Ep28 Recovering from Rejection In Your Relationship - Dr. Dar Hawks

Rejection can feel like a heavy shadow looming over our relationships and self-esteem, but it doesn't have to be that way. 

In the latest episode of the Better Relationships podcast, Dr. Dar, known as the relationship healer, offers a compassionate exploration of rejection's many faces and its impact on our lives. 

From the pain of unrequited love to the frustration of job rejections, Dr. Dar provides actionable strategies to help listeners overcome the negative spiral of rejection and step into a space of self-empowerment and confidence. 

Discover how to turn rejection into a powerful catalyst for growth in episode 28.

Transcript

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Today I'm talking about overcoming rejection in your relationship. Many people have experienced rejection in their relationships, but it's not always easy to know exactly how to deal with it. Rejection can be very hard on your self esteem, self acceptance, emotional and nervous system, and just tanks your confidence. Some people may try to avoid the issue by withdrawing from the other person, while others may try to find out what they did wrong and try to fix it. There are also some people who'll try the revenge tactic to get back at the other person by intentionally making them feel rejected or trying to make them feel jealous. I tend to attract those people who want to know what they did wrong and try to fix it, while they also need the other party to work on themselves rather than deny anything is wrong or that they did anything to cause hurt feelings, much less admit they're engaging in rejection behaviors. People who want to know what they did wrong and try to fix it really do care so deeply about their relationships and people that they care about. Here are some examples of how rejection shows up in our lives Susan said her husband told her he's no longer and may never have been attracted to her. Jesse said that she had applied for 25 jobs and has heard nothing. She's also been to five interviews and again, crickets. Paul said his wife complains about the way he dresses even after he puts on the clothes that she bought for him. Dana was fired because she was the best salesperson every month and the manager did not want to upset the full time, long term staff. Pam's son applied to 20 colleges and received 20 rejection letters. Yep, they're called rejection letters. Christine said her mother was not supportive of her goals or successes and would either change the subject or just talk down to her and let her know that whatever she'd accomplished was no big deal. Anyone could do it. Karen found out that her boyfriend was cheating on her and lying about it after she saw him snuggling up to another woman at a cafe. Barry said the one word he remembers m his emotionally abusive parents say to him the most was no, loudly, Zane said. He initiates romance with his partner but gets swatted away, so he's given up on intimacy. Paul is finding he can be free to do whatever he wants, and he enjoys watching porn. He pays exorbitant amounts of money each month to satisfy his habit. His wife is upset that he won't be intimate with her. Joni asked for a raise last year and her manager said no. He said the same thing five years in a row. She doesn't understand why because she's a hard worker, supports her manager and her teammates, and is a conscientious, caring employee. George learned that the lady he was dating had a boyfriend all along and had been lying to him for over six months. A few others that show up as you're a teenager and growing up, one could be not being asked for a couple skate at the skating rink as a teen, or being dumped by your boyfriend, or even going to Baskin robbins and being told they're out of your favorite flavor. Then you ask for your second favorite and are told they're out of that, too. I feel like I've provided ample, blatant and subtle examples of how rejection shows up in our lives. Here's a tip for you. I suggest you write yours down as you recall them. As you remember them, create a couple of pages or separate a couple of pages in your journal or in your notebook and put, the heading of my rejection list. And as you remember them, as you have these feelings of being rejected, write those memories down. Doing that will give you freedom, healing, and assist you with shifting your relationship to rejection to a more self empowered acceptance space. You will be amazed at how many things come up for you to write down in just a week. The act of writing it down is the first step in releasing the energy and healing the stored pain associated with that memory. Given that I'm going to focus on romantic relationships today, I want you to know that everything I share does apply to rejection. In any relationship or situation, rejection is something we deal with every day. It's painful, it's hurtful, it's suffocating, it's damaging, it's depressing, it's disappointing, and it's traumatic. There is nothing worse as a caring, loving, compassionate human being to not be wanted, valued or needed. It slowly dims a light in our hearts and souls. It affects our mental, emotional and physical well being and our relationships going forward, even with ourselves. For some, it's debilitating to the point of not being able to function. Others throw themselves into work or caring for the kids and others keep trying to make themselves attractive and prove their worth to make them wanted. This all happens at work and in our personal relationships. Now please don't get mad at me. Now you may start to