HealthyGamerGG - How to Actually Handle Rejection

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

Today Dr. K talks about rejection, how to actually deal with rejection, why you struggle with rejection, and more!  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So rejection sensitivity is really common, and people are always trying to get rid of it. If I am afraid I'm ugly, if I'm afraid that I'm overweight, what am I going to be sensitive to? And the standard answer is get rejected over and over and over again, and that's by standard answer, we're not saying it's wrong. There's a certain truth to it, right? But that's not easy to engage in, and it's not sometimes helpful. Whereas if we think about it, each of those rejections is associated with a lot of pain, right? It hurts. You can't just ask someone to go outside and go swimming in lava every day for like a week. Like they're not going to do that, right? It's really hard.

So how can we understand this a little bit better and how can we sort of potentially get some control over it? I have a tough time handling rejection. Hey, everyone. I could really use some advice about how to get rid of this rejection sensitivity I'm having. The most small sign of rejection makes me feel absolutely miserable. I get insecure and feel hurt at first and then angry at the person that I feel rejected by. There were many times where it left me miserable for days or even weeks. Now it happens more often that I sometimes react openly to it by being a bit off or being a bit colder just to regret it a few minutes later

because it just turned out to be in my head. This is really in the way, this is really getting in the way of making friends or finding some at least, but I can't shut my emotions off in that moment. I'm 22 and shouldn't be such a child anymore. Does anyone on here know how to get rid of this? So this is something that is, this is something that a lot of people struggle with. That we have a difficult time handling rejection, right?

And what we're looking for is a way to get rid of it. So this is where, like, you know, a lot of people will say like, oh, you know, you just like handling rejection is about developing thick skin. right? So even we'll say that. We'll say like, okay, it's like it's about practice. It's about experience. You know, you got to get rejected over and over and over again. Survive it. And then you'll realize that like, you know, it's not that bad, right? And that's how you get over handling rejection. You just have to be rejected. Which there's truth to. But if you really think about it, like it's terrifying, right? So if you tell someone, yeah, like the way to get over your phobia of snakes is to spend more time with snakes. Like that's the reason that we have exposure therapy and psychiatry. We're like, oh, yeah, like, let's expose you to it. The only way to learn how to handle getting rejected is to get rejected, which is maybe true, right? But, like, it's actually terrifying if you really think about it.

It's, like, really, really terrifying. Because these people don't want to, you don't want to do that. It's like, if you have someone who's afraid of snakes and you're like, the solution to get over your fears, we're going to drop. you in a pit of snakes. Like, they're not going to want to do that. If you have trouble with rejection and you get you're sensitive to rejection, you have trouble handling it, you're not going to sign up for it, right? In fact, it's, and that's not like a personal failing, which by the way, a lot of people feel like they have, right? There's a lot of self-judgment here. So you're almost

like rejecting yourself in this process. Oh, I'm such an idiot for being so sensitive to rejection. I should have grown up by now, which in that moment, what are you doing to yourself? you're rejecting yourself. You're not accepting yourself. You're not cutting yourself any slack. And so this is sort of where it honestly starts, right? So why are we so sensitive to rejection? Generally speaking, as human beings, the things that we're sensitive to are the things that we ourselves are insecure about or the things that we do to ourself. If I am afraid I'm ugly, if I'm afraid that I'm overweight, what am I going to be sensitive to? Comments that other people make about me potentially being ugly or being overweight.

And sometimes what'll even happen is they're not even making comments about my weight. Right? Like, but the way that my mind is so primed, it's going to assume that a neutral comment is going to be interpreted as a comment about what I'm sensitive to. So rejection sensitivity is really common, and people are always trying to get rid of it. And the standard answer is, you know, get rejected over and over and over again. And then that's, by standard answer, we're not saying it's wrong. There's a certain truth to it, right?

