Fear of rejection: how it isolates us from other people

Fear of rejection is not only an annoying experience; it also makes us more vulnerable.

When we think about that facet of our lives that has to do with personal relationships, it is very easy for us to imagine it by measuring the number of friends and loved ones that each person has.

However, there is something that is just as important, if not more important, than this "count" of the number of regular relationships we have: to what extent is it likely that we will lose contact with these friends, lovers and loved ones? to lose contact with those friends, lovers or people we would like to get to know??

The truth is that human beings are predisposed to give more importance to possible losses than to gains; this makes us pay close attention to signs of possible rejection, either by people we are close to or someone we would like to get to know better.

However, there are some people who are particularly sensitive to rejectionThey fear and anticipate it frequently, experiencing significant doses of psychological discomfort. The curious thing about this predisposition is that it increases the chances of rejection actually occurring, due to the mechanisms that we will see below.

Why does sensitivity to rejection occur?

The idea that people with poorer social skills are rejected because of their awkwardness in communicating and bonding with others is only partly true. It is true that not having a good toolbox for managing social life makes it easier to end up being more isolated, but this is not inevitable. In fact, many people with difficulties in their relationships are not slow to think about social interactions, but quite the opposite: they become obsessed with it because of fear of rejection.

People sensitive to rejection remain in an almost constant state of alertnessThey are constantly thinking about liking the other person and analyzing the behavior of others for signs of boredom, mockery or anger.

How did they get to that point? Often it is not due to poor social skills, but rather a series of bad experiences in the past. For example, a very tough love breakup or a childhood marked by bullying or other forms of abuse can lead to a state of social hypervigilance.

Thus, the fear of rejection is a fruit of very worrying expectations about what others require to enter into a relationship with them, and this may be produced by past events that escaped one's control and the resulting lack of self-esteem.

Why the fear of being rejected isolates us more

The obsession with the possibility of seeing ourselves rejected makes us conceive relationships as a machine, and not as a space for interaction between two human beings. The reason is that the pressure not to lose that person is so high that they only concentrate on measuring their movements so as not to "cross an imaginary line" that would set off alarm bells in the other person.

On the other hand, people who are more afraid of rejection are more prone to interpret any ambiguous action as a sign of rejection as a sign of rejection, which causes them to adopt a defensive attitude.

In a research conducted on the subject, a questionnaire measuring this psychological characteristic was given to a group of single people and, months later, those who had entered into a relationship during that period of time were asked to imagine that their partner performed a series of strange actions, such as spending less time with them, being distant, etc. The results showed that the people who feared rejection the most quickly moved on to assumed that their relationship was in jeopardyinstead of considering other more reasonable hypotheses first.

It has been shown that this pattern of thinking makes people more hostile more quickly and without needing too many reasons, and they even become more reluctant to assume their mistakes, something paradoxical if one takes into account the fear that one has of the possibility of isolating oneself.

On the other hand, it has also been seen that this fear causes people to to enter into a harmful dynamic in which the first in which the first casualty is oneself. For example, research showed that men who have been crudely rejected in a social circle are more willing to make sacrifices to be part of that group, confirming that dynamic of submission to the other that causes such a bad image (besides being harmful to those who suffer it in first person). Men who had been rejected by a woman on a dating website were also more willing to spend more money on a date after going through that bad experience.

Concluding

Sometimes we forget that the basis of healthy relationships is simplicity and honesty. Assuming the role of victim doomed to rejection only precipitates the appearance of a stigma that leads others to distance themselves.