see rejection everywhere and examples of it and know that people around you have been hurt by rejection. Whether you realize it or not, it's time for you to have a relationship mindset shift about rejection so that you can heal and be healthy. Anytime someone says no to you, anytime someone dismisses you, or anytime you experience rejection, I am committed to you healing everything that looks like, feels like or is rejection to you. The thing is, in my experience of coaching couples, teams and individuals, their experience of rejection is usually directly connected to the first time they felt unwanted as a child. Because if you didn't feel that early in childhood, chances are you wouldn't really know what that is as you grow older and you'd be kind of neutral and indifferent to it if it were to happen. Being told no, not now or later are all things we heard as children and then made it mean that we were unwanted or rejected. To feel unwanted as a child is the most devastating thing to their psyche and we carry it forward into adulthood. That experience of being unwanted then gets stored as a memory in your cells. I'm unwanted. I suck, I'm not worthy. I can do better and be better. I, want to be wanted. I need to be wanted. And so on goes these thoughts. This memory then triggers the need to belong, the need to be accepted and loved in all areas of our lives. This is a very foundational, basic need. And yet it's the hardest to get satisfied and fulfilled because in many respects we depend on others to get that need met. It's almost like the person rejecting you or the situation rejecting you has a vice grip on you, making you hyper focused on doing things to be better or make them want you. It becomes intensely unbearable to not be wanted, valued or recognized by them. After all, you're a great person. You do all kinds of things to prove to them that you're wantable, lovable and worthy. Only m to find that everything you do to make them want you the way you want them to, the way you want them, just is not working. So what are you supposed to do? You're a kind, compassionate, generous person who naturally nurtures, cares for and helps others. It's not in your nature not to try to make things better, to try to give them some joy in their day, to do things for them and going way above and beyond. It's a lot to process and handle and manage, and it's embarrassing to talk with anyone about it because everyone thinks everyone loves you and that you have really great relationships. When you're out on vacation or having a meal with friends, you are loving towards each other. I believe that rejection is the root, at the root of what ails humanity today. So it's crucial and beneficial to reframe what Rejection is and how you will choose to allow it to impact you and your life going forward. When you heal. By shifting your relationship with rejection, you also create an energetic shift in yourself from a place of blame, shame, lame and same that you've named and claimed to a place of self empowerment, self esteem, self confidence, and self love. A place where you believe in yourself unwaveringly. A place where you put yourself high up on that pedestal, right next to the person you hold in high regard and higher than those you hold in lower regard. A, place where you put yourself first. A place where you matter. A place where you do not have to prove yourself. A place where you know that the person doing the rejecting is the one that's unhealed. A place where you can have compassion, even love, but no longer be in a space for them to mistreat you. A place where you decide to no longer allow anyone or anything that uses rejection tactics to affect you, impact you, change you, or diminish you in any shape or form. You see, rejection is a means to control, manipulate, and more importantly, keep you small and weak. Some do it intentionally, but most do it because they're unheard, healed, they're hurting, and they have unresolved issues with being loved, wanted, and valued, too. You don't have to look far to see examples of how rejection is propagated in popular culture. Take the reality show the bachelor, for example. The show is predicated on young women parading around, proving their worth to the bachelor, all the while hoping, waiting, raising their game, and intensely competing with each other so that he chooses her and then everyone else is rejected. I'm a big fan of words, their meaning and origination and the energy in the word. So I want to share a little bit about the meaning of the word reject or rejection and how it originated. here are some definitions. Objects or parts rejected from a collection. The act of throwing off or away. Refusal to accept or grant casting off. Refuse to accept something. An immunological response that refuses to accept substances or organisms that are recognized as foreign. Here's the history of the word that I always find interesting. In the early 15th century, rejection meant to set aside or block from inheritance. Later in the 15th century, it shifted to refusing to acquiesce or submit to. The origin of the word is from the old french word rejecte, and is directly from Latin reject us or rejectare. And it meant, at that point in time to throw away castaway, to vomit or to throw back. By the 1530s, it shifted to mean throw away as undesirable or useless, or refused to take for some purpose. Now pay attention to this one. In the 1560s to the 1580s, it came to mean to repel or rebuff someone who makes advances of any kind, especially of a woman refusing a man as a lover or husband. But here's the thing. It's the woman doing