Feeling Rejected?

Feeling Rejected?

Nobody is immune to rejection. Even the most beautiful and talented people have been rejected in one way or another. When you take risks in life, you face the possibility that you might be shut down or might not make the cut. 

Different phases of life bring different opportunities and situations where we’ve got to put ourselves out there and be vulnerable. There’s a reason you probably shudder at the thought of some of these experiences — they all come with a reasonable chance of rejection, and the odds are pretty good that you’ve experienced rejection already in one of these contexts.

As much as we’d like for everything to always go our way, that’s not the way things work. While rejection is pretty much inevitable in some capacity, it still hurts. It’s painful to get shut down for something you want, whether it’s a date with a crush or a job at your dream company. We all want to be loved, cherished, and accepted — be it by a romantic partner, friend group, or boss.

Rejection can cause us to feel a slew of emotions, ranging from confusion to sadness to rage. Oftentimes, people don’t understand exactly why they’ve been rejected, which can lead to a downward spiral of negative introspection and an overall sense of not feeling “good enough.”

Social and romantic rejection can be especially traumatic and negative for our self esteem. “Humans are inherently social creatures. We crave connection and meaning to others. When faced with rejection, or lack of acceptance, it’s hard of us to not internalize negative thoughts about our own self-worth. Rejection brings up the existential crisis of ‘alone-ness,’ which is quite painful and hard to ignore,” Jor-El Caraballo, LMHC and Talkspace therapist, explains.

The Science of Rejection

On top of being hard to ignore, instances of rejection can also be pretty hard to forget.

“Memories are complex processes that occur in the brain. Highly emotional experiences, like rejection, get stored in the brain and remain there thanks to the amygdala [a part of the brain] that attaches meaning to experience,” Caraballo says. “If you’re someone who has struggled with rejection, and that gets reinforced in various scenarios so that it gains meaning and importance — even in small ways — that rejection turns into our pervading emotional story.”

Studies using MRI brain scans have shown that the same region of the brain that is activated while experiencing physical pain is also activated while experiencing emotional pain, like rejection. However, there’s an interesting difference to be noted when it comes to re-living emotional pain.

Another study showed that re-living emotional pain is more unpleasant, and results in more brain activity, than re-living physical pain. The study also confirmed that it’s easier for us to recount details and feelings from occurrences of emotional pain than physical pain. Emotional pain can linger for decades if we don’t learn ways to heal its lasting wounds.

How to Recover from Rejection

So, how do you pick yourself back up after facing rejection? There are a few things you can do to make yourself feel better about the situation…and prepare yourself better for the next time you may face rejection.

• Allow yourself to feel. Rather than suppressing all the emotions that come with rejection, allow yourself to feel and process them. Holding in your negative emotions and bottling up all the feelings is no good for you. “I think that like many other experiences we often tell people that their feelings don’t matter and they should ‘just get over it.’ We could really stand to focus more on creating space for people to feel their feelings, even rejection, and find ways to feel it and cope rather than just ignoring the pain and making it all better,” Caraballo says.
• Spend time with people who accept you. Surround yourself with people who love you and accept you. While it may be tempting to isolate yourself further when you’re feeling upset over rejection, it’s important to be at least a little social with loved ones. Remember that you are loved and appreciated, and don’t let an act of rejection make you believe otherwise. You can’t always be accepted for every opportunity or by every person — and that’s okay! The people around you will remind you that you’re loved and valued.
• Practice self love and self care. It’s so important to love and have a positive relationship with yourself. Doing so will help you be more resilient with future instances of rejection. Make a list of the positive traits you have that you’re proud of, inside and out. Appreciate the parts of yourself that you love, and work on cultivating good self esteem. You can also make a list of your accomplishments, both big and small.

Resource: https://www.talkspace.com/blog/why-rejection-hurts/#:~:text=Rejection%20can%20cause%20us%20to,not%20feeling%20%E2%80%9Cgood%20enough.%E2%80%9D