Why the fear of not being liked appears, and how to deal with it

Fear of rejection can make us give up on having a real social or emotional life.

Let's do a little experiment. Let's try to remember a hug, a kiss or an act or situation in which you knew you were loved. Let's recall the situation, the inner warmth that comes from the chest and spreads to the rest of the body. If we speak of love, let us relive the sensations that ran through every part of our being.

Now imagine that this situation will never happen again, that no one will reciprocate your affection or even that what you experienced is nothing more than a lie. How would we feel? That is what happens to those people who are afraid of not being loved.

The need for love and affection

We all need to love and to be loved. Feeling affection is a need that the human race has had since the beginning of its existence, and is basically a basic survival mechanism in a gregarious species such as ours. It is a need that we have from our earliest childhood, and that will mark the way in which we perceive ourselves, others and the world in general.

Thus, affection is one of the most important affection is one of the elements that help us to understand the world and our own identity, being a basic need.It is a basic need. But not everyone loves us and not everyone likes us: throughout our lives we will be rejected, ignored or avoided by someone, just as we will not be loved by everyone.

This is something that generally does not keep us awake at night, but that under certain circumstances some people sometimes extrapolate to their close environment and to humanity as a whole: it can awaken the fear of not being loved.

Now then, having at some point the fear of not being loved or being rejected is not something strange is not something strange depending on the situation we are living. The fear to not being wanted can arise practically to anyone in some punctual moment of the life, but if we are before a constant and persistent fear throughout the time it transforms into a problem that carries serious difficulties to the person who suffers it.

• Article related: "The 16 types of fear and its characteristics".

The fear not to be wanted: basic aspects

The fear to the rejection or to not being wanted generates, as it is evident, a great personal suffering. The person becomes focused on pleasing others and seeking the approval of the environment, or to avoid putting his fear to the test. In many cases, the way of acting is even molded and adjusted to what others demand, becoming chameleon-like in order to please.

It is frequent that although these people wish to be loved and wanted, they unconsciously look for signs that confirm their fear, being much more probable that they attribute gestures, ways of speaking, jokes or attitudes to the dislike that they consider that others have for them. Thus, the fear of not being liked goes in most cases together with the fear of being rejected.

Another aspect that can be relatively frequent is that those who have a permanent fear of not being liked feel strange, out of place, as if they do not belong to any of the environments in which they find themselves. They may also feel empty and lacking in anything that makes them interesting. It is often linked to a lack of self-esteem or self-acceptance. or self-acceptance.

Likewise, in some cases, relationships with others based on the fear of not being liked stop focusing on what we like about the other person and instead focus on what he or she will think of us and on making those thoughts favorable to us. In other words, the relationship ceases to be sincere to be a (sometimes desperate) quest to be liked by someone. In short, it can go from "I want you around because I love you" to "I love you because I need you".

How can someone with a fear of not being loved act?

One of the most frequent consequences of the fear of not being loved is that the person who has it becomes overly focused on pleasing others.. Based on this need, he/she may assume a submissive and/or dramatic role, continuously seeking attention or doing almost anything that is asked of him/her or endure humiliations in order to have someone by his/her side. In these cases it is even possible that the person denies and annuls part of his way of being in order to please, assuming a different role than the one he would normally take.

Another possible consequence of this fear is the opposite of the previous one. And it is that, paradoxically, the fear of not being liked can also provoke that the person who suffers from it can come to avoid contact with others and isolate themselves socially in order to avoid possible rejection. in order to avoid a possible rejection that clearly indicates (from their perspective) that they are not wanted.

What causes it?

Although people with this fear do not necessarily have to have suffered any type of problem at a vital level, the truth is that it is much more frequent in subjects with some specific characteristics and experiences.

People with fear of not being loved usually have very low self-esteem and low self-esteem. They tend to undervalue themselves and see themselves as unimportant.. In most cases they are insecure and have a high sensitivity that makes them feel very intensely. Sometimes they have unrealistic expectations about themselves or about the world, setting their goals too high to reach them or expecting everyone to like their way of being or at least those they know.

In many cases we are dealing with people who have suffered some kind of abuse in childhood or throughout their development. Excessively rigid parenting patterns or punishing their way of being can make them feel inadequate and inferior.

The opposite extreme, overprotection on the part of the familycan also generate this fear when they go outside and find an environment that does not protect and treat them in the same way. And we are not only talking about family abuse: the experience of continuous bullying can also be (on its own or accompanied by other abuses) one of the causes or reasons that can cause someone to be afraid of not being loved and to be hypersensitive to rejection.

Another frequent reason is the existence of abandonment: children who have been abandoned by one or both parents or who have grown up in social institutions may feel unloved by the environment and come to believe that no one or very few people can do it. It can also arise after a sentimental breakup or after several love rejections.

Possible consequences

Persistent fear of not being liked can, as mentioned above, have more or less severe consequences on the person's behavior.

One of the possible problems is that they engage in behaviors that in effect lead them to be disliked. Excessive avoidance of contact or the continuous emission of attention-seeking behaviors may end up causing them to be rejected or their contacts with others to be merely superficial, which in turn will enhance their fear and continuation of their behaviors. Thus, a self-fulfilling prophecy effect is generated: even if the person was not initially rejected, the way he/she acts by thinking such a thing generates that he/she ends up being rejected.

Another problem is exhaustion: the fact of not being able to be oneself and forcing oneself to be something we are not uses up a lot of resources, which in the long run can generate problems of anxiety and depression. It can also lead to social phobia.

It can also lead, in extreme cases, to accepting or not reporting specific abuses. For example, in many cases of women (or men) who suffer abuse by their partners, these abuses are not reported for fear, both of the possible consequences and of being left alone without that person (which, on the other hand, many aggressors tend to promote by distancing the victim from her close environment). Or even if there is no direct abuse, it can also occur in the academic or work environment or even at the level of family and friends, enduring abusive treatment and degrading conditions or simply not acting as they are to be liked.

If fear is permanent and is established early in life, it can cause problems in the acquisition of an integrated identity. problems in the acquisition of an integrated identityor even lead to the emergence of personality disorders. Two of the most typical examples are dependent personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder, although other problems such as narcissism may arise among other elements of this fear.

Can it be changed?

People who suffer from the fear of not being loved (understood as something permanent and not as something punctual that, we repeat, can happen to almost anyone) are usually also afraid that this situation is perpetuated and will never change.

However, the truth is that this fear can be treated. Training in social skills and assertiveness can be useful for this, as well as cognitive restructuring of beliefs (about themselves and others) and dysfunctional expectations. It is possible to work on the fact that personal relationships do not depend only on the subject and his/her behavior but also on the other party, as well as to try to generate alternative interpretations of what the subject considers evidence that he/she is not wanted.

It is also useful to show that rejection is something we all experience at some time, and to relativize the importance of this fact. It can even be useful to put ourselves in the worst case scenario and de-catastrophize the fact that someone does not like us.

The practice of role-playing and expressive therapies can allow the patient to express the suffering that this fear causes them. The use of behavioral treatments is also very useful (although the latter may be difficult for the patient to accept). Finally, group therapy can be a useful and effective mechanism to contribute to the patient's ability to improve his or her situation by coping socially with fear.