5 keys to facing rejection in a healthy way

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Rejection is one of the most universal monsters of social life. Now, it is practically inevitable that we will sometimes encounter it: we are not croquettes that everyone will like. Therefore, we want to give you some tools to minimize the emotional consequences.

Have you ever had pumpkins? Have you felt rejected or unrequited by someone you liked, were interested in, or were in love with? How to deal with rejection in a healthy way?

When someone rejects us (it can also be a family member, a friend, a group of people, etc.), what is at stake is our self-esteem and our sense of dignity. But there is more behind it.

Thus, in this article we want to reflect on how rejection affects us on an emotional level and propose some ideas to deal with it in a healthy way.

How rejection affects us emotionally

We could talk about rejection as a punishment, as a universally unpleasant event. We are sociable beings, we need to relate and feel validated and recognized by others; we want to feel reciprocated. Sometimes we even need, or seek, the admiration of others.

If we add to this that the rejection comes from a person we would like to have around, the emotional consequences intensify. Thus, rejection causes our self-esteem to suffer, we can feel it as a personal attack.

“If there is someone we love, whom we admire, a person we are attracted to or a person we want to become friends with and we feel that there is no correspondence, the blow to self-esteem has to exist.”

-Luis Muinho-

Also, keep in mind that “a rejection is the story of all rejections”; That is, it is likely that “that” rejection adds its emotional weight to that of other previous rejections. The good news is that we have resources that can help us deal with rejection in a slightly healthier way, and that will prevent this very common event from affecting us in a non-adaptive (or excessive) way.

Feeling rejected affects our self-esteem.

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Keys to facing rejection in a healthy way

How to deal with rejection in a healthy way? Looking for the middle ground between validating what we feel, allowing it, and avoiding dramatization.

The core idea of the way of coping that we propose is that rejection says nothing about you; just that the other does not feel what he has to feel or that he is looking for something else. What else can be good for us to work on this acceptance?

1. Work on your self-esteem

Is a reality. If our self-esteem is “good”, it has been worked on, and we feel good about ourselves, the damage that rejection can do to us will be less. They can bother us, make us uncomfortable, disappoint us, yes, and it is legal. But they will never “KO” us emotionally or make us believe that we are worthless.

Our self-esteem influences how we feel about ourselves and how we interpret what happens around us. A self-esteem that, in turn, is influenced by the messages we receive, but also by other variables over which we have more control, such as the way we manage those messages we receive.

And remember that we need to love ourselves to be happy, not for “that” person to love us no matter what (that should always be an “extra”).
Some ideas that can work well for us when it comes to improving our self-esteem are the following:

Self-reinforcement: give ourselves small “prizes” for those things we do well. Promote self-knowledge: spend time alone, search hobbiesget out of the comfort zone, discover what we like…Take care of our internal dialogue: Treat ourselves well and educate our thinking so that it is healthy. Take care of our emotional health (ask for psychological help if we need it).Recognize our strengths and accept our weaknesseslike a perfect puzzle. Surround ourselves with people who treat us well and make us feel good (stay away from toxic relationships).

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2. Recognize your strengths

You have a lot of strengths and strong points, even if you have been rejected (one thing will never take away the other). But it is important that you discover them and identify with them.

Good self-esteem depends on healthy self-knowledge of oneself; That is, knowing that there are things that we are extremely good at and others that we are not so good at, and that absolutely nothing happens.

We don’t have to be good at everything to feel good about ourselves and to be tremendously valuable.

3. Don’t think about it so much: it’s time to accept

Sometimes we want to please people who we will never please, and that is absurd. Love, attraction and feeling They must be things that happen naturally.

Flow, don’t worry about pleasing someone and avoid dwelling on the subject. Feel the emotion, let it hurt for as long as you need, yes, but also work on accepting that rejection.

4. Apologize

Another idea on how to deal with rejection in a healthy way is to take the blame off yourself. Nobody is to blame for anything here; There are simply people who will like certain things about us, others who we will fall in love with without doing anything and others that will not pay any attention to us.

And it’s normal and okay. You haven’t done anything wrong to explain the fact that you were rejected.

Accepting that we can’t please everyone is key to dealing with rejection.

5. Avoid personalizing or being so referential

And finally, remember that a rejection doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. This rejection is not explained by something personal, the causes have nothing to do with us; Sometimes there is no “logical” explanation.