The Rejection Healing Process That Actually Works
3 ways to heal and move through severe rejection.
Some moments stand out like a killer scene in a book or a movie. The powerful and pervasive kind of scene that stretches beyond the ordinary and permanently stamps our memory. When I think of a powerful scene, I immediately roam towards scenes that convey a profound revelation or express raw vulnerability, or perhaps a strong confrontation or an unexpected choice.
Life is kind of like that, isn’t it?
We don’t always know what is coming our way, who we will meet or how something will play out. Sometimes, we think we’ve got it pegged — we grow comfortable and content with our world and we’re confident about what lies ahead.
It never lasts, though. Something always shows up to throw us a loop. Always. Often, those unforeseen events are the same moments when we discover something new about ourselves and the people in our lives.
Life is like a series of ordinary moments dotted with the unforgettable.
Our paths demand that we periodically face the unexpected — pain and loss, new love and heartache, conclusions and new beginnings … rejection. Circumstances that evoke change and growth, and may also remind us of our vulnerability, our humanity and why we’re alive — including and perhaps especially the hard times.
Some of our most difficult moments actually turn out to be among our most meaningful.
“Most fears of rejection rest on the desire for approval from other people. Don’t base your self-esteem on their opinions.”
- Harvey Mackay
Rejection in any form has got to be one of life’s most challenging experiences. When we are confronted by rejection, we are immediately faced with painful feelings of inadequacy. Depending on what and how the rejection is delivered, it can even break us in ways we never thought possible.
We have all been there at some point in our lives and I’m betting that each time you’ve experienced a rejection, you learned something new about yourself.
A profound revelation. An unexpected level of vulnerability or faced with a hard decision; an unavoidable confrontation either with yourself or another. Whatever it was, if it rattled you in a deep way, then it was something like a killer scene.
Severe rejection digs in like a blunt blade slowly pushing through your being. It hurts like hell. But rejection has many layers and can actually go way beyond emotional pain to also inflict damage to our psychological well-being.
In a Psychology Today article, Dr Guy Winch says that “rejection piggybacks on physical pain pathways in the brain. fMRI studies show that the same areas of the brain become activated when we experience rejection as when we experience physical pain. This is why rejection hurts so much.”
I’ve been there — totally caught up trying to solve why someone I cared about won’t give me the time of day; mulling over pieces of the past and blaming myself for saying or doing the wrong things that triggered a scathing message or worse still; endless silence.
After a particularly traumatic or deeply emotional experience such as a brutal rejection, we are haunted by what happened or what could have been. We get trapped in a negative feedback loop that effects our present and carries forward into the future.
While research has found that we experience the pain of rejection like physical pain, emotional healing is far from the same as physical healing — recovery from a physical injury requires rest and perhaps rehabilitation, while emotional healing requires intentional inner-work.
In some cases, it can take a long time to arrive at a place where you’re ready to release the emotional pain rejection has inflicted, especially when it comes to social situations or romantic love.
This may because of our evolutionary past. Winch explains that “in our hunter/gatherer past, being ostracized from our tribes was akin to a death sentence, as we were unlikely to survive for long alone.”
This suggests that the human brain developed an early warning system to alert us when we were at risk for ostracism, and because our survival depended on remaining in a tribe, rejection evolved as a painful experience.
Like an inbuilt behavior-correction warning.
Life has changed dramatically since those days, and while our survival is no longer dependent upon the pain of rejection, its severe backlash hasn’t diminished over the years. So, the best we can do is learn how to handle and move through the emotional pain of rejection and hope that the experience will reveal something new to us; something like a killer scene.
Here’s what I have found to be helpful moving through the rejection process:
Don’t Grin if You’re Not Feeling It.
There is no use trying to force a smile on your face when you’re in the throes of emotional turmoil. You’ve got to sit with it; take the time to process your feelings and allow them proper space — there is no golden rule on how long this will take and that’s okay.
What you resist will persist.
The more I try to bury my feelings or pretend what happened didn’t matter, the more they linger and haunt me. Sometimes, we cannot reconcile our brain with our heart — no matter how hard we use logic to assess the situation. In other words, when our heart is hurting, we can’t just demand the pain to go away or ignore it because we longer wish to live with the hurt.
That’s why it is so important to accept and just be with your feelings without trying to push them away.
You’ve got to believe in better days ahead.
Deep emotions and intense experiences become a part of you. In the long run, you will eventually find peace with and someday release those feelings to a space within you. Every now and then, you may take a look and revisit those past feelings and that is completely normal, too. But each time that you pack them away again, you’ll do so with a different perspective on the situation.
Avoid the Drum
We all know how to beat ourselves up for something we may or may not have done, and we all wonder about the “what if’s” or “if only’s” — these thought processes are unavoidable but it is super vital to try not to get sucked into that rabbit hole and instead focus on what you do have in your life.
You have you and you are perfectly imperfect.
Brave heart: Honestly, we can never really know what someone else is thinking or feeling if they don’t express it to us. We can take all the right actions to “right any wrongs” we have caused, or come clean with our feelings, but that doesn’t mean we can know how someone else will react — and we can’t begin to realize the reasoning behind someone else’s actions, no matter how perplexing it may seem to us.
It’s especially mind-boggling when you can’t seem to figure out why they aren’t responding. After all, you’re nice and fun to be around, right?
Winch: “Rejection destabilizes our need to belong. We all have a fundamental need to belong to a group. When we get rejected, this need becomes destabilized and the disconnection we feel adds to our emotional pain. Reconnecting with those who love us, or reaching out to members of groups to which we feel strong affinity and who value and accept us, has been found to soothe emotional pain after a rejection.”
Say “no” to your inner-critic.
It might be difficult to see and feel your own value at first, but it is so important that you find moments to acknowledge yourself and your worth. The opinions of others do not define who you are nor do they validate you as a person.
We are all learning. We all make mistakes. Go easy on yourself and seek out those who love you “warts and all” because they are the real gems in your life.
Focus on What You Can Learn
Getting rejected is just a part of a life well lived; a life where you go for what you want, step outside of your comfort zone and take a leap of faith.
Own your rejection with love and courage.
We’re not always going to get it right and that is okay. I believe the experiences that impact us the most are the ones which evoke new ideas and revelations, as well as personal growth, but neither of those things can happen without introspection and reflection about what transpired.
Asking yourself these two questions after a rejection will help to get you into a constructive headspace:
- What is the most important thing I have learned from this?
- What could I do differently next time?
Rejection is going to happen. It’s an inescapable part of life when we are giving life our best shot; and really, what’s the point of only half-living life, right?
Personally, I give my most burning and painful rejections thanks and honor because those difficult moments have shown me an inner-strength I never knew existed and have served to fan the fire of desire in my belly even more.
I refuse to allow rejection and those behind it to define who I am, bring me down, or stop me from seeking out my dreams; and I hope you don’t give it that power either. At least, not for any extended period of time.
Here’s to life’s killer scenes. Here’s to rejection.
Thanks for reading. If you liked this article you may be interested in:
Catch up with me at Whispering Ink!