Better dealing with feeling rejected

Do you ever feel you need to fight to be yourself or do what you want?

Or must you compromise more than you would like to have harmonious relationships?

Our natural loyalty to who we are and our individual will, as well as our need and wish to be loved, accepted, and part of a community, are two forces in us that may move harmoniously while, at times, creating turmoil.

We all have to face moments when we feel that we stand alone. We have to choose between being loved and accepted and doing what is true to us.

More often than not, when we feel we need to choose (or maybe, better said, lose) between these two, it is a feeling rooted in an old wound of rejection—a wound that somehow still feels raw. It still brings with it a sense of a possible loss.

When we are met with that pain, we unknowingly get trapped behind a wall of fear and feel we are facing a terrible loss. This blocks our ability to breathe, stay grounded, and be stable. We get into survival mode, which often makes us compromise ourselves or become overly defensive or aggressive, believing we have already lost connection and acceptance.

In those moments, we lose the space to communicate, clarify, and adapt.

It also does not make it easy when the other person responds to their wounds.

 

So, what do we do?

How can we live with these two forces without getting into self-inflicted turmoil?

Without being trapped behind those walls of fear or getting held back by the pain of old rejections?

How do we ensure that we live between these two forces and not get carried away by each one?

 

Take a moment and think of moments when you are being rejected, not liked, criticized, or something similar.

How do you feel when you think of that? Where do you feel the primary response in your body?

Be aware of the pain in your chest and the heart pain, and try to breathe into it.

Take some time to breathe and be with that pain without closing yourself off or fearing the possible intensity. Let the memory of the rejection be there without needing to do anything about it, but breathe in it and let yourself move with it.

The more you are ready to feel and be with it, the less it will be something that controls you. It stops being a place where this turmoil occurs.

Sometimes, we need the time to feel and hurt the rejection. Breathe into it so that the way it cuts us will heal quicker and let us let go of what we may have been hanging onto. It may be an internal dependency, old neediness, or even a self-image, an idea about who we are that is not valid anymore.

Giving yourself the time to feel it, away from an actual need to respond, allows you to heal the wound and let the pain or sadness flow. When it flows, it becomes lighter, changes your perception, and lets these two forces in you move again in harmony.

 

Now, look at your relationships and check when you are stressed about what the person thinks of you. Moments, you get insecure or tend to give us what you need. You can then search for moments in which you tend to quickly burst into anger, needing to prove you are right and push away any possible criticism or rejection. When you have one incident in your mind, feel what happens within you. Which parts of your body do you tend to harden and tighten? Do you clench your jaw and hold your breath?

Take the time to maintain that effort while taking the time to feel and reveal how you use that to protect yourself from the hurt. Which historical hurt of rejection is connected to this response?

Once this becomes more precise, maintain the protection effort while reconnecting to the knowledge of your strength.

Then, breathe into the tense areas, release the effort, and let go of the protection so that you can better connect to the presence of strength within you, even if there is pain and hurt. Keep on breathing, and feel that you let go. Let yourself fall into the strength to ground and hold you.

When you breathe and dare to meet the hurt, breathe deeply as long as necessary until the intensity reduces like a wave that meets the shore. What old need has stayed unmet once you have moved through the wave?

How did this unmet need transform into a deep feeling of rejection, self-rejection, or self-doubt?

Feel how you are still holding on to self-doubt/rejection, and with a couple of breaths, choose to let it go, melting the effort and feeling your bones as your presence carries you.

Make sure you lean backward, allowing yourself to be carried by your strength rather than holding onto that protective effort.

Out of that state, how do you perceive those moments in your relationship, and how can you shift and change them? How can you let the two forces in you flow rather than get stuck?

 

Now, think of the wishes that you tend to believe contradict your acceptance. From the new state you have created, how can you change how you communicate your desires and build a bridge of acceptance?

The next time you encounter such an interaction, make sure you take time to listen, break, and lean back before you respond to undo the old protectiveness, freeing the old fear of rejection and leading you to the new situation.

 

Yours

Anna

Photo by Ksenia Makagonova on Unsplash