rejected makes us feel as if we are anything but.
Strong feelings of rejection mostly occur because we think in black and white terms; we see things as being either acceptance or rejection; not just regular instances where we sometimes bond with someone and at other times things just don’t work out the way we want them to.
We’ve all experienced being rejected in one way or another, and it’s more than likely that we will experience being rejected again at some point in our lives. There is a positive side to rejection however; to be rejected, we must have put ourselves out there, taken some type of risk or made ourselves vulnerable in some way.
Rejection can be so downright uncomfortable that we may find ourselves doing anything to avoid it; this may be either on a conscious or unconscious level. Avoiding rejection means that we limit the possibility of achieving success or true happiness in our lives. It can be likened to travelling down a road to nowhere; it mostly leads to a ‘dead-end’ existence devoid of joy, excitement, real love or deep satisfaction.
What we can learn from rejection, is that it can offer us many valuable lessons. When things are the most uncomfortable and difficult in our lives, it is then that we will experience the opportunity to grow the most. It’s how we act when a person or situation is not giving us what we want that reveals our true character. Taking time to pause, reflect and walk away with our dignity intact, also presents an opportunity for us to reframe, regroup, and re-evaluate what’s important in our life.
If you were rejected by a partner, take some time to consider how many other people that person may have rejected before you, and will most likely reject after you. Perhaps consider that this may just be the way they are, rather than you not being good enough for them. Maybe you didn’t land that ‘golden opportunity’ in your next career move because the decision-makers were looking for someone with more experience or expertise in their field. Just because someone doesn’t prefer you as a lover, employee or team-mate, doesn’t mean that there’s anything fundamentally wrong with you; it simply means that you just weren’t the right fit for that person or role and chances are, that after the sting of the rejection has subsided, you may realise that they or it wasn’t the best fit for you either.
According to Dr Helen Fisher, researcher and author of “Why We Love”, the pain of rejection, especially when it’s related to emotional pain, occurs in the same area of our brain as physical pain, and we can experience it with equal intensity. The feelings of rejection, love and heartache are due to a sudden change in our brain’s chemistry and it can feel similar to withdrawal symptoms from a drug.
Rejection can feel even worse if we have experienced it numerous times in our past or if our self-worth is low. Here is a video which explains how rejection impacts us, and how it can especially affect us if we have low self-worth.
Unresolved experiences of rejection when we were growing up can make us more susceptible to stronger feelings of rejection as an adult. This could have been due to experiencing trauma; for example, a parent leaving, losing a parent or another family member or someone else we were close to, having a parent who couldn’t attend to our needs or love us unconditionally, or perhaps a sibling being the ‘favourite’.
Overwhelming, negative emotions, some of which are helplessness, sadness despair or anger can be triggered when we’re rejected. Triggers often occur in the present moment, by events which caused us to feel rejected in the past. A person who had a stable childhood will usually be able to shrug off rejection and just ‘get on with it’, whereas someone who experienced rejection or mistreatment by a parent, may feel rejection more keenly and take a much longer time to shake it off.
Sometimes the fear of rejection can surface at the beginning of a new relationship; when the anxiety over whether or not it will develop into something more meaningful. https://sydneyhillscounselling.com.au/blog/do-relationships-make-you-feel-anxious/
So how do we deal with rejection? Here are some tips:
Reach out to people who care for you:
Pain that is shared is pain that is halved. People whom we are close to and who genuinely care about us, can be a source of great comfort when we experience rejection. Just talking to our loved ones can make us feel accepted for who we are and soothe the sting of rejection.
Acknowledge that the rejection sucks:
Say it or scream it out loud! This will be the equivalent of giving yourself a hug and will make you feel much better than keeping all that negativity inside. Tell yourself that it’s okay to be upset about the rejection; this self-compassion will make it easier to find the strength to move through it.
Acknowledge the pain of your loss:
Rejection is a loss; it’s the loss of someone or something we hoped to have, and this is what causes us to feel hurt. When we’re rejected, it’s very common for us to feel shame and embarrassment. Sometimes, because these feelings can be extremely uncomfortable, we suppress our feelings, overindulge in eating or drinking or even deny that we’re in pain.
Don’t take rejection personally:
There aren’t always clear reasons or answers as to why we may have been rejected, however we almost always want to know why we were. When the reasons for the rejection weren’t made clear to us, we can tend to blame ourselves and assume that it was us that messed up, that we weren’t good enough, that we were unlovable, difficult, selfish, argumentative and so on. If we were conditioned in our early lives to feel that we were not good enough or inadequate in some way, this belief can make rejection feel even more painful and cause us to blame ourselves.
Learn from rejection:
People can be rejected in many different ways, and it doesn’t just happen to the average person. Many famous people such as Walt Disney, Oprah Winfrey, Hugh Jackman, J.K. Rowling, Steven Spielberg all experienced rejection. Rejection doesn’t always mean that we did something wrong, however being rejected can provide us with an excellent opportunity to observe how we behave and present ourselves. Sometimes we don’t get that job because it was filled by an internal applicant, or a person we’ve been dating for a short time ghosts us because they are still hung up on their ex, so it’s not fair to lay the blame squarely on ourselves or take full responsibility when we’ve been rejected.
Bounce back stronger:
The more resilient you become the easier it will be to bounce back from rejection and setbacks. Keeping an open mind, avoiding negative thinking patterns such as all-or-nothing thinking (e.g. ‘If I’m not perfect, I’ve failed’), personalisation (e.g. blaming ourselves or taking responsibility for something that wasn’t completely our fault), labelling (e.g. I’m not good enough, I’m not loveable) and seeking support, are ways to foster resiliency. Remember to keep your sense of humour, keep a list of your strengths and past achievements (and regularly read through it), practice regular self-care and see any rejection as something that happened for you, not to you.
Keep Persisting:
Actors, writers and artists persist despite being rejected multiple times. Imagine if J.K. Rowling had simply given up her dream of being a published author the first time she was rejected? Creative people accept that rejection is part of the process of putting themselves out there, and that it’s vital for them to do so if they’re to get published or launch a stellar career. Seeing it as a necessary part of their creative journey, they keep persisting and they learn not to take rejection personally. Accepting rejection and persisting in putting ourselves ‘out there’ can help make us a little less sensitive to rejection.
Try something new for 30 days:
When you’re feeling the sting of rejection, think of something you’ve always wanted to try and put it into practice it for thirty days. They say that 30 days is the time it takes to form a habit and when you have idle time on your hands, what better opportunity is there than to put something positive into action. Dedicating thirty days to learning a new language or skill, taking up a sport or new creative hobby or committing to a personal growth program will increase your confidence, take away any anxiety experienced by being rejected and is a very positive way to turn the negative effects of rejection into a positive lifestyle change.
Rejection hurts! If you recognise yourself as someone who finds rejection overwhelming, it can be helpful to seek support from a professional, registered counsellor who can help you to process your past emotional pain so that you’re able to tolerate rejection without being crushed by it. Professional counselling can also help you prevent choosing situations which may lead to rejection and redirect you to choose situations which increase your self-esteem. Call us today on (02) 9159-6277 for a confidential chat to see how we can help you. You can also email us at [email protected]. Sydney Hills Counselling offers face-to-face and telehealth session options.
Reference:
Fisher, H. (2005). Why we love. New York: H. Holt.
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