Because once you get rejected a couple times and you survive, then you'll realize, like, oh, it's actually, like, not that bad. It won't devastate me the way that I thought it would. But that's not easy to engage in, and it's not sometimes helpful, right? So it's not like, go out there and get rejected a thousand times, then you'll overcome your rejection sensitivity. Whereas if we think about it, each of those rejections is associated with a lot of pain, right it hurts like you can't just ask someone to go outside and go swimming in lava every day for like

a week like they're not going to do that right it's really hard so how can we understand this a little bit better and how can we sort of potentially get some control over it okay so let's talk about this okay so how do we overcome rejection sensitivity okay so the first thing to understand is that oftentimes the rejection sensitivity. The sensitivity itself comes from self perception, right? And we kind of saw that over here. We look at this like, you know, I shouldn't be such a child anymore, right? So like, we'll see that oftentimes. So the first thing that you can do is on a core level, like try to understand where did you get the idea that you were worthy of rejection? Because if you're sensitive to something, chances are it's a fear that you hold internally.

Right? So what I would kind of ask yourself is, why are you rejectable? And as long as you have the belief that you are rejectable, it's going to be easy to be rejection sensitive. Right? So this is actually like the foundation of it. So this is where if you do something like see a therapist or like work on your somers or things like that.

So a lot of like spiritual practices and stuff, you'll disqualification. stuff, you'll discover this kind of thing, right? As we like meditate and do this kind of stuff, you can do it sort of clinically or non-clinically. If you've got a, you know, serious problem and you have social anxiety or like real problems with your relationships, I'd recommend a clinician. But you can do this kind of internal work without necessarily going to therapy. Okay? So that's the first thing. It's like understand the core of your sensitivity. And if you can work on that core of sensitivity by exploring when did your brain learn that you were rejectable. And then as you think about those experiences as you really process and you realize that chances are the reason you're

rejection sensitive today is because there was someone who rejected you super hardcore and hurt so much and you carry that hurt around with you and you're so afraid of that happening again that like you know it's kind of projecting into your current life okay second thing is that when people are rejection sensitive what they want to do is get rid of it right we want this thing to just go away. And so this, in a sense, is one way of getting rid of it. But like, the goal here is to, how can I say this? The goal here is to change our reaction or change our mind. Whereas what we're going to share with you today is a couple of things that you can do that may actually help with this. Okay? A couple of other things that you can do. The next thing to think a little bit about

is when we sort of talk about other ways to get rid of it, there's sort of a thick skin approach, right? Which is if you get rejected enough, you'll get thick skin, and then it won't hurt as much, hurt less. Right? But this is the kind of thing that's, like, absolutely terrifying, because I want y'all to understand this.

So if you have a person who's rejection sensitive and you tell them to, like, get rejected and this hurts, like, this is the whole point that you're trying to avoid. This is why you want to get rid of it. of it, right? You're trying to avoid this at all costs. You want to be cured of the rejection sensitivity. So everything that your mind is doing in terms of even this kind of stuff. So when we get rejected, we feel hurt. So what do we do when we get, if we get rejected, right? So sometimes we internalize it for weeks. I feel hurt on the inside, but I'm not going to say anything to

anyone for weeks. So like when we get rejected, we just take that feeling, we stuff it down in there, we live with it. It ruins our life for days or weeks. And you're telling this person to go out there and get rejected. They're going to get rejected once. They're going to go for days or weeks feeling bad about themselves. And then you're going to be like, good job. Now go out there and do it again. Or what happens is that, and then what happens they get fed up with dealing with internally. And then what do they start doing? They start lashing out. They get cold.

Right? This is what this person said. Now it happens more often that I sometimes react openly by being a bit off or being a bit colder. So what's going on there? It's like, here's our bucket of bad feelings. And so why are we, and it's filling up with the toxicity of, I got rejected, I got rejected, and then at some point it starts overflowing. And so now we. we start, sometimes we'll lash out, but what's more common is we'll start acting cold, right?

And why do we do that? It's because, like, it's kind of passive-aggressive, because we can't actually lash out. Like, we can't, like, overtly get mad at them, but we're going to punish them for hurting us. So I'm going to give this person the cold shoulder. And then what happens then is, like, this screws up our relationships. Because on the one hand, like, here's this person that could be my friend that makes me feel hurt for weeks. And then I give them the, cold shoulder, and I don't really understand, like, what is going, like, they don't understand what's going on. I feel hurt by them.

