Overcoming the Fear of Rejection

Welcome to the Overcoming Sexual Abuse Podcast, where you get the tools and inspiration to help you overcome childhood sexual abuse. I’m your host, Christina Enevoldsen, certified coach, author, and incest survivor, and I’m here to help you heal and live your very best life. 

As humans, rejection is one of the things we fear the most. Even something as simple as criticism can trigger our fight-or-flight response. So I’ll help you break through the pain and fear of rejection so you can feel accepted, secure, and loved.

Rejection is one of the most feared and painful experiences, largely because throughout human history, fitting in has been the difference
between life and death. And traditionally, if you didn’t belong to a tribe or group, you died. There was no other tribe or group to go to. And the emotional pain of rejection is this warning system that says, hey, don’t risk your life being an outsider. And even though it’s not an immediate death to us in our time, we still need connection with others for our mental,
emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. Feeling left out, criticized, ignored, forgotten, overlooked, disrespected, shamed, or any other form of rejection can trigger that fight-or-flight response from that primitive part of your brain. And that’s for good reason. All of us come from a long line of people who fear rejection. We know that because people who didn’t fear rejection didn’t live long enough to pass on their genes. In addition, childhood abandonment can trigger an even stronger reaction. That is an immediate threat to life. An abandoned child can’t survive. As a child, you didn’t have another family to join. 

Now that we live in a time when you have other options, if your current tribe rejects you, and now that you’re an adult, your options are broader. And our culture these days offers so many more options for belonging. And it’s important to update your brain with that fact. Part of the change in our culture allows for our really fast rates of personal growth. And having options allows us to risk rejection and approval from the tribe that we belong to. So we can grow and create and evolve to another level. And in previous generations, that risk was really, really costly. Even so, we still have that primitive fear warning us. That voice might look like, if I’m too successful, I won’t have any friends. If I change too much, I won’t fit in with my family. So we don’t want to stand out. We don’t want to lose approval and risk the rejection. We protect ourselves by hiding and doing nothing in an effort to protect us from disapproval or rejection.

So how much time do you spend hiding, rejecting yourself ahead of time so you don’t have to risk being rejected by anyone else? I tried to hide myself for fear of being rejected. I tried to fit in as much as I could so that everyone would like me. But even then, there were some people who didn’t like me just because I wasn’t authentic. I wasn’t sharing the true me. So you can never please everyone. And it took me a long time to launch this podcast. It’s been in the works for at least three years, probably more. There’s been a few reasons for the delay, but one of them is because I was afraid of being criticized for what I think and how I say things. And over the three years, I’ve practiced putting myself out there in smaller ways and practice telling myself, I’m going through a sorting process. So when I communicate who I really am, people have a clear picture of whether or not I’m for them or not for them. And I started saying this to myself, I’m surrounded by love, and I’m filled up by love, and it splashes on everyone around me. I’m securely loved exactly as I am. Therefore, I can afford to express myself with clarity and boldness. I’m a clear voice that both attracts and repels and whatever people believe about me is okay. And I believe that most days. And I want you to notice that in that affirmation, I’m putting myself in the mindset of focusing on loving people rather than seeking to be loved and approved of. And that’s really freeing because I’m free to do and say things that I think will actually help people rather than what I think will make them like me. And that’s a really loving thing. And I see this, as I said, as as I boldly declare who I am, it’s a sorting tool. So I’m supposed to repel some people. That’s okay.

The most painful rejection that I’ve experienced was when I was expelled from my abusive family. I’d worked all my life for my parents approval. I never felt like I had it. And I never felt secure in my place in the family. And then I did something. And I thought it was a small thing. I asserted my own will. And they fired me from being their daughter. It was this clear, you’re not one of us, you don’t belong here. And that was so painful. I had to really acknowledge that loss and comfort myself and grieve that. And grief really transforms things. Grief is like this corridor that leads to having hope for something else. In grief, you can start to see your way through. You can see
that previous life or that previous relationship, that’s not the only thing that exists. So eventually, I came to agree with my parents decision. They were right. I didn’t fit in with them. I didn’t belong in the abuse. And it wasn’t long before my pain turned into relief. I hadn’t known how much I was contorting myself to earn their approval, or how much energy it just sucked out of me. So their rejection was actually a freedom to me. Rejection feels so fatal, though.

