HealthyGamerGG - Rejection Sensitivity: The Real Reason You're Struggling in Relationships

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

🎙️ Dr. K's Relationship Insights: Rejection Sensitivity. Discover tips on handling neutral social interactions, self-blame awareness, and avoiding overreacting. Learn how meditation and professional help can lead to a happier you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we're going to talk about rejection sensitivity. If you look at the world, there are kind of two types of people. There's one group of people that are sort of living relationships on hard mode, where they're kind of constantly in their heads about, okay, if I say this is it going to piss someone off, what will they think about me? They're sort of always walking on eggshells. Relationships feel really, really hard, whether they're at work, whether they're romantic relationships, or even friendships or family relationships. And if you're one of those people, you look at other people and you're like, how is this even possible?

There are some people out there who are like, yeah, you know, if people get pissed off at what I do, that's their problem. You know, I can't be shaping my behavior to try to make other people happy. I got to live for myself. And for some of us, that seems like incredibly foreign. In our mind, our experience is completely different. We're constantly thinking about, okay, what is this person going to think? What is this person going to do? How can I avoid having this person like get mad at?

at me and we're sort of hypersensitive to that stuff. And the really frustrating thing is that when we look at these people who are sort of like oblivious to relationship stuff, they seem to be like living kind of like happy go lucky oblivious sort of lives. And they also seem to have like friendships and things like that. They can also do really well at work, right? Because they're kind of like extroverted and outgoing. And if they screw up, they're like, lull, ha ha, I screwed up. And everyone laughs at them. And meanwhile, you were at work and you're like, oh my God, I screwed up. What are people going to think, am I going to get fired? Is everyone going to hate me? And it just feels like there's these two completely different ways of living life. The hard thing is that as we sort of look towards

those people who are kind of oblivious about this stuff, they don't seem to be thinking about it, it doesn't really bother them. We actually kind of want to be like them, right? We want to be happy, go lucky. We want to be a little bit out of our own heads. We want to be able to set our boundaries. The challenge, though, is that we can't really do what they do, right? And we may even talk to them and ask for advice, or we may sort of like hear about advice from the internet where people are like, just do this, like set your boundaries, right? Like, let your boss know that this is not okay. Let your parents know that this is not okay. This is unacceptable. And so we can kind of say stuff like that, but the people who are giving that kind of advice aren't really like sensitive to rejection.

So the playbook that they're using is different from the playbook that we're using. The life that they're living and even the brain, that they have are actually very different from ours, because rejection sensitivity is a very real thing. And today we're going to talk a little bit about how we develop rejection sensitivity, a little bit about how it manifests, and some more about what to do about it. So let's talk about how rejection sensitivity develops. So generally speaking, rejection sensitivity is actually an adaptive survival mechanism to a non-ideal environment growing up. So we're going to give you all kind of an extreme example of this, okay? So let's say that I'm in a household where I don't feel safe or secure. The most classic example is like a parent who is abusive or neglectful. So what people sort of learn,

what children learn is a survival mechanism is how can I read any kind of subtle sign from my parenting figure or caregiver about what their mood is and how can I avoid pissing them off, right? So if caregivers sort of blame you for their bad mood and they punish you for like annoying them, then you will become sensitive to rejection. So what this experience kind of feels like for people is like you're kind of walking on eggshells. You're hyper vigilant to the mood of people within the household. And sometimes when I talk to people who have really been in traumatic situations, I'll ask them, how long does it take you to know whether you're like in for a bad night?

And they'll say they can tell within seconds. the second my mom or dad walks in the door, I can tell based on, like, it's so rapid and it's unconscious, I know already that I need to go into survival mode. And what these people will end up doing is they'll engage in some kinds of behaviors that are actually survival or adaptive adaptations, such as becoming invisible, right? Or being very, very careful about what you say or what you do because you don't want to trigger some kind of negative sort of situation. And if you kind of think about the child in this situation, this situation does not feel safe or secure. And since it's not safe or secure, we can't do anything even remotely risky.