And so now, like, they're asking me, hey, do you want to go grab dinner sometime? And you're like, I don't know, maybe. And then the friend is confused because they don't understand what's going on. And there's all this rich, internal stuff that's going on within me when I get rejected, which they have no idea about. And so then it gets confusing for them. They stop texting me. They get frustrated.

that feels like another rejection, and then like this whole cycle repeats again, right? So what can you do here? So I do think that there's value in all of these things, but there are two other things that I'm going to show you all that are kind of like really important. One is perception, and the second is communication. So the key thing here that a lot of people miss out on rejection sensitivity is how their perception is screwing them. So let's look at this, and we can see it right here. The most small sign of rejection makes me feel absolutely miserable. This is the key thing. So a lot of times when we

talk about growing internally or growing psychologically, we're always trying to control our reactions or we're trying to control our internal environment, or we're trying to control our actions, right? So if we think about like if someone has a problem, okay, there's signal, reaction, and action. And if you look at what people are asking for and where solutions are, right, it'll always be here and here.

And we're missing a third of it. So let me give you all an example. So how do I get rid of this? How do I overcome my social anxiety? How do I stop thinking about this? How do I not get hung up on that? Right? How do I let go of an X? How do I get over this relationship? How do I stop thinking about her all the time? Thinking about him all the time? How do I stand up for myself? How do I set boundaries? Right? How do I speak up for myself? How do I talk to my parents? So everyone's talking about the reaction and the action. How do I stop feeling this way? I want to. I want to say. I want to be able to

a magic bullet or magic wand that takes away the reaction. I want to shape my behavior. And so there are solutions there for sure. Here's what we're missing, the perception. Because if you can alter your perception, that'll change your reaction. And by definition, it'll by definition will change your action, right? Because the action is based on the reaction, the reaction in turn is based on the perception. So that one area that I think is very, very, very underutilized in terms of self-growth is being critical and shaping your perceptions. So let's think about this a little bit more carefully. So the most small sign of rejection makes me feel absolutely miserable. Now, if you are, imagine you're in a relationship with this person,

how can you interact with them? How can you avoid this? Right. If I'm your friend, And we'll see this like sometimes with these like horror texts, right, of dating apps and things like that. Where like the smallest sign of rejection makes you feel miserable, but it's like it's not actually a sign of rejection. They're not actually rejecting you. It's just life. Right. So if I don't text you back within five minutes, you feel rejected. Your perception is, oh, this person is on the cusp of rejecting me.

And let's understand why this is. This isn't stupid. it's because I don't know how to... So when we get rejected and it hurts a lot. Okay? So when we get rejected and we get weeks of misery, what is our brain going to adapt to do? It's going to learn how to like predict this as easily as possible, right?

So if something is like... So like we've seen this in, for example, parents of children who have had serious accidents. Where like if you have a serious accident, if your child is a serious accident, you take them to the hospital. The first sign of that thing repeating triggers the parent. And that's absolutely adaptive. It's absolutely evolutionary.

We're not going to let it get to that point ever again. I've seen it in marriages where there's a lack of, you know, people have had affairs. And then what happens to the person who is cheated on? They're paranoid. And the first sign of infidelity creates an explosion of reaction. You all get that? So this is not, it's not like, this. person is stupid for a small sign creating a reaction, it's because if there's a bad consequence,

and it happens once, our brain is going to learn how to predict it. If it happens again, we're going to learn how to predict it. If it happens again, we're going to learn how to predict it. And then eventually what happens is like, you know, the signal over here is small. The signal over here is larger. The signal over here is larger, right? And so smaller and smaller things are going to cause us to react, which is just our way. brains way of protecting us. It's like, you know, there's rain clouds in the sky. There's thunderstorms.

There's thunderstorms. There's rain clouds. There's regular clouds. And there's the beginning of clouds. There's a change in barometric pressure. Our brains and our survival mechanisms have learned how to move earlier and earlier and detect smaller and smaller signs. And the more the emotional impact is, the smaller of the signs that we're going to look

for. So what can you do? Recognize that this is what your brain is designed to do, but that it is a maladaptation. So what you really need to control is your perception. The key moment is here that you can work on. So if you have someone where you, the smallest sign of rejection, that's where you need to catch your mind. You need to say, hold on a second. What actually happened?

And before you, because once you jump on that conclusion, once you board the train of rejection, you're SOL. You're screwed. So how do you avoid boarding that train? How do you avoid getting the reaction and then engaging in the action? How do you avoid that, right? So this line and then this line. The way is by noticing the perception.

