Posts Tagged ‘rejected’
March 9, 2009 at 11:55 am
Personal Relationship Troubles-Fear Of Rejection
Do you hold back from starting new relationships because you are always worried that you might get rejected? If a fear of rejection is holding you back from forming new friendships or relationships, there is help available. You can learn to greatly overcome your shyness and your fear of being rejected and start having the relationships you really deserve.
Does your shyness and fear of getting rejected keep you from having the relationships you want? Are you lonely much of the time?
Everyone gets rejected at times, but for those of us who are socially confident, rejection is a minor matter, and people who are confident quickly move on.
For many of us however, rejection is a traumatic event, and just the thought that someone might possibly reject us is enough to make us run away from the very people we want to get to know.
People who suffer from a fear of rejection sometimes start to believe that they are deeply flawed, unlovable human beings.
When they look at others who are socially successful, they assume that socially successful people are different and better human beings.
People who fear being rejected believe that when someone rejects them, it’s because the other person realizes how deeply flawed they are. They believe the rejection was their own fault.
They don’t realize that even very confident, very attractive people get rejected too.
People who fear rejection don’t realize that the real reason that relationships either happen or don’t happen depends on how compatible the combination is of the two people involved.
Instead people who are very afraid of rejection think that every time they make an overture to someone else, it’s a referendum on their own personal worth.
Relationships are largely a question of compatibility on many levels.
So, when we get turned down by somebody, it’s not some kind of proof that we are deeply flawed.
It just means the other person didn’t think we were a good match at this time.
It is a fact of life that when we make social overtures to other people, we face the risk that people will sometimes reject us. The only people who never experience rejection are those who never interact with other human beings. Otherwise, everyone occasionally experiences situations in which they are rejected. You might get turned down for coffee, for a dance, for a party, a relationship, or even for marriage.
The more we dwell negatively upon an instance of rejection, the harder it becomes to get up the courage to face another occasion when we might get rejected again.
When we experience rejection, we can tell ourselves that we are doomed to be rejected forever; that any rejection from another person is proof that we are somehow not good enough, and that we were wrong to ever think that another person could like us.
But is this the only way to look at rejection? Remember that people who have healthy self- esteem, who are outgoing and who make lots of social overtures to others, get rejected too. The difference is that they don’t feel nearly as troubled by rejection. They don’t take it personally.
There is good news though. Even if you are very emotionally sensitive or shy, even if you didn’t get much emotional support as you were growing up, you can still learn to change the way you talk to yourself about the experience of rejection. You will have to practice a lot to change the way you think about rejection, and you may need the help of a good therapist to point out new, more supportive ways of thinking.
Rejection is never fun to experience, and for some people, it’s not easy to overcome.
Those people who are very emotionally sensitive, who lack confidence and self esteem, or who are very shy:
– tend to fear the risk of rejection far more than socially confident people do
– are more likely to experience rejection as a very painful and humiliating experience.
– often assume they are entirely to blame if they are rejected
– are likely to interpret social rejection as proof that they are somehow at fault, or defective.
– are more likely to imagine rejection even where none has occurred
– are more likely to avoid social interactions if they believe rejection might occur.
– are more likely to believe that if they have been rejected by one person, they will continue to be rejected by everyone else, for the rest of their lives.
Here is a brief summary of steps you can take to overcome your fear of rejection:
– Remind yourself why you want to overcome your fear of rejection. Remind yourself that your goal is to have a happy social life.
– Change what you say to yourself about rejection. Don’t tie your self worth to whether or not you get accepted or rejected by other people.
– Take a series of baby steps when developing new relationships.
– Look for signs of receptiveness in the other person.
– Deliberately set out to collect as many rejections as you can
– When you are out making approaches to other people, tell yourself that it’s just practice, it doesn’t count.
– Make many, many social approaches to other people.
One way that you can lessen the likelihood and frequency of rejection is to allow your relationships to develop slowly. Take baby steps. When relationships develop slowly, you must still make efforts to approach the other person, but your efforts will be low key and casual, rather than intense.
If the other person shows signs of enjoying your company and seems eager to continue your conversations, then he or she will probably be receptive to any overtures you make and any invitations you extend.
Although it may sound terrifying, one of the best ways to overcome a fear of rejection is to deliberately put yourself into situations where you get rejected a lot. This strategy is actually used by some therapists who specialize in the treatment of shyness.
When you intensely fear rejection, you may arrange your whole life to avoid any situations that can trigger your terror. You will be convinced that getting rejected by someone is the most horrible thing that could ever happen to you. You never get a chance to expose yourself to the feared situation and learn how to overcome your fear.
However, if you actually confront the situations in which you feel anxious, your anxiety may lessen as you become more used to dealing with the feared event. By proving to yourself that you can face up to your fears, they will eventually lose their power over you.
People who intensely fear rejection, and who suffer terribly when they have been rejected, often tie their sense of self-worth to what they imagine others are thinking of them.
Even though we can’t control whether or not other people reject us, we can control how we react to rejection.
We don’t need to condemn ourselves when we are rejected, and we don’t need to stop interacting with other people just because there is a chance they might reject us.
Remember, if you never put yourself in a situation where someone can say "no" to you, you will also never be in a situation where someone can say "yes" to you.
| By Royane Real Published: 5/12/2007 |
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