Rejection

Rejection

How does rejection make us feel?  What is the emotional pain and disturbance we experience?  Rejection is a very painful feeling and I wish it on no one. It’s the experience of not belonging and included by others.  The emotional pain comes from being refused, pushed out, side-lined and not accepted.  So what is the best way to cope with rejection?  What tools can we use?

Most people have experienced some form of rejection in their life.  And how much of that feeling was real or imagined, due to some expectation and attachment of our own? Even if we had the answer that does not take the pain away. No matter how insignificant, it still hurts and it niggles away in the mind … and heart, gradually that feeling starts to wear away trust and hope.

“Yet for many years, few psychologists tuned into the importance of rejection. “It’s like the whole field missed this centrally important part of human life …”

Mark Leary, PhD, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, USA.”

It makes perfect sense that our emotional pain can be as severe as physical pain.  What we need are dramatic coping mechanisms, something that can help us overcome these moments of feeling rejected.  Nature in the end holds all the answers and can help us to manage these feelings.

“As researchers have dug deeper into the roots of rejection, they’ve found surprising evidence that the pain of being excluded is not so different from the pain of physical injury.  Naomi Eisenberger, PhD, at the University of California, Los Angeles, Kipling Williams, PhD, at Purdue University, and colleagues found that social rejection activates many of the same brain regions involved in physical pain (Science, 2003).”

Over a lifetime we develop patterned behaviours and belief systems.  These become our programme for life, unless we choose to consciously rewrite the programme to overcome our fears of failure; hurt feelings; social rejection and of not belonging.  For this we need to find tools to help us deal with emotional pain.  If we do not then we will fall victim to our own patterned behaviours and beliefs.

“The link between physical and social pain might sound surprising, but it makes biological sense, DeWall says. “Instead of creating an entirely new system to respond to socially painful events, evolution simply co-opted the system for physical pain,” he says. “Given the shared overlap, it follows that if you numb people to one type of pain, it should also numb them to the other type of pain.”

Nathan DeWall, PhD, Psychologist, University of Kentucky, College of Arts and Sciences

We are social beings and deep down we know we can only survive when we pull together.  Therefore, it is very dangerous to see a breakdown in our social bonds, in our compassion and our humanity.  Where there is no sense of social connection, ultimately this will lead to the downfall of all of us, because we have to live in community and co-operate with one another, to learn how to thrive and survive.  As citizens of this planet, we have to learn to live and share together, otherwise we are done for!  History tells us that people who live as isolationists have a limited future and die out pretty soon.

Spiritual practices can help us to overcome rejection

Self-acceptance and self-love are so important …  Let me give these to myself even if others are not giving to me.  Very few can have the heart, vision or capacity to be totally selfless. Basically people can’t give when they don’t feel they have enough for themselves.  In fact many are running on empty tanks, this can often make them seem selfish and self-motivated.

We need to work more on our self-respect … Knowing that I am wonderful no matter what others think of me … that I am enough just as I am. In the eyes of God, the soul as a child of the Divine is perfect, but the choices I make in life may not be so perfect.  But that is how I create my destiny from free will.

Have a strong sense of personal purpose … When I know I am not invited to something, I am very often quite happy. Simply because that frees up my time and energy … as I have other important things to get on with in my life… What I do with me is more important than what I do with others…

Understand that the Universe is conspiring to help you… If I am not being picked for that team (yet), or for that role or privy to some information, then the Universe has my best interests at heart. The Universe is protecting me by not endangering me.  Maybe I don’t need to waste my time on these issues.

Positive self-talk … “It is not my shortcoming but theirs …” Others may reject me due to their own fears … that does not mean that I am any less … So let me not take that to heart or make it personal.

Being honest with the self, this is key … By remaining balanced and anchored in the true awareness of my spiritual nature, here I am able to know my strengths and weaknesses.

Is there any truth in what people are showing me? Maybe I do have something that needs to change in me. After I have done some internal checking, to see if there is anything behind that specific rejection, then I can move on.

Having spiritual values in your life … This will greatly help me to alleviate the emotional pain and pressure of social rejection. Because spiritual values will help me to stand in my own power, not from a place of ego but from wisdom.

When we come to know ourselves really well, where we are not trapped in any temporary or physical identity, then we can go beyond rejection.  If we can work with personal self-acceptance and not become upset by rejection, whether real or imagined, we are going to create a happy life.  When we take things in the right way, we can see it as a free lesson in humility from the Universe.

It’s Time … to be strong and to repel rejection.

© ‘It’s Time…’  by Aruna Ladva, BK Publications London, UK