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Rejection...Loves Me! Loves Me Not!
No one escapes the pain caused by rejection, be it professional, social, or romantic rejection. Rejection is an inevitable part of our life. Rejection can be one of the greatest fears that can cause the utmost damage to our personality, and our survival. In centuries past, human beings spent most of their lives in small communities or clans, were deep relationships were forged with a small cluster of people. People grew up learning to understand, communicate, and be tolerant of personality differences. The slights that came in day to day life, were more easily ignored or laughed off, keeping them in realistic context to greater life experience. Our nature trained us to avoid relational rejection, for being pushed out of our community was nothing short of a threat to our very survival.Rejection creates a feeling of being unwanted which in turn reduces our self-esteem. The more intimate the relationship in which rejection is experienced, the greater the damage done, and the more challenging it can be to overcome the effects. The ability of a person to properly process the long lasting effects of rejection depends on one's ability to understand the behavior of the individual who does the rejecting.
When a person rejects another, they are directly or indirectly assigning blame to the other party, and by rejecting them, the rejector is able to feel free of any responsibility to work on the relationship or situation. What you did, who you are, or what you did not do, is the focus of rejection and the means by which the blame it assigns is expressed. Rejection begins with and ends by identifying the faults in the other party. It is not an expression of loyalty, and only absolves the blaming party from any responsibility to engage in problem solving or remaining loyal. Hence the term, "You've been dumped!"
Often when being rejected, we take onto ourselves the false belief that we are worthless, sensing the false messages that fuel our inner fear of life without this person, fear of shame, fear of potential loneliness. We can experience a sense of injustice, guilt, jealousy, anger, and or depression. All of these negative messages being targeted inward as we take the pain of rejection personally, very personally. Here in the midst of being caught up in a downward revolving cyclone of negative self-messages, many of today's youth and children struggle with knowing how to break free to process and understand a healthy response to rejection, as a growing wave of psychological fragility flows through out the rank and file of our youth.
Today's society is a world of fragmented families, a media influenced generation which is hearing a message of the importance of being in the spotlight, instead of being part of a healthy social group. Our youth today, have become indoctrinated that acceptance is based on our ability to perform, instead of simply being who we are as an individual. Further, an increased sense of uncertainty and insecurity makes us more vulnerable to rejection. The "Rejection Radar" of our youth is not adapted to a world in which they're thrown against new and often strange concepts for the basis of self-value. With this reality has come an increasing number of children and youth struggling with rejection hyper-sensitivity.
Although we are designed to motivate and facilitate relationship repair, for those young people who struggle with rejection hyper-sensitivity, this defensive system backfires and fails, leaving them living in a constant panic mode, and emotional turmoil. This frustrating feature of rejection sensitivity sets them off on the most challenging circumstance, the self-fulfilling prophecy. Slip-ups and innocent oversights on the part of others are magnified and perceived as being much larger and significant an event than what they really are, unleashing hostility, anger, despondency and jealousy in the rejection hyper-sensitive child. Females becoming more hostile, and unsupportive. Males becoming more jealous. As the rejection hyper-sensitive youth "overthinks" the events and stews on the continual re-enforcing negative thoughts, hostility and anxiety continues to rise bringing them to a place of relational self-sabotage, manufacturing reasons as to why they should be rejected, overly invested in anticipating the rejection of those around them, pushing away the very people they hope to hook, relationally. People close to a rejection hyper-sensitive person "walk continually on egg shells", never being interpreted from a reality based perspective.
The best remedy for those who struggle with rejection hyper-sensitivity is a healthy circle of caring friends who have the ability to tolerate the hyper-sensitivity, building trust in a person and the relationship. Rejection hyper-sensitivity rarely starts in adult-hood, and is a slow process to over come. Those who struggle with rejection hyper-sensitivity, once in a secure long-term relationship come back to a normal level of inner security as their self-esteem heals and recovers.
UCLA neuroscientists have found that rejection activates the same brain area that generates the adverse reaction to physical pain, the anterior cingulate. Rejection is as threatening to our well being, as being hit by a car.
We should never assume that the person who is rejecting us, is correct. Most often, the issue is their's, not ours. Beethoven's music teacher declared him "hopeless" at composing. Albert Einstein's parents feared he was "sub-normal". "Balding,...skinny,...can dance a little,..." they said of Fred Astaire at his first audition. Would be crime novelist John Creasey received an unbroken succession of 743 rejection slips from publishers. Over sixty million of his books have now been published.
In a relationship, rejection is not the correct assigning of blame to the one being rejected, instead it's a cowardly admission of the part of the rejecting person's ability to communicate, remain loyal, and work through relational challenges.