Why (and how) rejection hurts. And learning not to fear that pain

Hands up everyone who isn't afraid of rejection! 

Oh, nobody? I thought so.

The first thing that pops into my mind when I think of rejection is a memory of being the last one picked for sports teams at school, Freaks and Geeks style. Bring out the violins.

But rejection happens in adulthood too, and it's not only destructive on an emotional level, it has an impact on your physical health.


In his book Emotional First Aid, psychologist Guy Winch writes that rejection is such a strong emotion that the body experiences it like physical pain. Remember, for example, what it feels like to be dumped: "You might have felt pressure suffocating you, had trouble breathing or had jabbing pain like a sharp knife," Guy writes. (BTW, Guy's TED talk on emotional first aid is moving and insightful, if you're interested.)

This shows how intensely rejection can affect us. But it isn't a connection with physical pain that makes me as afraid of being rejected now as I was in my childhood. The reason fear of rejection stalks me today is all about self-protection.

My worst experience of rejection in adulthood was in 2013 when my then-best friend squeezed me out of the close-knit circle of friends I'd had since my university days. I had no choice but to walk away, but the cost was high. No more sun-loving barbecue invitations. No more giggly brunches. No more daily email banter. Suddenly lonely evenings and weekends stretched out before me like a vast wasteland. My phone never rang. I'm sure my friends had their reasons - there are always two sides to the story - and it would be remiss of me not to admit that I was not a great friend to them either. Knowing that we were moving in different directions, and would have drifted apart anyway, didn't ease my despair - it was the slap of being rejected that hurt. Essentially, my worthiness as a friend and as a human being had been assessed by people who knew me incredibly well, and judged to be inadequate. The message: I am not good enough. The effects on my already-low self-esteem were catastrophic.

I wrapped my wings around my fractured heart and retreated into isolation. I stopped talking to people. I was cold to people who tried to connect with me. I stopped attending the few social events from other connections that came up. These were not conscious actions; they were the response to an unconscious belief playing in the background. This belief told me not to get close to anyone because I could not face the chances - which I believed to be high - of being rejected again. 

I'd love to tell you that this fear disappeared but it is more accurate to say it has only lessened slightly. After moving to a new city I have found myself in a great social circle of warm and wonderful people - yay! - but it has been difficult to learn to let people in. I have several confidantes, but I am careful not to lean on anyone too much. I don't have a best friend and I don't want one - that's way too risky.

Obviously there are a bunch of other self-esteem issues going on here too, which I've had for decades and have chronicled in other posts (like this one), as well as my natural (and entirely healthy) tendency towards introversion. But fear of rejection is almost certainly a factor in my reluctance to build deep relationships, both platonic and otherwise. 

Is this really a problem, though? I mean, it's keeping me safe, so that's useful. Is a fear of rejection even a thing that needs fixing? I've thought about this a lot, and my answer is yes and no. The thing is, fear never goes away. You can mute it but it will still be there, shapeshifting into another form (such as fear of failure). 

So I can't fix it. But I can change the way I respond to it. I can find new ways to arrest these thoughts when they appear before me, masquerading as my reality. I can go badass detective on the messages I send myself, and subject them to interrogation to determine their validity, instead of simply following their well-intended but ultimately self-limiting directives. I can push back on the thoughts that tell me the risk of letting down some of my barriers and simply being myself in my interactions with others is too great, and would lead to rejection. 

Of course, I don't *have* to do any of these things. 

But. 

If I don't, I'm essentially telling myself that I'm not good enough - which is the very message this fear is trying to protect me from receiving from others. By allowing myself to risk being rejected, I'm backing myself and saying I am worthy of being accepted, and that I'm resilient enough to deal with the consequences of possible rejection. In doing so, I'm accepting myself, which may not diminish my fear of rejection any but it seems like a pretty good start. 

Tissues and issues: a beginner's guide to confronting Fear

I thought long and hard about whether to publish this post. It’s more personal than I am comfortable sharing. The reason I did decide to upload it was because the point of this blog from the outset was to share my story of personal growth honestly. I believe that Fear is something we ALL struggle with, in different forms. We are different, but we are all the same.

What’s the name of that headache you get after intense crying? Is there even a name for that? There should be.

On Saturday I looked at a photo of me with my family dog and with no warning I burst into tears and could not stop. This photo is very precious to me. It was taken last March, three weeks before I left New Zealand and it shows me cuddling the dog for what I suspected might have been the last time (luckily he is in very good health and I was able to see him again at Christmas). He is generally affectionate but usually gravitates towards my parents for cuddles, so for him to lavish so much love on me on this occasion was wonderful, and I lapped it up. Cue #dogselfie.

This photo is attached to my wall so I see it every day, but the reason it aroused such intense emotion last weekend was because I looked at the joy in my eyes and I suddenly remembered what unconditional love felt like. And that brought me face to face with my deepest, most powerful Fear* (thank you very fucking much, Autumn equinox): that I will never be deeply loved. And just for good measure, it brought along its ugly twin: the Fear that I am not worthy of love.