This is the key thing. So what are you perceiving what actually happened? How are you interpreting it that way? These are the questions that you need to ask yourself. And start with the smallest thing possible. Right. So if someone doesn't text you back, rather than like, oh, my God, I'm getting rejected and texting them back, like, oh, like, why aren't you texting me? Text me back. Text me back. I'm so mad at you. Or then what happens is you adopt the cold shoulder, right? So then when they text you, you and your

mind are like, I'm not going to, they made me wake, I'm going to make them wait. And you resolve to yourself that whatever they text me, I'm going to not respond to them for 24 hours. That'll teach them because that's what's going on, right? And that doesn't have. help your relationship. So notice the perception. Why does my mind, why is this interpreting it this way? Right? Like, what are the other possibilities here? So this is where cognitive reframing comes up. So like go through a differential diagnosis for what you perceive as a rejection. Ask yourself, why does my mind perceive this as a rejection? And it's going to be really hard because you're going to automatically jump to that conclusion. But look at the actual thing,

like write it down. Like what did they do? And how do I feel? And this is where the antidote, the second antidote to this is communication. So this is where, like, communication isn't perfect, right? So if I don't text you back, there could be a thousand reasons for that. And anytime there's a disconnect between two people, communicating, like, resolves that perceptual problem. So if you didn't text me good night, like every night, I feel really hurt by that. I feel rejected by that. but I never understood that you don't really like get any value out of that, right?

So like it doesn't really mean much to you when I text you goodnight. It's not that important to me. Because human beings are all going to be operating off of their internal like roadmap of what's okay and what's not okay, what's important and what's not important. Because what's important to you may not be what's important to them. And so how do you resolve that perceptual gap? Because here's the problem is you're judging their actions based on your internal roadmap, which is why a small signal makes you feel so rejected. Whereas they're completely oblivious to it.

Because it's not that big of a deal to them. And it's not that you're stupid for it being a big deal to you or they're stupid for not understanding. There isn't a right or wrong here. The key thing here is communication. Now, the tricky thing here is that people who are rejection sensitive are terrified of communication. And this is the last thing that I'll kind of leave you with.

If you're sensitive to rejection, sometimes communication can be absolutely terrifying. Because these techniques like the cold shoulder, these passive aggressive kind of moves, preserve some degree of safety. They preserve some amount of nebulousness into which you can't truly get rejected. And so sometimes if you're rejection sensitive, having a conversation is opening yourself up to the biggest possible rejection. Because if I tell them that texting every night is really important to me, and it matters a lot to me, and then they don't do it, then it's a rejection of the highest order. Because I've explained to them how important it is. Right?

So it can be terrifying to try to have communication, but I'd say if you are sensitive to rejection, sure, you can deal with the core of it. You can sort of try to make your reaction go away. You can start to adjust your actions. Yeah, of a room, right? But at the end of the day, what you've got to be super, super, super careful about is your perception. This is the thing that is missed the most. Because it is in your perception that the whole cycle starts. So you've got to be super careful about that.

Okay? Questions? No, baby elephantism is next. Are such signals types of trauma? Sort of. Right? So this is where, so trauma shapes our purpose. are perceptions and shapes our behaviors.

But trauma is not the exclusive thing that shapes our perceptions and shapes our behaviors, right? Trauma is a particular event that shapes our perceptions and behaviors in a particular way. So I would say that people who are rejection sensitive

have probably undergone some kind of trauma, but I don't know if it's like, it's a word that gets thrown around a lot, right? So, like, sort of is the answer. How to be more mindful of perception. The first thing is to look for it. The first thing is when you react, pause and track back. Because here's the thing. If you're rejection sensitive, you really want to look at how you feel in

the moment and you really want to look at all of the stuff you're going to do. I'm going to be cold to them. I'm not going to respond to them. I'm going to show them. I feel hurt. I can't believe they did this. And then your mind like boards this train and it's like thinking about the future and thinking about how you feel and thinking about how hurt you feel. What caused the rejection or the source of the rejection gets, you just blow right past that, man. So go back and say, hold on a second.

What made me feel this way? And what did they actually do? Because if you can alter your perception, then it changes the reaction. And then it changes how you act. The perception is key. Because oftentimes with rejection sensitivity, we are sensitive.

