I’ve been rejected countless times throughout my life. I distinctly remember the sting I felt upon learning I didn’t make my high school’s varsity soccer team. Years later, that pain returned when my dream college declined my application, when someone I’d fallen hard for broke up with me, and when I was passed over for a high-paying job at a tech start-up.
After these rejections, I couldn’t shake the same loud intrusive thought: I’m not good enough. I figured there was something specific about me that was less-than, like my INFP personality type or creative thinking skills, and I was gutted. “Rejection is not only the loss of a dream you developed, but it’s also typically experienced as a blow to your self-esteem,” Molly Burrets, PhD, a Los Angeles-based psychologist and adjunct professor at the University of Southern California’s Department of Marriage and Family Therapy, tells SELF.
If things don’t go your way, it’s easy to ruminate about what you could have done differently or ways you could be better—and remarkably tough to stop catastrophizing. That said, it’s entirely possible to break free from the post-rejection spiral and, well, get a grip again. But before we get to tips, it helps to understand why being turned down can send you into a tizzy in the first place.
Why rejection is so damn painful
When there’s an opportunity in front of you—like a fancy job or a new long-term relationship—your brain tends to create an idealized vision of what your life could look like going forward, says Dr. Burrets. With that start-up job, for example, I pictured myself becoming super financially successful before I hit 30. So, if and when the role or partnership doesn’t pan out, you don’t just lose the thing itself—you also have to let go of the wonderful future you built around it in your mind.
People tend to take that loss quite personally. “You may feel undermined, devalued, or wronged, which can elicit feelings of inadequacy or shame,” Lauren Phillips, PsyD, a Brooklyn-based psychologist at Williamsburg Therapy Group, tells SELF. “We tell ourselves this story that something negative about us is the reason we didn’t get that opportunity,” Dr. Burrets adds, like how I was convinced my boyfriend called it quits because I wasn’t fun or pretty enough.
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