Apart from the daily struggles and the social problems that life throws at us, we are bound to handle many things in life. Among them all, relationships take a major part. Handling relationships and various expressions that involve both positive and negative emotions like praising, excusing, contemplating, condemning, accepting, rejecting, criticizing, cornering, victimizing etc. are all conveniently knitted in the fabric of family that we need to tackle. Be it a husband or wife, but facing some strong criticisms and rejections on the face from the spouse or our potential someone is something terrible to bear.
While our answer may trigger some arguments, our silence could intensify the hostility. Though the sense of rejection is not so strong sometimes, it certainly affects us. It is always recommended to meet a relationship counselor either online or offline for some relationship counseling if you are unable to handle those discrepancies in our relationships on your own.
How to handle Rejection?
Though we are friendly and soft spoken, we might have to take that bitter taste of rejection in our lives. So, why to call it bitter or sweet before we actually know about it? In fact, rejection is just an opinion of someone that opposes our proposal. This is just their opinion, as we have ours. Some people cannot take rejection as others because they treat rejection personally as if they as a person are being rejected. In fact, others must have rejected the idea or the plan proposed. But, when the thought of rejection is reflected on the person or personality, it hurts badly. Any person can feel better if the meaning of the rejection is understood.
One response to perceived rejection by others is to emphasize the aspect of one’s identity that differentiates the self from those rejecting us. To create a self-perception as a rebel one can take on a feature that differentiates members of one’s peer group from the mainstream. This is commonly seen
when group opinions are considered. The groups that face rejection become strong as a group and voice their opposition as strong as they could. This strengthens the group unity but can increase the enmity towards the group that rejected the idea. But the advantage of such situation is that, no one gets as emotionally hurt as when focused individually.
Science of relationships
Every person has emotional attachments. But that attachment styles varies from person to person. Our attachment styles with people exert strong effects on our thinking about others and our relationships with them. Such factors influence important aspects of our behavior on how close we feel with them and reveal our innermost thoughts and share our feelings with them.
These attachment styles can influence the functioning of our brain. When an individual has greater attachments to a person, they show more activation in the parts of brain that are linked to emotion. When they think about any negative outcomes in the relationships such as conflict, breakup or death of their partner, they face the fear of rejection and abandonment due to these links to emotional part of the brain.
What Rejections can do to us?
This explains why we get hurt when our closed ones reject our proposals. We usually get disturbed to be away from our loved ones, emotionally. Though physical distance doesn’t bother much, emotional distances disturb our peace of mind to the core. Rejections can question our emotional relationships when perceived personally. Such perceptions can disturb our mental peace. When we are already under such distress, we are sure to take rejections personally. If emotional distress is followed by rejection, it might lead to aggression. Being rejected and often excluded by others could lead to even more exclusion and that might turn into a kind of self-perpetuating negative cycle.
Rejection in some people initiates hostile cognitive mindset. This mindset activates cognitive structures in our minds that lead us to perceive ambiguous or neutral actions by others as hostile in nature, and to
perceive aggression as common in social interactions and as an appropriate kind of reaction. It is this argument that makes people feel that it is their right to feel aggressive when rejected. Social rejections when followed by hostility might result in aggression that can sometimes change the personality of the person rejected.
This is dangerous both to the person and to the society. Some people experience jealousy when they face rejection in front of others. Jealousy is experienced because anticipated or actual social rejection threatens our self-esteem. Based on the differences in interpersonal behavior, rejection could also result in loneliness. Unable to mingle with others and purposeful social withdrawn in the fear of facing rejection, might bring loneliness.
According to “excitation transfer theory” the arousal produced in one situation can persist and intensify emotional reactions occurring in later situations. In the same way, rejections faced in childhood might disturb a person so emotionally that he stops expressing himself in the fear of being rejected and might become an introvert as he grow up. Are you struggling to face rejections in your relationship? Is your relationship under crisis? Our mental health experts might help you in this regard. Wellness hub has a team of experienced professionals who are friendly, empathetic and non-judgmental. Log on to Wellness hub and book an appointment, today.