What does the word sensitive mean? It means that a small signal creates a large response. My skin is sensitive. don't touch it there. I'm really sensitive about my weight. Don't talk about my weight. Right? So the word sensitivity literally means disproportionate reaction to a small signal. And so focus on the signal. That's where you can start to shape your reaction to the signal. Because once the reaction

happens, then it's really hard to manage. So it's the thing that people leave out. And by all means, like, get rejected. I mean, the more you get rejected, we'll see this a lot with dating for example, right? You got to put yourself out there a couple times to realize that you'll survive a rejection. Okay? Gagachad, get rejected. Yeah, so that's like, that's hard for people who are rejection sensitive, right? It's really easy for people who are, who have the confidence to be rejected, to tell people who don't have the confidence to be rejected, just go get rejected. So for people saying, just change your perception. So the first thing is recognize that perception is part of the equation and then explore it. You'll be. You'll be. You'll be a very thing. You'll be,

surprised at how low-hanging the fruit is. Yeah, does rejection sensitivity have roots sometimes in a lack of validation from an early age? Absolutely. It oftentimes has, because your brain learned to be wary of rejection

somehow. Do you all get that? Like, it learned that lesson that rejection is dangerous. Rejection hurts. And so it had to learn that lesson somewhere. Yeah, so notice the perception and challenge your beliefs. That's a great way to put it. We're not saying that you have to explicitly just challenge them, right?

Because for now, right now you're just taking them for granted. There's no scrutiny. And that's where, like, you'll be surprised at how far a little scrutiny goes. It's becoming the observer, like in meditation, a good way to get a new perspective? 100%. Yes. So as we become the observer, we separate ourselves from the reaction and therefore the reaction dies down.

Right? So I think there's a video in Dr. K's guide to meditation about how we fuse with our thoughts and how it is that meditation is an scientifically validated intervention for all mental illnesses. Like that's like, I think that's fair. Maybe not all, but, you know, a surprising majority of them. So it helps for borderline personality disorder, helps for depression, helps for anxiety, helps for ADHD. So how does that work? It's because on a fundamental level,

meditation helps you pull away from your mind and be more objective. And the common thing about all these mental illnesses is that we get caught up in our mind. So there's some videos in there about the nature of thought. And like how does thought work and how does mind work? And how do we separate from our mind and what happens when we separate from our mind? Okay. Yeah. So someone saying, I had an anxiety attack yesterday because of rejection and doing the observer thing suddenly calm me down. It was insane. Absolutely. So what about if you have trauma and the meditation triggers it? So I recommend particular meditation techniques for people with trauma. So here's the thing to

remember about trauma and meditation. When we have trauma, our mind develops suppressing mechanisms or protective mechanisms where we wall the trauma off. Oftentimes when we meditate, especially from the mindfulness tradition, and let's remember that. that mindfulness is like 5% of like the meditative tradition. The problem is that it's become the most popular. So everyone assumes that mindfulness is meditation. So mindfulness is about observing and letting go and pulling back. And so when you create that kind of vacuum,

sometimes the trauma gets sucked, past the defense mechanisms, and that negative pressure in the mind, that vacuum in the mind, pulls the trauma up. So that's why if you look at, you know, clinical interventions, meditative interventions, they tend to be more grounding in nature. So they're not going to create a vacuum in the mind, in fact, the opposite. So if you look at mindfulness practices in DBT, they call them mindfulness practices, but they're really grounding

meditations. They're really focusing your mind in a particular place. It's the opposite of a vacuum. And so if you have trouble with trauma and mindfulness, that's where I'd say, find a competent teacher who is like trauma informed and can teach you an appropriate meditation for trauma. Is there a difference between Buddhist and Hindu meditation? Sure. But that assumes that Buddhist and Hindu meditation are also monolithic, which they're not. Right. So Buddhism has tons of traditions of meditation with lots of different techniques. Hinduism has the same. But generally speaking, I'd say that there is more overlap between the traditions than within the traditions. So there is tantric Buddhism and there's tantric Hinduism, which are basically very similar.

So the difference between wajyayana Buddhism and like Mahayana Buddhism is greater than the difference between Hindu and Buddhist meditation. Essentially, Buddhist meditation is Hindu meditation. It's all the same tradition, which I know sometimes will like offend people. But let's remember that the techniques that Buddha taught and the techniques that Buddha learned were from quote-unquote Hindu teachers, right? Like, they're all the same. These techniques are the same.