And what we have to learn how to do is play it safe. And if you grow up in a household like this, you will grow up as someone who is rejection sensitive. And this, by the way, is not something that, like, people kind of made up. This is something that's been very scientifically validated. There are actually questionnaires that you can take that will actually measure the level of rejection sensitivity you have. And people have also done brain scans on people who are sensitive to rejection and found that their brains are different. For example, one study looked at activity in the dorsal interior cingulate cortex, which you don't have to get into too much of the specifics. But the key thing about these brain scan studies is that they find that some people are

sensitive to specifically disapproval and that some parts of their brain will light up and will become hyperactive when there's any kind of disapproval on their radar. They don't respond this way to even things like anger or fear or other negative emotions. But, when they see a facial expression of disapproval, their brain kind of lights up like a Christmas tree. So this is absolutely something that is an adaptation and shapes the way that our brain is formed. So what are the key features of rejection sensitivity? There are three of them. The first is anxious expectation. So people who are sensitive to rejection are always worried and almost expecting to be rejected. So what this results in is in social situations a sense of hypervigilance

where you're constantly thinking or even waiting to be rejected. So you can't just be yourself and relax. You have to constantly think about, okay, if I say this, how is this person going to respond? If I show up at work and I'm wearing this clothing, will this person start to think, oh my God, I'm trying to copy them? So you're constantly thinking about and expecting some sort of rejection. The second feature of rejection sensitivity is ready perception. Now, what does this mean?

This means that there are actually neutral stimuli in the environment that you will perceive as negative. And there have been studies done on this as well where someone may say, like, let's say you text someone, and then they don't respond right away. So this is somewhat like of a neutral stimulus. It doesn't mean that they dislike you, doesn't mean that they hate you. But if you are someone who is prone to rejection, what that means is that your brain will interpret a neutral stimulus in a negative way. And this explains why people who are sensitive to rejection have such different. experiences of life, because there's actually a lot of neutral or benign stimuli out there,

but our brains are going to interpret them as like negative towards us. And this sort of leads to the third aspect of rejection sensitivity, which is overreaction. So this is where either emotionally or behaviorally, we're first of all anxiously expecting, and then we're over interpreting neutral stimuli, which then results in an overreaction, right? So if I text someone and they don't text me back, suddenly I feel terrible. My amygdala and my hippocampus will sort of like hyperactivate. My limbic system hyperactivates. I feel a ton of negative emotion and then I suddenly start copiously apologizing for texting them and disturbing them. So what your life sort of feels like if you're sensitive to rejection, what it actually looks like is that they're all kinds of like

neutral or maybe negative stimuli you perceive them as negative. And then you're constantly apologizing, constantly walking on eggshells, constantly trying to fix relationships that you seem to always screw up. And so this is all mediated by stuff going on in the brain. Now, the tricky thing about rejection sensitivity is, as we mentioned earlier, it's actually a survival mechanism. And the real problem that people who are sensitive to rejection run into is that this is kind of like learning a survival strategy that then stops helping you survive and actually causes you problems later on in life. And so there's one key thing to understand here, which is that when you learn these kinds of avoidant behaviors, right, because by the way, you're tired of pissing people off and you keep

on screwing up. So the best thing to do is to retract from the relationship. So if you kind of think about how we learn these strategies, these strategies are usually learned in the home. So there's one key thing that's very different about growing up with rejection sensitivity and living as an adult with rejection sensitivity. And that is when you're growing up, the relationship is actually constant or guaranteed. Right? So I want you all to think about a six-year-old or a seven-year-old who's learning these adaptive strategies. As they learn to withdraw and avoid people because we're tired of pissing people off and we keep on screwing up, that parent is still going to be there tomorrow. They're going to still be there the next day in the next day, in the next month, in the next year.

