Rejection is one of those complicated emotions that can vacate common sense and logic while debilitating self-esteem. Like paying taxes and death, it is inevitable that we will experience rejection in some, if not all areas of our lives at one point or another.
THE TRUTH
Rejection is one of the very first emotions we deal with during our developmental years. Whether it is for affection from our parents over a sibling, or we didn’t make the team, or a group of friends on the playground: we all can access some incident in our memory where felt rejected, marginalized or left out.
Some sink and some swim… Whether you were Regina George or not… you will encounter a struggle with rejection on some level or another academically, professionally or most commonly, personally/romantically.
HOW DO WE DEAL?
There is a massive misconception that it’s somehow a phase that we will grow out of and that is categorically NOT TRUE and this fallacy is immensely destructive. Psychology Today sites that rejection creates surges of anger and aggression. We have seen how rejection can manifest in schools and post offices many times over throughout the years and still these end results beg the question. How do we deal?
There is an internalization for rejection that can shatter the rejected person’s state of self-worth particularly if the value they place on themselves was not very high to begin with. The anger and aggression comes from having taken an unsuccessful risk.
WHAT DO WE DO?
There are quite a few things that we can do to address the feeling of rejection but the most effective is to change how you feel about rejection because when someone rejects you, it usually has very little to do with you.
Naturally, it doesn’t seem that way we because by nature we believe that we garner some kind of control over others and that we can some how *win them over. In turn, it becomes a vicious cycle of self loathing. Why? Because when we adopt the mindset that there is something that we can do to reverse rejection, it becomes a dangerous game leveraging your self-worth to no end and much like gambler, betting more and more each time to nullify the previous loss to no avail leaving nothing accept anger and aggression.
THIS TOO, SHALL PASS
It may pass like a kidney stone, but nonetheless…. Rather than spending time attempting to win a person over, spending time with people who love and accept you can comfort you and ease the pain of rejection. If the feeling of rejection is more severe, perhaps talking to someone who does not know you at all can help you get to the square root of what triggers that feeling. Any thoughts? Please do share!
Much to Think About Nothing 