But what it really is, its feedback. It’s a redirection and an invitation to change something. In previous episodes, I’ve talked about unpleasant emotions being about changing something. And rejection is meant to change something that you do or change your tribe. There’s a quote from Albert Einstein. He said, everybody’s a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it’s stupid. As long as I fought to belong in my family of origin, I thought of myself as inferior. It was really hard to see myself apart from the way they saw me. But in my relationships now, it’s really easy to see what a great person I am that I’m a caring and wise person. But I needed a different environment to see myself that way. Sometimes a change in environment can make a huge difference in how you see yourself.

I have a mentor who talks about this concept of completed relationships. And that’s about acknowledging that very few people in your life are there until you die. Most relationships are for a season. And when the season is over, it’s actually very natural and healthy to let it go and make room for people who fit into your current season. And you can think of those relationships as complete. An example of that is you might be close to someone at work, but then if you change jobs, you don’t have enough in common with them to stay close. Or when other circumstances change like moving or maybe you stop drinking, those changes mean some relationships don’t survive that change. Or when you experience growth and your current relationships can’t contain that growth. So you could think of those complete relationships as wonderful at the time, but it was only for a time. You may want that connection to continue, but it was complete. So be willing to enjoy people for a time and then to enjoy other people. That’s part of natural progression. And that doesn’t make you flaky or disloyal. And it’s okay to evolve and you can’t drag everyone with you. Some people just don’t belong in the new life that you’re creating for yourself.

And if the other person decides the relationship is complete, that doesn’t mean they find something wrong with you. Even if they do find something wrong with you, that doesn’t actually mean there’s something wrong with you. There will always be people who don’t like you and people who do like you. There are some people who don’t like chocolate. Maybe you don’t. I happen to love it. But what if I offer chocolate to someone and they don’t want any? Does that mean there is something wrong with the chocolate? No. It doesn’t actually say anything about the chocolate. Whether it’s good or it’s bad, whether it’s yummy and delicious or if it’s awful. And of course it’s yummy because it’s chocolate. So if I offer chocolate to someone who likes chocolate, they might eat the chocolate. And if they like the chocolate, that still wouldn’t be about the chocolate. That would be about what that person likes. So different people have different likes and dislikes. And some people will like you and some people won’t. And that’s okay. Now, sometimes a rejection is actually about being redirected to something better. That’s what happened with me. I tried and tried to get my mom’s attention when I was a child and all throughout my life. And I chased after her love and her approval. And it cost me a lot of energy and self-esteem. And really all that I got was a lot more rejection.

I have another mentor who has this brilliant thing. He says, yeses are found in the land of no. And he encourages people not to shy away from rejection. Not to avoid getting no’s. Because no’s are part of getting true yeses. Not a reluctant yes. Not eh, I kind of like you. Not I’ll put up with you or tolerate you. But this wholehearted yes, I want you in my life. And there are a lot of no’s to pass by before getting those clear yeses. So for those who fear rejection, he challenges them with a game of how many no’s can you get in one week. And it doesn’t have to be about people who want you in their life. It can be no’s for helping you with something. It could be a no for joining you somewhere. And this game is really powerful because it reframes rejection then. Because if you’re trying to collect no’s, that isn’t a loss if you get a no. It’s a win. And it gets you out of your comfort zone. And it shows you that rejection isn’t fatal. If you hear no, you don’t die. It also gives us affirmative responses. Because not everyone that you’re aiming to get a no from will say no. Some will say yes. So isn’t that fun?

So abuse tends to put us in this mind frame of limitations rather than possibilities. So I was stuck knocking on that same door where I was continually shut out by my mom. As though that was the only door there was. As though if she didn’t love or approve of me, then there was no other love and approval in the world. But a closed door in one place might be an opportunity in the next door. So if you feel limited in your relationships, it might be hard to imagine validating relationships, finding people who really are wholehearted about saying yes to you. But it’s important not to depend on one relationship. So make it your intention to diversify your relationships and to seek out variety in them. And you might seek variety in the type of people in your life. One might be this deep listener and another might be someone who just adds this free spirited fun. And both are important. Another way to diversify is to seek out people who are available at different times. Like one person might only be available on weekends while another is out of town once a month but is available most of the time otherwise. And so with diversity you increase your chances that your needs will be met, your needs for connection. And when you feel deep connection with more people, that decreases the intensity of any rejection you might fear or actually feel. 

Well, thanks for joining me today. If you’d like a worksheet and checklist of the action steps I’ve shared, you can download that for free. Just go to the show notes page at overcomingsexualabuse.com/007.

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