Am I sensitive to "rejection"?

[goblinchild]

I've had a few very light little instances of disapproval in the past two days. It was nothing that wasn't understandable. A few people were misinformed. But still, I keep thinking about it without trying.

I remind myself that they're good, well-meaning people with different mindsets, different lives. No one was unkind. We were coming from different backgrounds and had a misunderstanding, that happens. And I believe this when I say it to myself!

But I still feel disproportionately hurt. I keep catching myself being a little more vigilant about if I've done anything else that would cause disapproval. The way I'm dressed, am I standing too close, do my actions seem irritated at all? I know I do this and it will go away soon. I just have to keep reinforcing to myself that everything is fine. But doesn't everyone feel that way about rejection/criticism? I know some people probably deal with it better, and some people have coping mechanisms/skills, but surely no one likes rejection? I thought this was pretty normal.

[woodsgnome]

I know for me it's been easy to slip into feeling that rejection is often my fault. Then I'd realize later it probably wasn't the main reason at all.

I have a marked tendency to self-blame as a first response to rejection. Sometimes it even seems that I almost expected it. Rejection was, after all, a 'normal' part of early life for me. Undoing all of that is an ongoing monumental effort.

As you pointed out, there can be lots of reasons some people might have -- rejection isn't necessarily personal, but it sure can seem that way. Why has more to do with what we learned to think -- that rejection was always our fault.

Yet we did somehow survive that old story of 'not good enough'. So I think the best option is to realize one's basic  goodness, and to practice living as true to that as possible; living from one's heart and being kind to ourselves. Rejection in our new story is no longer a case of fault-finding.

I wish you well, goblinchild.

 

[Gromit]

Have they actually rejected you or simply disagreed?

There can be a big difference. And, if they have, it may be about them, not you.

Easy for me to say, I know, I too, ruminate over things until something else comes along to distract me, and the thing I feel I may have done wrong can resurface years later in my mind when others have long since forgotten.

I don't think anyone likes rejection or even to be wrong but some people seem to handle it better, or they look as if they do.

G

[Kizzie]

I suspect most of here are a little more sensitized to disapproval because it meant danger and abuse in the past.  It was meant to hurt us, make us feel inferior....

It sounds like adult you knows the light disapproval you received was not meant in the way it was in your past, but perhaps younger you doesn't and needs some TLC and reassurance?

[goblinchild]

Thanks for all the replies. I've been thinking about all of them.

I've been working on this for the past week and I think the vein runs deeper than I originally thought. What was bothering me about rejection was like the tip of an iceberg. (Better to find them the icebergs then to not see them at all though, amIright?)

I don't understand it yet. But I think there's a lot of unfairness and judgement I've experienced that I've only considered through the mindsets of the people who were unfair. Every time I try to consider my side of things or the truth of the situation, I dissociate something fierce. It's like I can't access empathy for myself in those situations and I can't see things for what they are. I think maybe it could be a survival thing? Maybe if I understood how those judgemental people thought about me, I could navigate abusive situations better? Or something like that.

I've also considered that maybe it would have been too painful to consider that the people doing the judging were mistreating me. Or I may have been too young to emotionally understand. So maybe I adopted their mindsets and saw myself as bad, so I could continue to see them as good?

But when situations happen, especially if they echo some judgement from my past, it's like a part of my brain needs to understand where those people are coming from so I can adapt? It's like it wants to adopt their realities to be safer, instead of aknowleging my own reality. And I keep repetitively thinking about it without trying, sometimes as if to figure out where they're coming from or sometimes to re-assert where I'm coming from, but never in a way that feels convincing tbh.

I hope this made sense, it's still confusing to me so it's hard to articulate.

[woodsgnome]

  I hope it's alright to share this safe hug with you, goblinchild.

This is a huge area to fully unpack, especially with the multiple past issues that can overlap with what's going on at present.

Taking care of your own feelings is hard enough, let alone trying to fully figure out what's been happening. It can indeed appear, it seems, in a variety of ways ranging from dissociation to a murky feeling that you've absorbed too much of the past hurts to confidently figure anything out. It seems helpful if you could get to the bottom of it, but as you say it's deep, like being frozen in an enormous iceberg. If only one could clear out the wavy images of what lies outside.

I'm not trying to sound hopeless; just recalling the many times when I've been in the same stuck place you describe. What doesn't make sense I want to analyze, so history won't repeat; so I'll react better, or won't seem so threatening to others, etc.

Whatever the case, it's primarily set off from all the fear we tend to accumulate and hold in that iceberg. At least that's how it's seemed for me.

It helped me just to ditch the reasons that seem logical, but still the doubts linger, and instead I can end up flailing about thinking there's an obvious answer somewhere, when maybe there isn't a definitive one to be had 

I think the only sure, if unsteady, antidote is to stay aware of treating oneself with the utmost care. It's not hopeless -- it's just madly confusing. Being vulnerable seems risky, but being so and then letting all the reasons float out of one's worry cloud might still be the best way to gain any headway and prevent these sorts of things from mushrooming into making the hurt worse than it has to be, due to self-guilt and self-blame at not finding the true answer.

One may have hints, might compare the hurts to past wrongs, but meanwhile living comfortably with oneself seems the most important priority. Self-care is even more needed, despite the lack or uncertainty. Despite it all, taking care of oneself is really all one can do. It's nothing to be judgemental about, it's already free and a part of your true inner self.

[Kizzie]

So maybe I adopted their mindsets and saw myself as bad, so I could continue to see them as good?

FWIW I think that's exactly what most of us had to do so IMO you are well on your way to figuring things out   

I'm in the same place right now; looking underneath the water to see the rest of the iceberg and it is a scary place b/c I was there when I was a child and it froze in place.

My T is (little by little) helping me to regulate the fear I felt then, to understand emotionally that I did what I absolutely had to to survive, and to retrain (free up?) my brain and nervous system to my own reality and self now if that makes sense.   

As Woodsgnome suggests, in all of this "utmost care" is the order of the day.