So we learn this sort of adaptive strategy of avoidance in a situation where the relationship can never be ruptured, right? If I start avoiding people like my parents are still going to going to be there every day. So the relationship is in a kind of constant state that will never result in like them withdrawing from you because it's a parental relationship. The real struggle that people with rejection sensitivity have is as they move out into the world, those relationships are not constant. Those relationships are not guaranteed. And so what happens is a lot of the strategies that we use, which is learning how to be invisible, walking on eggshells and avoiding situations, will actually negatively impact our relationships, right?

Because if I start to be really avoidant with a friend of mine or someone that I'm even starting to date or a boss and I'm like dodging text messages because I'm afraid of pissing them off, what I will end up doing is piss them off. I'll come across as aloof. I'll come across as uninvested. I'll come across as busy. And then people will start to retreat from us. And this creates a really challenging conundrum for someone who's sensitive to rejection. Because oh my God, now this person is retreating. What did I do wrong?

And that's when you kind of get paralyzed, right? Because you don't, you want to do more. You want to pull them back in, but you grew up in a situation that did not teach you how to pull people back in. Did not teach you how to engage with people because actually the survival strategy when you were growing up is go invisible and become avoided. So now the natural question kind of becomes, okay, so what do we do about this, right? And this is where we're going to tunnel down to the three features of rejection sensitivity a little bit more. So the first is anxious expectation. So this is where if you observe yourself, when you interact with people, what you'll kind of discover is that your mind is on high alert.

And one of the key things that you can do to kind of overcome this is try to have as many neutral interactions as you can. So why does your mind always exist on high alert? It always exists on high alert because it learned to be in high alert, right? Like you learned that, okay, we need to be constantly in high alert because we are constantly in danger. So one of the most important things that you can do is to have to have. have as many neutral interactions as possible and don't overreact to them. So if you go and hang out with people, try to have it just be neutral, right? So like, you don't have to knock it out of the park. You don't need to like piss people off, but just try to hang out with people. And over time,

as long as you're kind of neutral, that sort of anxious expectation will start to decrease. We basically want to give our brain more data about how people will react to us. Because we don't want to use the conclusions from childhood. The second thing that we need to be a little bit careful about is how we react to neutral stimuli. And this is where people who are sensitive to rejection really negotiate against themselves when it comes to social situations. So you will take any kind of neutral situation or any kind of situation and you will, first of all, assume the worst, and secondly blame yourself the most, right? So if someone says, hey, I'm sorry I can't hang out today or they cancel the last minute, you're not going to interpret that as, oh, this person is

flaky or they're sick or this is a problem on their end. You are automatically going to interpret that as a problem on your end. So you need to really be aware of the way that you actually like give yourself very little credit. And you give them a bunch of credit. And you'll, you're sort of really willing to negotiate yourself and always take on the mantle of being the bad guy. Because remember, in the household that you grew up in, whose fault was it if mommy or daddy were mad. It was your fault. You need to be quieter. I can't believe you didn't put away your toys, and they kind of blame you for all this kind of stuff, so you get into a pattern of blaming yourself. So become aware of that pattern. And the third thing is that people who are sensitive to rejection

tend to overreact, both emotionally and behaviorally. And so that's where I know this sounds really, really, really hard. But when you are in a situation where you feel rejected, just stall. Just procrastinate. Just don't do anything. Don't do anything to make them happy because remember that your mind may be over interpreting or incorrectly interpreting how they feel about the situation. So don't like, don't react. So you'll have these very powerful drivers within you that say, oh my God, I screwed up, I screwed up, I screwed up, I screwed up. What do I need to do? What do I need to do to fix it? Let me send them flowers. Let me do this. Let me apologize over and over and over again because until I apologize, I can't tolerate this feeling of negativity. But as you start to overly apologize and take responsibility for stuff that is not your responsibility, what happens to the relationship? Sometimes they're like, oh my God, this person is like so clingy. Like, I don't even know. Like, I can't manage this person's negative emotions.

