How to Cope with Rejection?

By Philip Martin

How to Cope with Rejection?

How to Cope with Rejection?

As a baby we have one fear, we fear being separated. This is a survival mechanism, for if we are separated from our mother - we will perish. Though this is not necessarily so today, in our civilized world, this fear of separation is still inherited from our past.

While we are attached to an outer object (mother) and while we are in the womb, we are protected and safe. When we enter the world and are free from our safe womb, we still need the attachment of this same outer object. For we have changed little from being in the womb, we can breathe air but we are even more vulnerable.

As we grow we will initiate the separation process, when we feel the time is ready to begin self determination and autonomy. Any separation initiated by the mother before this time, will simply stir up the fear of separation and delay the harmonious onset of self determination.

We know this fear of separation as rejection. And rejection is the lack of acceptance. If we are accepted we feel good. The trap we fall into, is being aware of the fear of our early need for acceptance/attachment, and being afraid of re-experiencing this old fear. We attempt to gain acceptance from outside objects (people) and we temporarily feel satisfied when we succeed. To keep the fear at bay we have to continually gain acceptance. Hence the importance of other people's good opinion of us. We are so deathly afraid of rejection that we are forever threatened and hence we fail to ever truly gain true acceptance.

Rejection probably gives us more pain, and affects our lives more than any other emotion. Imagine your life if rejection doesn't matter to you and if you are unaffected if someone rejects you. Is it difficult to imagine you can feel that good about yourself? Well you can achieve that state. It is a matter of going in a different direction, a direction that really gets the results that you are after. That direction, of course is inside. Instead of avoiding or reacting and fighting rejection (which only reinforces the fear), the cure is to accept the feeling of being rejected.

That's right, for when you are feeling rejected and all its resultant agony, the truth is that you are feeling all this pain. Your natural reaction is to avoid it by fighting or fleeing. If you instead say to yourself, "I am feeling rejected, and that is O.K" and momentarily stay with the feelings, you are staying in control. This is important, because fear makes us feel we are not in control and we tumble back into our vulnerability, which escalates the fear and on and on the vicious cycle goes. But when you accept the fear by repeating the saying above, you have effectively stopped the cycle/pattern. The fear becomes less intense; you are subtly empowered even though you may be unaware of this empowerment. Now you ask yourself "what do I want to do now?" and do it. It may be leaving the situation or any other option, and you remain empowered because you know you are doing something for yourself, therefore you are somebody. You are remaining in control. You have accepted, rather than rejected the fear, hence you have more acceptance and less rejection.

By Philip Martin

Posted by Cancer Healing