Yes, I know both these thoughts are bullshit. That’s the thing about Fears – they have no basis in reality. But it’s only when we are prepared to stand up to them (instead of running away) that we can truly see that.

Why is this ugly stuff coming up now? From an astrological perspective the Autumn equinox – which took place on Saturday, the day of this teary incident – brings us face to face with the darkness of our Fears, thereby spotlighting the areas we most need to work on in order to move forward and evolve.

These core Fears are something I have probably always had, without being aware of them, and have tried to bury, unsuccessfully, with several methods over my lifetime that range from binge eating to keeping people at arm’s length.

Now that I’m becoming more comfortable in my own skin (old age will do that to ya), and am no longer scrambling around for an emotional Band-Aid, these Fears are back with a vengeance. Which feels really crappy and hurty but is actually a good thing, because that gives me the opportunity to overcome them once and for all (I hope). Instead of dealing with symptoms I am now dealing with the root cause. If you know what the problem is, you can fix it, right?

In the rawness of my tears last weekend, I felt a measure of relief that I was no longer running away from my Fears. There was a sort of acceptance – an acknowledgement that, yes, I’m scared, but I recognise what I’m dealing with now (namely: a tired old story with no factual basis) and I’m not letting it run riot over my emotions. I’m going to remind myself of the many tangible reasons I know these Fears to be untrue. I’m going to refer back to my Self-Appreciation Project jar and reflect on why I’m absolutely a worthy human being. And then I’m going to dust myself off and go back to participating in all the joy, sadness and mediocrity of the human experience. The only way out is through.

Has anyone else found themselves challenged by “old stuff” and an underlying Fear response this past weekend? Would love to hear your stories.

*Eagle-eyed readers will notice I always capitalise Fear. There’s a reason for that. my experience of Fear is that it is powerful it has often stood over me like a bully, so that’s why I personify it.

Ready, set, procrastinate!

There’s a mouldy nectarine in the bottom of my fridge. It’s been about a week since I first noticed it, and I have continued to notice it, several times a day, without doing anything about it. The nectarine continues to rot, and I continue to ignore it. It’s a bit of a shit Mexican standoff really; of course the nectarine will ultimately win, and all of my fresh vegies will lose, which means I lose. And yet despite knowing that the mess in the vegie drawer is getting worse the longer I delay throwing out that nectarine, I continue to ignore the problem. Gross.

I’m not telling you about my nectarine sitch to explain how desperately my vegie drawer needs a solid clean – and I want to assure you that the rest of my house is very tidy and hygienic – but because it illustrates in a really disgusting way just how procrastination has taken hold of my life lately.

Here is a list of things I need to do that I have been putting off for a month or so, some trivial, others fairly pressing:

·                     ·      Locking in dates for my trip to New York this winter. (Note to self: it is officially Autumn now. Autumn is followed by winter. That means winter is happening very soon. Pull your finger out!)

·                     ·      Getting a new gym program. I am so booored by my workouts that I’m putting very little effort in (counter-productive, no?). Some days I don’t even sweat. If I’m going to drag my ass out of bed at 5.30am you’d think I’d be committed to making the most of this time. But somehow the effort of booking a personal trainer to create a new program for me keeps falling into the ‘I’ll do it next week’ category.

·                     ·      Following through on all the angel card readings I have promised people. It’s not that I don’t want to do the readings, I just never quite get around to locking them in.

·                     ·      Sorting out my accounting records. Yuck.

·                     ·      Getting some new meditation podcasts. I feel like I’m not going deep enough with my meditations at the moment, and not getting the clarity I used to. This something I really I need to address, or else I’m going to find my ability to manage stress and the general challenges of everyday life will be seriously hampered, and I’ll start getting stuck.

·                     ·      Finishing the two new short stories I’ve started and polishing two older ones to be entered in competitions (one of my goals this year).

·                     ·      Enrolling in more volunteering projects (another key 2015 goal).

When I look at this list, there’s a common denominator. It’s so obvious that Fear is at play behind my decision to delay/avoid all of these tasks. I don’t want to tackle my accounting records because they never add up properly at first and it takes hours longer than it should and it’s frustrating and I’m scared I will realise I’m too stupid to manage being self-employed. I don’t want to plan my New York trip because I’m scared I will find that I can’t afford it, and have to ditch the whole idea. I don’t want to find new meditation podcasts because I’m scared they might be too hard, and will prove that, actually, I really suck at meditation and will never improve. I don’t want to do more angel card readings for my friends because I’m scared the messages I give people might not be meaningful to them or will reveal stuff they don’t want to hear and they’ll hold that against me and tell other people I’m crap and WHAT IF THAT’S TRUE?!

Wow.