Like, they're overly apologizing. I don't know what to do so they can start to withdraw. Or sometimes what's even worse is they will play into it. They're like, yeah, everything is your fault. And I feel this way because you screwed up. And the worst thing that someone who's sensitive rejection can do is find someone who will tango with them. Find someone who will actually be like willing to dance that dance with them. Because then what ends up happening is you find yourself in an abusive relationship,

where you're now in a relationship with someone and that could be friendship, could be boss, could be romantic. Where they're willing to take the blame all the time and hey, by the way, they're narcissistic. So they're totally happy blaming you all the time. So the key thing there is to try to just not react, try to stall as much as possible, and try to tolerate that negativity as best as you can. Now, this is where we kind of got to talk about a couple of other interventions. There are several studies on meditation that show that meditation actually mediates improvements in rejection sensitivity. And specifically, what meditation teaches

is some stuff like self-compassion. So there are some studies that have even tunneled down into, okay, what aspect of meditation is responsible for improving rejection sensitivity? And it turns out that self-compassion is a key part of it. So let's think a little bit about how this works. So as we start to meditate, and especially if we do self-compassion meditations, which y'all can find on our YouTube channel or you can sort of check out Dr. Kay's guide, as you start to do these meditations, you start to develop compassion towards yourself. And as you develop compassion towards yourself, you start to not always be at fault.

If you're not always at fault or someone that people are just waiting to reject, then you can start to really like start to interact with people in kind of a healthier way, right? Because if they don't text you back, oh, that has nothing to do with me because I'm actually a decent human being. So it's not necessarily my fault. And so this is one way in which meditation can really help us address these kinds of things. Another mechanism through which meditation can help with rejection sensitivity is that it helps us be observers of our own internal environment. Right? So the problem with a rejection sensitivity is that our mind produces conclusions that we automatically believe to be true. Oh yeah, this person is not texting me back because I'm not worth texting back. And so what we actually want to do, what meditation can help us do is create distance between our own experiences and can lead to actually non-reactivity, which is one of the key things that we really want to fix when it comes to rejection sensitivity. Now, if you're listening to this and you're kind of saying, okay, so like what are you saying? I should just TLDR meditate. Well, that's like if you want to DIY it, right? If you're listening to this up until this point, you're saying that sounds really hard, it sounds really hard for me to kind of fix.

This sounds like I've tried meditation before and it's hard to do. Well, we're happy to lay out with you how you can DIY it. But this is where, frankly, like, DIYing it is hard. So the real question that you've got to ask is like, okay, if you can handle this, you should absolutely do it. Here's the road forward. But it can be a little bit of a bumpy road. The other challenge here is that sometimes therapy can be helpful for rejection sensitivity. So, for example, rejection sensitivity is tightly correlated with borderline personality disorder, with mood disorders, with anxiety disorder, with body dysmorphia. So it's correlated with all these mental illnesses that you can get diagnosed and treated for. And if you get diagnosed and treated for those conditions, chances are

the rejection sensitivity will improve. So if you feel like this is too much to do on your own, you can absolutely work with a therapist or psychiatrist who can help you with some of these other conditions as well. The real challenge about working with therapists or psychiatrists, though, is that none of us are really formally trained, or very few of us, are formally trained in rejection sensitivity. What we're trained in is are those diagnoses. And this is where things get really tricky because it's possible to have rejection sensitivity without one of those diagnoses. And remember that rejection sensitivity can kind of correlate with each of those things. So the cool thing is that through research we've really understood that actually rejection sensitivity is a adaptation of the brain. It's a particular wiring or conditioning that can be deconditioned. And you can actually target that specifically. And this is where like we sort of understand this stuff, which is why we kind of like built our coaching programs. So as an example, like group coaching was sort of designed to help people with the stuff that therapists sort of aren't great at necessarily helping with. So we're not really substitute therapy and we don't.

