Rejection can happen at many times in your life, at a friendship, in love and, of course, after a job interview. Not to mention the search for a dorm room where you often have to prove to your roommates that you are "nice enough" to have the honor of renting with them in the apartment.
I have previously written a blog about dealing with rejection after a job application. In this blog I deal more with fear of rejection in a more personal context, namely rejection by friends or even (potential) lovers
Response to implicit and explicit rejection
Rejection and being ignored are two similar circumstances with the difference being that rejection is an active form and ignoring is an inactive form of rejection. Yet both have a different effect on the person being rejected.
In the case of active rejection, you often get responses that prevent you from being rejected again in the future. What often happens is that people isolate themselves socially and you are more agitated. After all, if you don't want to belong to someone you can't be rejected. Ultimately, this is the same thinking that Stalin had: No people, no problem. We all know the things Stalin did, so I think it's safe to say that this is not a healthy line of thinking.
In the process, you can also think more about things you did and shouldn't have done after an active rejection.
When rejection is more implicit you are often ignored. Research shows that you then actually feel more like you've failed socially which actually causes you to think about behaviors you should have performed. You also try to make more contacts. When ignored, however, you suffer less from agitation, but more from depressive feelings.
Implied and explicit rejection thus have different effects on the rejected person, but in both cases it is something that can cause anxiety and insecurity.
The origins of fear of rejection
In whatever way you have been rejected, ever having been rejected may have been a trigger for fear. To overcome the fear of rejection, it is important to identify the cause of the fear.
If you have ever been rejected, implicitly or explicitly, you can often clearly identify for yourself where the fear comes from. However, you may suffer from this fear even if you have never been rejected.
Research shows that people who fear rejection feel they experience less support socially than those without it. In doing so, they are also more susceptible to stressful situations.
Risks of fear of rejection
You would say that fear of rejection is no big deal, but unfortunately it can be. For example, research shows that young gay men are more likely to have unprotected sex when fear of rejection is present than when the fear is not. This is also a phenomenon that occurs in heterosexual relationships (or onenight stands).
So the fear of rejection can cause you to do things that are not at all in your best interest and, in some cases, can even make you sick. This study is about sex, but you can also, for example, want to be accepted so badly that you start trying drugs because the people you hang out with do too or ask you to join, because only then are you "cool."
Check your beliefs
As mentioned, people with a high fear of rejection may feel they have less support socially. It is wise to check this belief. With this, a hypnotist can help you if you find this difficult yourself.
For example, ask yourself the questions which people you can ask for help or who you can go to to talk something off your chest. There are probably more than 0. Just writing a list of people you can call can give you a sense of relief. Even if this is only family.
Write about the stressful situations
By keeping a journal and writing about your emotions in stressful situations, you can already reduce the fear of rejection. This is a good strategy to suffer less from the negative emotions that come with the fear of rejection. This is according to the study Written Emotional Expression and Emotional Well-Being: The Moderating Role of Fear of Rejection conducted in 2005.
Accept Yourself
Self-acceptance is very important to overcome the fear of rejection. If you accept yourself as you are, you are also more likely to feel that other people should accept you as you are. If that is not the case, it is they who are unlucky and not you, because you are just a great person.
With this, a hypnotist can help you improve self-esteem and self-confidence in social situations. So that when rejected, you can say it's their loss and not yours. This also makes you more yourself and more likely to be accepted by people you get along with even better than if you are not yourself just to be accepted.
For example, self-acceptance can be promoted with self-hypnosis. During self-hypnosis, suggestions can then be repeated so that these become your beliefs that you live by. This gives you less fear of rejection and therefore you are also less likely to do things that are not in your best interest.
For self-hypnosis, you first relax. You do this by first focusing on even breathing. You then breathe in as long as you breathe out. Next, you relax your muscles and then you turn on the mp3 with suggestions, or even better, you repeat the suggestions aloud to yourself. These can be, for example:
"I am good the way I am."
"If I don't actually want to do something, I don't do it."
"People prefer to deal with me when I am being myself," he says.
"There are always people I can turn to when I want to talk about something," he says.
These are just examples of suggestions, depending on your beliefs about yourself interacting with other people you may get other suggestions from a hypnotist.
Confront your fear
How bad is it really to be rejected? Does the world perish? Confronting your fear can also make being rejected less scary. A hypnotist can help you with this. For example, you might make a list of situations you find the most scary and the least scary. For example, you may find rejection for a job less scary than rejection after a fun first date.
By visualizing social situations, the hypnotist can help you apply techniques to stay calm and stay close to yourself. Then you can go down the list from less scary situations to the scarier ones where the fear has a greater impact on you. Experiencing rejection can also help you suffer less from the anxiety.
Before you know it, you'll be speed dating 😊.
Strengthen your self-confidence
Everyone knows someone, or perhaps you are one such person yourself, who completely changes themselves when they have a new partner. From clothing style to hobbies. This is very unfortunate, because being someone other than yourself is something you can't sustain for very long. Therefore, such a relationship is also difficult to maintain, unless both partners can handle (back) change well.
It is therefore important to improve your self-confidence and to let go of the belief that you must change completely to be accepted. If you don't know why you are doing this, for example, regression can help you figure out how this came about. Often events from your childhood may have created beliefs that work against you now as an adult. Because you are now in a completely different situation, regression can help you let go of those beliefs and face social actions with more confidence.
Visualize social interactions
By visualizing in advance how you want to behave during a social interaction, you are more likely to do so. This makes it more likely that you will remain yourself and, as a result, get people around you who accept you as you are from the start. Suppose you are meeting with a friend and he has invited other people. Then you can visualize in advance how you will join in with the fun, and also how you will stay true to yourself when people demand something of you that you do not want to do.
A nice example of how something can go along in a group setting is when you are having a bite to eat. If you want to watch your line at that very moment, you would prefer to order a salad. If everyone else then just orders a fries or something, you may become afraid that you are too out of line. By choosing that salad anyway, you can actually get a lot of admiration from people. Being out of place is really not a bad thing, as long as you are yourself.
If you find it difficult to visualize social interactions, a hypnotist can help you with this.
Want to learn more about hypnosis and how it can help with problems? Then come to the playshop or attend a Hypnosis Institute Netherlands event.
Sources:
http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2009-00255-010
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167204271556
https://search.proquest.com/openview/2a32e6d8dbda5df33cd68b984960bffb/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
