Rejection & Acceptance, Chapter 2: Our Roots of Rejection

Ramadan Kareem to our Muslim colleagues, and welcome to Chapter 2! If you missed Chapter 1 feel free to start there. As always, you can also read this on Aya's Medium if you prefer.

Pete: Any good career counselor or coach can help someone see when they set themselves up for failure. My fear of rejection came out sideways, presented as arrogance, sarcasm, and a lack of confidence, and was rooted in feeling weak. Remember what I said about rejecting others before they rejected me? In the case of the UK job, the Fraud Police placed me under arrest: they made sure I rejected myself before the hiring manager could reject me.

I’m fortunate to have worked with a fantastic career coach who told me about living above the line with curiosity, creativity, and play. We are wired to live below the line as a defense mechanism. It takes work and practice to give ourselves permission and shift out of our natural survival tendencies. In the case of the UK interview, I saw it as an interaction I had to win. What if I had trusted the hiring manager to know what he was doing when he contacted me? It was a mistake not to include my career coach in my preparations, to go it alone. This pattern of behavior comes with many familiar questions, such as:

• Why hadn’t I consulted her when the opportunity first arose?
• Why did I wait until after the fact to bring it up?
• Why was it so important for me to be “right” with the project manager?
• And most importantly, why would I deny myself the opportunity to feel joyful, exhilarated, or fulfilled; to be helped; or to be creative in this new role?

It’s like standing in a grocery store but not buying anything, aka “starving myself in a place of plenty.” I used to have good reasons for doing this. I am an autistic person and experienced emotional meltdowns throughout my childhood. They were exhausting and physically painful, and they isolated me from others. Over time I learned to don “wet weather gear” whenever I felt emotionally taxed: sometimes this serves me well, but as I get older, the interpersonal cost becomes more apparent. My father likes to say about me, “you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink,” but what presented as my stubbornness was actually a form of self-starvation, of self-rejection. I preferred hunger and thirst over feeling disappointed again because disappointment felt so overwhelming. I never got comfortable with my feelings or myself when I was young, and I started to hate myself for being so vulnerable.

When we talk about personal narratives that fail to evolve, this was a big one. I didn’t know how to be gentle with myself, and it affected my professional life, my marriage, my friendships, and my relationships with my kids.

Aya: I wish, earlier, someone had shared the tale of their rejection—the raw emotions, the sting of pain, the shadows that draped the beginning, and the enduring mark it etches in the heart. Rejection, akin to a subtle fracture in the human emotions, goes beyond surface-level wounds—it delves into the profound layers of our psyche, intertwining with feeling unlovable.

Consider the human psyche as a delicate ecosystem, where the need for acceptance and love is an intrinsic part of emotional well-being. Rejection, in this context, acts as a disruptor, triggering responses that echo not only in wounded pride but also in the fundamental question of one's lovability.

When I feel rejected, my brain reacts the same way it does to physical pain. This explains why being turned away hurts me so much, especially when I was hoping to be accepted. The brain, wired for connection, perceives rejection as a threat to social bonds, evoking a response deeply rooted in our evolutionary need for community and belonging.

The wound of rejection, inextricably linked to the perception of being unlovable, taps into the psychological concept of attachment. Human beings, from infancy, seek emotional bonds as a means of security and survival. Repeated experiences of rejection can resonate with early attachment wounds, fostering a belief that one is inherently unlovable.

Moreover, psychological theories like self-determination theory posit that the need for relatedness is a fundamental psychological need. Rejection can undermine this need, leading to a sense of isolation and a questioning of one's worthiness of love and connection.

In the narrative of the psyche, the wound of rejection becomes intertwined with narratives of self-worth. It's not merely a bruise on the ego; it's a puncture in the core belief of deserving love and acceptance.

Understanding the psychological impact of rejection involves acknowledging its role in shaping not only immediate emotional responses but also long-term perceptions of self. The healing process, then, extends beyond surface-level recovery, requiring a recalibration of self-perception and a reintegration of the belief in one's lovability—a process as intricate and nuanced as the psychological landscape it seeks to mend.

Pete: This makes clear what most of us already know, but may struggle to put into practice: to love others, you have to love yourself. To accept others, you have to accept yourself, or at least reject yourself less often!

Thanks for reading. On Wednesday we will post Chapter 3: Judgement. See you then.

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