If you are always afraid of being rejected by others, you probably have a lot fewer friends and relationships than you want. You are probably lonely much of the time, wondering how you can get the courage to approach others. You can learn to overcome your rejection fears and learn to make a lot more new friends!
Do you hold back from trying to start new relationships because you are worried that you will be rejected? Are you shy? Does your shyness and fear of getting rejected keep you from having the relationships you want? Are you lonely much of the time?
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.
One of the reasons why rejection can cause us so much difficulty is that in our minds we often tie rejection to so many other ugly words that cause us even more pain. Humiliated. Inadequate. Useless. Loser. Not good enough. Pathetic.
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 dont feel nearly as troubled by rejection. They dont take it personally.
They dont view rejection as proof that they are flawed.
Rejection is often much more troubling to those people who are very emotionally sensitive, who have low self-esteem, or who have had a very dysfunctional or abusive childhood.
There is good news though. Even if you are very emotionally sensitive or shy, even if you didnt 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.
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.
Rejection is never fun to experience, and for some people, its not easy to overcome.
There is a big difference in the way that shy and lonely people experience rejection, and the way that socially confident people experience the event. For most socially confident people, being rejected is a relatively trivial experience that is soon forgotten. For people who are shy and lonely, rejection can be a long lasting, emotionally traumatic experience.
Those people who are very emotionally sensitive, who lack confidence and self esteem, or who are very shy:
- They tend to fear the risk of rejection far more than socially confident people do
- They are more likely to experience rejection as a very painful and humiliating experience.
- They often assume they are entirely to blame if they are rejected
- Theyare likely to interpret social rejection as proof that they are somehow at fault, or defective.
- They are more likely to imagine rejection even where none has occurred
- They are more likely to avoid social interactions if they believe rejection might occur.
- They 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.
How does a person with healthy self-esteem deal with rejection?
A person who has healthy self esteem is likely to think to themselves, Gee, its too bad my invitation wasnt accepted. Oh well. Maybe it was bad timing Or they might decide, Maybe that guy is just a jerk Id never like anyway. I think Ill call up Roger instead and ask him to go to the game with me.
When socially confident people make a friendly overture, they assume they will probably be successful. They are very focused on the positive end result they want more friends, more options, a more vital life.
A person with healthy self-esteem realizes that taking occasional social and emotional risks is a necessary part of developing relationships. If someone turns them down, they dont take it personally. They just move on and look for someone else who will be more receptive.
It doesnt occur to a socially confident person to think that the reason they were rejected is because they are deeply flawed or inadequate.
In fact, socially successful people tend to take all the credit for their social successes for themselves, and when they do encounter a social fiasco, they usually assign the blame to the other person! This is the opposite of how shy and lonely people often react. Shy and lonely people tend to grab all the blame for themselves if their social overture is rejected, and if their overture is accepted they may believe the other person made a mistake in accepting them!
If you absolutely hate the thought of rejection by other people, here is a foolproof method that will guarantee that you will never be rejected again.
Are you curious? Here it is: The way you can be totally rejection-proof is if you give up absolutely all interactions with other human beings for the rest of your life!
Is that something you are really willing to do? There are occasionally extreme cases of people who adopt this option. For the great majority of us however, giving up all social connection is too high a price to pay to avoid the occasional pain that sometimes accompanies human interactions.
When we give up interacting with others, not only do we give up some occasional pain and discomfort, but we also miss out on all the potential warmth, comfort, fun and excitement that other human beings can offer 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.
Lets assume that the option of never again interacting with other human beings is not something you want to pursue. If you have decided to continue interacting with other human beings and try to make some of them your friends, you must be prepared to accept this fact: occasionally some people will reject you.
As terrifying as this may seem, you can take steps to reduce the likelihood that rejection will occur, and you can actually learn to make rejection a less painful experience for you.
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. Dont 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 its just practice, it doesnt 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.
During each interaction with the person you wish to befriend, notice that persons body language and facial expressions. Are you getting encouraging smiles and nods? Is that persons body posture open or closed? Do you sense an eagerness to continue the conversation?
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.
Some people are so terrified by the prospect of rejection that they never make a social approach to another person. This is unfortunate, since avoidance will reinforce their fears, and increase their loneliness.
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.
If you have made relatively few social approaches to other people, each one will loom very large in your imagination. Every rejection will seem to reverberate as a humiliating failure, and you may convince yourself that you will never again muster the courage to approach another human being.
One way to overcome the fear of making social overtures is to simply persist in making many, many approaches to other people.
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.
If you are terrified of rejection, you may have thoughts like, My self worth depends totally on whether other people approve of me and accept me. If people do not approve of me, Ill be completely devastated and feel horrible because it means Im worthless. If anyone rejects me it means that probably everyone will continue to reject me my whole life.
We can become so completely overwhelmed by the negative emotions that follow this sort of thinking that we dont notice what distortions we have introduced into our thinking processes.
If you persist in developing the habit of making many social overtures to other people, you will come to realize that occasional rejection is simply a part of life. It does not mean you are a flawed human being.
Even though we cant control whether or not other people reject us, we can control how we react to rejection.
We dont need to condemn ourselves when we are rejected, and we dont need to stop interacting with other people just because there is a chance they might reject us.
The way you can be totally rejection-proof is if you give up absolutely all interactions with other human beings for the rest of your life!
Is that something you are really willing to do? There are occasionally extreme cases of people who adopt this option. For the great majority of us however, giving up all social connection is too high a price to pay to avoid the occasional pain that sometimes accompanies human interactions.
When we give up interacting with others, not only do we give up some occasional pain and discomfort, but we also miss out on all the potential warmth, comfort, fun and excitement that other human beings can offer 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.
