Rejection is a painful experience to go through and it can undermine your life in many obvious and subtle ways. Here are a few ideas about dealing with rejection, and coming through it as a stronger healed person.
The problem with rejection is the feeling – it feels terrible and that is what people struggle with. That sounds so obvious but we need to be clear about what we actually fear and resist. Most of the time we fear the feeling that goes with the event rather than the event itself. Think of it in the following way
Imagine that rejection is the pinnacle of human experience. We all aspire to be rejected and we know we have ‘made it’ when we have been rejected. It feels utterly fantastic. Would we be scared of it? Probably not because it would not make sense to be scared of something that feels great and is a huge achievement.
But it does not feel great. It feels horrible and it turns out that what we fear is that horrible feeling, which happens to have been triggered by rejection. If something entirely different caused the same feeling we would fear that as well.
On top of the awful feelings are the many conclusions the mind gets stuck in, such as
‘There’s something wrong with me’
‘I’ve messed up.’
‘It’s all my fault.’
‘I can’t hold down a relationship.’
‘I’m now all alone.’
‘I can’t trust men / women.’
‘I may not find anyone else.’
These are depressing thoughts that will drop your energy and keep you trapped in the awful feelings, one of the worst of which is fear. However, there is a way out and it revolves around three things:
1. You create a new healthy relationship with your emotions.
2. You challenge and change the conclusions you have been tempted to believe.
3. You heal any aspects of your self-image (and your past), that cause you to believe those limiting thoughts.
When you do those things you not only come through the experience but you heal your mind and heart at levels that go beyond this experience. Your feelings become your friends and you are no longer tossed around by the dramas of life, and your energy does not get sucked out by unruly emotions.
How do you do this? Let’s look at the first one: creating a health relationship with your emotions. Emotion is E-Motion. It is energy moving through your nervous system driven by a thought or perception, and the energy creates tangible sensations in your body. If it is a negative emotion the sensations can be quite unpleasant, while positive emotions tend to create more enjoyable sensations.
The strength of the emotion will determine the strength of the sensation, so you can end up with unpleasant feelings in the body plus a lot of energy flowing through you, which can be a challenge in itself. This is what we tend to fear and resist, and most people will do this either by trying to discharge the feeling by acting out, or trying to suppress it and stop the feeling. Neither strategy works beyond the very short term. And if you act out you may then create other results that you do not want.
The way to a healthy relationship with the emotions triggered by rejection is to make peacewith them, and we do that by allowing them and feeling them. This is very different and is the middle path between acting out and suppression. If you are suffering from rejection there will be strong feelings in your body, and I encourage you to practise the following exercise.
1. Identify where the feeling is in your body and bring your awareness to that area
2. Allow the feeling to be there without judging it, fearing it or avoiding it. Simply feel it.
3. Try to discipline the impulse to go into your story about it all. When your mind goes there gently bring it back to just being with the feeling.
4. Open and deepen the breath and imagine, and feel, you are breathing right into the middle of the sensation.
5. Keep doing this until you feel it relax and feel lighter.
6. Place your hand on the area and give love to the feeling and to you who are suffering with the feeling.
7. Do this until you experience a change of state.
This exercisewill help to dissolve the intensity of the feeling in the moment and allow you to stay relaxed and centered. Do it as much as you need. However it is also giving your subconscious the powerful message that you need not fear your emotions, because you now know how to release and resolve them in healthy ways.
That puts you in charge and not the emotion. When you have dissolved the fear of your own emotions then you can accept them and find peacewith them.
With this you have taken the first important step in getting free of the fear of rejection, and the effects of rejection if it has already happened.
The problem with rejection is the feeling – it feels terrible and that is what people struggle with. That sounds so obvious but we need to be clear about what we actually fear and resist. Most of the time we fear the feeling that goes with the event rather than the event itself. Think of it in the following way
Imagine that rejection is the pinnacle of human experience. We all aspire to be rejected and we know we have ‘made it’ when we have been rejected. It feels utterly fantastic. Would we be scared of it? Probably not because it would not make sense to be scared of something that feels great and is a huge achievement.
But it does not feel great. It feels horrible and it turns out that what we fear is that horrible feeling, which happens to have been triggered by rejection. If something entirely different caused the same feeling we would fear that as well.
On top of the awful feelings are the many conclusions the mind gets stuck in, such as
‘There’s something wrong with me’
‘I’ve messed up.’
‘It’s all my fault.’
‘I can’t hold down a relationship.’
‘I’m now all alone.’
‘I can’t trust men / women.’
‘I may not find anyone else.’
These are depressing thoughts that will drop your energy and keep you trapped in the awful feelings, one of the worst of which is fear. However, there is a way out and it revolves around three things:
1. You create a new healthy relationship with your emotions.
2. You challenge and change the conclusions you have been tempted to believe.
3. You heal any aspects of your self-image (and your past), that cause you to believe those limiting thoughts.
When you do those things you not only come through the experience but you heal your mind and heart at levels that go beyond this experience. Your feelings become your friends and you are no longer tossed around by the dramas of life, and your energy does not get sucked out by unruly emotions.
How do you do this? Let’s look at the first one: creating a health relationship with your emotions. Emotion is E-Motion. It is energy moving through your nervous system driven by a thought or perception, and the energy creates tangible sensations in your body. If it is a negative emotion the sensations can be quite unpleasant, while positive emotions tend to create more enjoyable sensations.
The strength of the emotion will determine the strength of the sensation, so you can end up with unpleasant feelings in the body plus a lot of energy flowing through you, which can be a challenge in itself. This is what we tend to fear and resist, and most people will do this either by trying to discharge the feeling by acting out, or trying to suppress it and stop the feeling. Neither strategy works beyond the very short term. And if you act out you may then create other results that you do not want.
The way to a healthy relationship with the emotions triggered by rejection is to make peacewith them, and we do that by allowing them and feeling them. This is very different and is the middle path between acting out and suppression. If you are suffering from rejection there will be strong feelings in your body, and I encourage you to practise the following exercise.
1. Identify where the feeling is in your body and bring your awareness to that area
2. Allow the feeling to be there without judging it, fearing it or avoiding it. Simply feel it.
3. Try to discipline the impulse to go into your story about it all. When your mind goes there gently bring it back to just being with the feeling.
4. Open and deepen the breath and imagine, and feel, you are breathing right into the middle of the sensation.
5. Keep doing this until you feel it relax and feel lighter.
6. Place your hand on the area and give love to the feeling and to you who are suffering with the feeling.
7. Do this until you experience a change of state.
This exercisewill help to dissolve the intensity of the feeling in the moment and allow you to stay relaxed and centered. Do it as much as you need. However it is also giving your subconscious the powerful message that you need not fear your emotions, because you now know how to release and resolve them in healthy ways.
That puts you in charge and not the emotion. When you have dissolved the fear of your own emotions then you can accept them and find peacewith them.
With this you have taken the first important step in getting free of the fear of rejection, and the effects of rejection if it has already happened.
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