the rejecting at that point in time. By the 1660s, it shifted to refusing something offered. In 1893, it shifted to mean, a person considered low quality and worthless. In 1925, it was added from use in the militaries in reference to men unsuitable for service. Then in 1953, the medical sense of the definition was added to show an immune response to a transplanted organ. Also in the 19th century, it could also mean excrement. I especially love that last one, don't you? It feels like excrement and our thoughts become like excrement. That made me smile a bit. I hope it made you smirk too. If you've surmised from the definitions I just shared that humans start with a root definition, usually derived from Latin, and then update or change it with the times, you are so right. Consequently, you may as well make up a meaning that serves you in the best, most healthy way possible. Right? Here are my ideas on reframing the meaning of rejection. First, reframing is the process of transforming what has happened to you into positive, constructive self thoughts, and thoughts about the occasion or situation. Tied to this is also transforming your thoughts about who you are into self accepting and loving thoughts and things that you've learned. It's not about ignoring or avoiding the bad experiences in your life, it's more about managing your reaction to them and about moving forward by examining things in a purely factual, logical manner, removing the feeling and the emotion of it, which, when tied to the experience and the memory, is way more intense. When you look at it logically, you'll notice how much meaning, interpretation and negative thinking that gets made up and put into it. Getting your thoughts and feelings out of your head and written down will help you bring some objectivity to it. I've prepared a chart and some worksheets to help you map out your thoughts feelings and facts of your experiences of rejection, send me an email to supportlove@drdar.com. That's supportlove at ah, drdar.com. And put rejection worksheets in the subject line. I'll respond and send them to you right away. Back to the reframing process. Rejection is about freedom of choice. I know that's hard to even imagine right now, but rejection is about freedom to choose and of choice. Stay with me here. I'll explain it. The other person is making a choice to reject. Or perhaps you're making a choice to reject yourself. And you too are making a choice even in the midst of reacting to the act of having been rejected. When you feel rejected, what choices are you making? Perhaps it's to feel bad. Perhaps it's to prove your worth. Perhaps it's to, become a better person. Perhaps it's to be sad and be depressed. That's a beneficial and crucial question for you to sit with. When you feel rejected, what choices are you making? Another way to ask yourself this question is, what am I choosing in this moment as I am processing my thoughts or the feeling of being rejected? Most of my clients say I don't know right away. Then they'll lay all the blame and anger on the other person. But after some back and forth dialogue with me, they say I'm choosing to be hurt with this, when I could be choosing to think about it factually. When I do that, I see that what happened was less about me and more about them and their issue. I can choose to learn from this experience and come away from it healed, healthy, and whole. Here are some additional things you can do to support yourself around feeling and being rejected. Pay attention to how rejection in the past redirected you to something better for you later on, or protected you in some way. It's easier to see this after the fact, but you'll be able to embrace the redirection from rejection as a gift going forward, so that when rejection happens in the future, you won't be harshly impacted by it because you will know something better than this is on its way. Or you are being helped to see things clearly or move on from something that isn't ideal for you right now. Here are some steps you can take to be healthy, happy, and whole when you're faced with rejection going forward. Number one, stop reading and watching anything that has rejection messaging in it, like the Bachelor show example I shared with you. Number two, use the charts and worksheets I've got for you to get your thoughts and feelings onto paper. Get them out of your head where your analysis can be chaotic and create a worse emotional storm within you. Email me at supportlove@drdar.com with rejection worksheets in the subject line and I will send them to you. Writing it all down will help you see things more logically. It'll give your mental and emotional system a break. You'll be telling your mental and emotional system it's all written down now so you can rest. This really works. Step three, follow me on Instagram at drdarhawks for more tips like this. And step four, I invite you to take the relationship languages quiz at, relationshiplanguages.com to better understand your priorities and requirements and needs and motivations in your relationships. Because when you reorient what's happening in your life and your relationships to your specific relationship language, your life and relationships will change. You'll have more self confidence, your esteem self esteem will be higher, and you'll start to attract more people who care for you and will nurture you. Lastly, I want you to know that I am here for you to be of service and help you be the best you can be for yourself and in your relationships. Thank you for giving me the gift of your time and listening. Can'T wait to chat with you next time.