Rejection Sensitivity

I find it funny that english sometimes uses german words. But "exfreund" actually implies a sexual relationship, just saying.

Interesting read.

It sort of states the obvious, but one of the hallmarks of today's world, is that everyone "just knows" stuff, without actually ever "coming out and saying it."

As far as rejection goes, I'm very fortunate, as I can take my toys and go home, if no one wants to play with me.

I worked for many years, for a corporation that had a culture of excellence. It could be grating, near-abusive, and frustrating, at times, but it did teach me to set and maintain a very high personal bar. I got rejected a lot, and it taught me to be fairly self-sufficient, irt self-evaluation.

I won't do it to other people, though. I won't establish any relationships that I don't intend to maintain, and, when I change the status of a relationship, I make it a point to communicate it to the other person. That's not always easy. I also try to make it a point not to project personal values onto others (also not easy).

Also, not every relationship needs to be a lover. I have perfectly good relationships with people that horrify me. I don't need to do anything more than chat with them, once a month or so, and we don't need to talk about anything that causes friction, so I just keep it superficial.

Of course, humans being what we are, the favor is seldom returned, and one of the things that I've learned to do, through many painful years of hard work, is have enough personal self-regard, that the opinions and maltreatment from others doesn't have damaging effects.

TL;DR: I make sure that I have a good relationship with myself, I establish a minimum bar of Honor and Integrity for myself, and my relationships with others have flourished, as a result.

I've learned that people don't respect people that don't respect themselves, so respecting myself is job one.

An interesting thing, for me, was looking for work, after leaving my job of 27 years.

I encountered ageism, which was quite a shock. I've never had to deal with rejection; simply based on my physical appearance (I've always actually been rather sought-after, because of my skills, and, I hate to admit, probably because I'm a white male). It helped me to understand what a lot of folks go through. When we "hear" about something, it doesn't have the same weight as when it actually happens to us.

Funny thing about ageism, is that we will all get older (the alternative isn't fun). We'll each get a turn at this oar.

The idea of cummulative rejection is interesting! I never thought about it that explicitly in that way. I think it's an idea that transcends social rejection and might apply to all rejection.

In my case, I have this with job interviews. Unfortunately, every 10 additional rejections is affecting my mental health. This is about after a threshold of 50 initial rejections, including being rejected in the resume round.

I wouldn't be surprised if many people experience this with job interviews. I think it's because, in a sense, everything that one has experienced in life suddenly may come together (in terms of values, beliefs, behaviors and so on).

If that what comes together is not a system that can work in any way shape or form, then people crash and can crash hard. Especially when one decides to "act out" their cummulative rejection. I've noticed that I sometimes happen to do that now as I'm noticing my patience is wearing thin on all facets of life and it sucks for everyone involved unfortunately.

It might be weird to say, but because of this I sometimes wonder, maybe I should become a bus driver or something "simple" [1] like that (pre-corona at least).

[1] I'm fairly sure that if I don't give a job like that my full attention, it isn't simple at all. I guess that some people see it as simple since there's less "IQ-ish reasoning" involved.

I agree. Was the “friendship” actually just someone they chatted with on Signal occasionally? That’s not really what I’d call a friend. It would barely class as an acquaintance. They also mention they interact with hundreds of people this way. I’m sorry but those aren’t friendships. Has modern life completely done away with actual friendships where you know each other fairly intimately and actually spend a good deal of time together? If you barely talk to someone’s online persona why should you even bat an eye when they ghost? You haven’t actually invested anything so you haven’t lost anything.

From how I understand the post, it's about the disconnect between human nature and modern relations (personal, romantic, professional, etc)

As humans we have a limit to how much rejection we can process in a healthy way. It varies from person to person, some can process things pretty quickly while others (like myself) quickly reach a breaking point

This becomes an issue, when (as the author points out), we try to rationalise people's emotional response away ("you're overreacting"). The author points out that rejection doesn't happen in a vacuum and the cumulative effect of these can have profound negative effect on people. This means that what might seem like a disproportionate emotional response to being rejected, in actuality is proportional to the cumulative build up of multiple rejections over time

Personal take: I agree with the author on the unhealthy nature of framing such emotional responses as a failure of the individual. This is especially true for the large part of the population who's neurodivergent

I myself have ADHD, and rejection sensitivity is something that I have to spend a lot of energy on, since I have to make sure I'm able to withstand a large emotional response, when I think I'm being rejected

The cumulative effect of a significant amount of rejection over the years combined with emotional dysregulation can result in me feeling actual physical pain because my emotional response is so intense

Advise like "you just need to not take it personal" is damaging, because it doesn't address the fact that feelings are out of our control - just like telling someone who's having an anxiety attack that "there's nothing to be afraid of" is missing the point of what is going on and is actually harmful to the person experiencing it

The post doesn't provide any solutions to this problem, but I think that acknowledging that this is an issue, might be a good start in any case