try to be substitute therapy. What we really try to do is help people with things like emotional awareness, rejection sensitivity, awareness of interactions. And so group coaching is a good example of this because what we do in group coaching, and by the way, you don't have to sign up for group coaching. If you can find an environment, we're going to lay out what we try to accomplish in group coaching that you can absolutely try to craft for yourself, okay? So in group coaching, you're with a group of people. So you're anxiously expecting that you're going to piss someone off. And when you feel that way, the group is an environment where you can share those feelings and you can say, I feel terrible about myself. And then this is where people with compassion and authenticity will help you dig

into that feeling. And what we're going to sort of create is this artificial social space where you can kind of like examine your reactions. We're going to evoke those reactions, but we're not going to kick you out of the group. We're not going to stop texting you. And this is the real value of group is that there's no other part to the relationship, right? So we don't care. Like we're not planning on playing video games. We're not going to be friends. We're not going to date. We're not going to go into business together. It is literally a place for you to engage in, examine your social interactions, and actually start the process of reprogramming. So this is what we try to create is situations where, like, you're going to have feelings. We're going to invite you to share your feelings. We'll even

inquire. If we notice you're quiet, we'll sort of say like, hey, what makes it hard for you to engage with us? Do you feel comfortable answering questions? And so people will kind of like bring you in. They'll bear that responsibility. And what we tend to see when we sort of create this kind of situation, and once again, it doesn't have to be group coaching. But if you can create any kind of situation where you can have some of these explorations of your reactions to conversation, to kind of social cues and things like that, then you can really start to unravel that and start to reprogram yourself. So as it turns out, if you're kind of looking at other people who seem to be able to socialize like really freely and are like kind of like, yeah, I don't really mind if I piss other people off. because that's on them. And that idea is very enviable to you, but also seems foreign to you. Like, how on earth can you do that? I'm terrified constantly of pissing people off. And there's

all kinds of relationships that I end up screwing up. And maybe even you've gone to a therapist or psychiatrist and you've tried to figure out what's going on, but you don't even meet diagnostic criteria for something like social anxiety disorder. It turns out that there's this whole other thing that we actually have a growing body of research on, and that is rejection sensitivity. The reason our brain is wired like this is because these were actually adaptive survival mechanisms for usually our home environment. The real challenge is that our home environment is kind of built on this idea that your parents won't really abandon you, right?

So maybe they did, but hopefully not. But if you're six, if you're seven, if you're eight, if you're nine, your parents are always going to be there. So the way that I'd kind of describe this is it's almost like, imagine you're learning how to swim with a life vest on. So like you have this life vest on because your parents. are never going to abandon you. And so the habits that you build, the way that you learn how to swim is like not really ideal

because you've got this one key safeguard. And this is what happens with people with rejection sensitivity is that helps them survive in the pool with the life fest. The problem is that when you move out into the real world and when you start to engage in work relationships, romantic relationships, even friendships, that life fest goes away because your parents may never abandon you, but other people, if you like keep avoiding them, or you overly apologize or you're clingy. They're going to be like, this is too much,

and they're actually going to withdraw. So what happens is you build all these habits of how to swim with a life vest on. And then when you move out into the world, you take the life vest off, and suddenly the ways that you learn how to swim no longer work. And then you feel like you're drowning.

And you look at everyone else out there who's actually able to swim and you're like, I don't understand. And you try to mimic their movements, but it doesn't work, right? You can't just watch someone else swim and then suddenly have been in the water for 18 years with a life vest and suddenly do what they're doing, you're going to start drowning. And it feels really traumatic and it feels like it's impossible to get a handle on.

So our hope today is that we've helped you understand this a little bit to understand that there isn't something fundamentally busted with you. This is your brain's way of like trying to figure out how to survive in the household that you grew up with. And the cool thing is that those adaptations we can actually lay out. And there's actually a process, everything from meditation to the DIY stuff, to, seeing a therapist or trying something like coaching, that you can actually like un-learn some of these behaviors. You can actually learn how to reprogram yourself to swim in these kinds of relationships.