How to overcome the feeling of rejection?

Why do we feel rejection?

People are social beings by nature, we need others to survive since we are governed by the need to belong. To a greater or lesser extent, all we need to feel that we are part of a social context, that we have someone to trust and feel safe. If we lack this, we feel vulnerable.

In this way, and although it seems paradoxical, the function of the feeling of rejection is precisely to ascribe ourselves to other people, to make us change internal aspects in order to belong. It is thus a form of self protection, without which we would have become extinct as a species long ago. It is like an alarm: from the feeling of rejection, our brain warns us of the risk of marginalization, and the need to change certain personal attitudes and beliefs to feel included, and thus survive.

Consequences

There are studies that show that the human body activates the analgesic circuit releasing the same substances when it is rejected as when it receives a physical blow. Also when we have just suffered a rejection, our cognitive abilities are reduced (short-term memory, decision-making, problem solving, reasoning ...).

On the other hand, if we try to recall in imagination, we evoke social pain much more intensely than physical pain. This is the reason why psychological trauma can remain unchanged for a long time. The painful experiences that we have to live, if we do not redefine and integrate them, generate emotional wounds that can drag on for years, modifying our own. The person who feels rejected is constantly undervalued, which leads to perfectionistic attitudes in an attempt to seek validation from others, but the more one seeks perfection, the more one perceives the shortcomings, which further increases the feeling of ineffectiveness and failure. This usually leads to:

• Social withdrawal.
• Passivity
• Anxiety
• Demotivation
• Depressive symptoms
• Somatizations
• Impulsiveness
• Hyperactivity
• Self-destructive behaviors.
• Aggressive or defiant behaviors towards others.

The danger of avoidance

When we feel rejected, the most common tendency is avoidance, basically in two areas:

• Internally: trying not to think about what hurts us, minimizing what has happened to us or trying to block the memory. If we do not attend to what has happened to us, we not only make the deepest wound, it also prevents us from addressing it and rebuilding ourselves.
• Externally: turning away from others, running away. This withdrawal not only prevents us from facing the problem, but we also victimize ourselves: not only do outsiders marginalize us, but we also self-marginalize ourselves, which makes us feel doubly bad.

Avoidance causes us to enter a vicious circle in which the deeper the wound, the greater the probability of being rejected or rejecting others.

How to manage it?

• It is impossible for a person not to fit in with anyone, in the same way that no one fits in with everyone. The more you interact, the more likely you are to find people you connect with, expand your social contacts.
• Rejection as a phase. Understand emotional wounds as a stage, not as something that will last forever. It will hurt until the damage is worked out internally.
• . Emotional wounds are encyst by the inability to forgive what they have done to us. Accept your hurt as part of yourself and your story, and later learn to let go through forgiveness. Remember that it does not mean to justify or approve the action of others or to reconcile, but to stop carrying the burden of the wound. Not forgiving only affects you.
• Appeal to your ability to, take the baton of your emotionality. In Sartre's words, “freedom is what you do with what they have done to you”.
• Notice how you have attached to your wound so far. In what has it conditioned? What other things have you not perceived about yourself or your surroundings because you are focused on rejection or trying not to feel it?
• If you are, verbalize it and open yourself to situations that require you to place yourself at that point. You can try before to train it in your imagination, from visualizations.
• Learn to value yourself for yourself, not for the opinion of others.
• Put the past in the past learning to manage your present. You can be many different "me" throughout your life. Transform from the present the parts that you have liked least about yourself in the past. Give yourself the opportunity to change.

• To a greater or lesser extent, we all need to feel that we are part of a social context, that we have someone to trust and feel safe. If this is lacking, we feel vulnerable.
• The person who feels rejected is constantly undervalued, which leads to perfectionistic attitudes in an attempt to seek validation from others, but the more one seeks perfection, the more one perceives the shortcomings, which further increases the feeling of ineffectiveness and failure.
• Avoidance causes us to enter a vicious circle in which the deeper the wound, the greater the probability of being rejected or rejecting others. That is why it is important to learn to manage rejection.

Health Psychologist and Psychotherapist at Teladoc Health