In short, I’m scared I’m not good enough. I’m scared I will fail. So basically I’m scared of the same stuff you, and every other person on this planet, is scared of – and that’s why I’m procrastinating.

But here’s the thing about Fear: it only holds its power over you for as long as there is an absence of proof that the things you are scared of could happen. And the only way to know if that proof exists is to do what you’re scared of. Yuck. The good news: through that process one of two things will happen: you will find that the thing you were scared of was never really there, or you will find that you can handle it. That’s a win-win situation.

I know all of this, and yet I continue to procrastinate. I’m putting a stop to that right now. You all are my witnesses. I’ve set myself a challenge to tick as many of these things off my list as I can by April 16 (four weeks away).

I’ll start with that nectarine. 


UPDATE: Since writing this post, my housemate has thrown out the rotten fruit and cleaned out the vegie drawer. Subsequent laboratory testing has revealed it was a peach, not a nectarine. All is well.

Choose your own creative adventure

Last weekend I went to a session with that quick-witted word-sorceress Liz Gilbert (#fangirlmoment) at the Sydney Opera House, as part of a series of talks to celebrate International Women’s Day. If you follow Liz on Facebook or have seen her inspiring TED talk about creativity you’ll know this bestselling author has made it her mission to inspire everyone to “get out of your own way” when it comes to unleashing the creative being that lies within all of us.*

It’s a worthy mission. In our haste to increase our incomes, enhance our love lives, climb the career ladder and just cope with the busyness of life, the desire to indulge our creativity tends to fall by the wayside. But it’s not an indulgence at all.

Even if you don’t want to win the Archibald Prize for portraiture or write the next Fifty Shades of Grey (please don’t; the literary world deserves better), spending more time being creative can have some pretty awesome flow-on effects – greater happiness and a sense of purpose being chief among them. It also keeps you focused – especially if you have a ‘1’ in your numerology, like I do. Liz says that if she doesn’t have a creative project on the go, she starts destroying relationships with those around her. Ouch! “A creative mind is like a border collie. If you don’t give it a job to do, it will find a job – and you won’t like the job it finds for itself,” she explains.

The benefits of creativity are not in creating a one-of-a-kind, precious product, they're in the process of creating. And it’s not just about art, drama or writing. Raising children is a creative endeavour and so too are exercise, cooking and reading.

There are myriad reasons most people put off that creative project they’ve long been dreaming of. Here is a small selection Liz mentioned in her talk:

• Someone else is already doing this (or: EVERYONE else is already doing this)
•   I haven’t got the time/money/energy
•  I’m no good at this
•   There’s no point
•   I’m not ready
• I’m too fat (WTF? Apparently this is an actual reason people give)

All of these are just excuses we create because we’re deeply afraid we’re not good enough, which is a common fear. But it's something we have to learn to get past. Creativity requires us to reach beyond our safety zone, which is something the subconscious regards as very, very dangerous. “Fear will always be provoked by creativity, because creativity asks us to enter into realms of uncertain outcomes,” Liz says. And that, of course, is when growth, both creative and emotional, happens.

Liz’s approach is not to try and eliminate Fear** completely – because it never goes away, ever – but to accommodate it, then ignore it and go ahead and follow the creative path anyway. Without that strategy she might never have had such a remarkable career. She tells Fear: “You get a vote, but you do not get a voice.”

I went home after this talk and dug out the short stories I had abandoned late last year because I thought they were shit. They may well be shit but as Liz has reminded me, there’s every reason to keep going with them, if for no other benefit than the joy of the process.

Time to put my border collie on a shorter leash.

*I’ve written about this before; read my previous post here.

**Eagle-eyed readers will notice I always capitalise Fear. There’s a reason for that. my experience of Fear is that it is powerful it has often stood over me like a bully, so that’s why I personify it.

It must be a sign! (Literally)

Sometimes the Universe is really obscure, sometimes it is blindingly, laughingly obvious. Today I experienced the latter.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my project for the year is to improve my debilitating low self-esteem. I’m only a few weeks in, but already I’m feeling lighter and more powerful. To magnify the effect, I’ve assimilated these two mantras into my morning meditations, and I also utter them at random points during the day when I feel like self-doubt is gathering momentum:

* I have the ability to change

* I have the power to change 

On my lunchtime walk today I was reflecting on a situation I’m in at the moment, and started to feel that doubt was taking over, leading me down a familiar dead-end street – Giving Up Avenue. I interrupted this train of thought and asked the Universe to tell me what to do next. Within five minutes I’d seen a truck boasting the words 'ABLE' barrelling past. I put that down to coincidence (note to self: there is no such thing as coincidence). Then I looked up and saw this street sign: Power Ave. I LOLed.

It doesn’t get much more obvious than that. The Universe was giving me a sign – literally – that I have the power to change this situation.

Wish me luck! Actually don’t – I won’t need it (OK, possibly a little TOO confident now, lol).