Most Common Problem: The Fear of Rejection

So one of the most common issues that people come to me with is a fear of being alone no matter what they come to me with, whether it’s something with work or relationships, it all filters down to fear of aloneness or fear of rejection. You may want to start with it’s kind of a more accessible place to begin. But ultimately, their fear of rejection is a fear of being alone. What’s really fascinating, when people come to me and you may have this in your own life, is that the very actions they’re taking in their life to protect them from rejection is actually creating rejection within themselves.

And this can be in the sense of let’s take a relationship as an example. Let’s say in a relationship, someone’s closed down from their partner and they’re doing it to protect themselves because ultimately they’re afraid that if they open up, that they’ll be rejected. If they’re known, they’ll be rejected. And so when they close down in this way — and it could be even in subtle ways — what happens is they create this perpetuation of aloneness and it actually can be something that can make a relationship unravel because the other person feels it and they feel that closeness as a rejection of themselves.

They may not identify it as the person rejecting feeling fearful of rejection within themselves. They will register it based on their own experience of fear, of rejection. And so they’ll take every action that you’re doing as an indication that you either don’t love them or that you don’t care or that you’re rejecting them. And so what happens is then a dynamic gets created. And that dynamic is this place where two people have real difficulty opening up to each other and anything can trigger them.

It’s easy to go into fighting — It’s easy to go into disconnection.

But let’s take the example of someone who’s single, who is afraid of rejection. And they may end up choosing partners that are not well-matched for them because they think that those people won’t reject them. But they end up creating this intensification within a relationship or a dynamic within a relationship where there’s this dynamic that doesn’t work because there’s not enough compatibility. And so they end up breaking up and being alone. The very thing that they don’t want experience or for example, if someone is like, ‘I don’t want to be rejected, I don’t want to have to deal with someone not liking me, someone learning about me and rejecting me or me opening my heart to someone and then they leave me’.

And so they won’t even try. They won’t even date or they’ll find everybody wrong or find some sort of excuse. They’re too busy with work or whatever else. So they don’t enter into relationships that they don’t have to worry about being rejected. And the problem with that is the fear of rejection is really the fear of being alone. And so now they’re creating a circumstance where the very thing they don’t want, which is to be alone, is that they actually are alone.

The worst thing about all of this, whenever there’s a fear of rejection, is that the mind is being reinforced with the belief that you are rejectable. And so as long as you play the game with the mind and allow it to have this kind of control over you, you’re basically agreeing with the mind that you’re rejectable. And so to break this trance, to break the illusion that you’re rejectable, even when something as scary as opening your heart to love, taking chances, going out and meeting other people, whether it’s romantic or social or even with business, could even be where you are in a situation where you’re in sales and you have a fear of rejection.

Doesn’t matter what it is, whatever it is, is to have the courage to say I’m stepping forward anyway. I’m putting myself out there anyway. And if someone doesn’t like me, that’s OK, because everyone has their preferences, just like you want to hang out with certain people. Other people want to hang out with certain people. And there are people for you. And the key is get yourself out there, connect with people as best as you can, because there are people for you.

There’s a community for you that will love you and respect you, find you interesting and loving. Find you. You know, to be someone who they absolutely want to be part of their life, but unless you put yourself out there, you won’t find these people. So choose to be lovable, choose to put yourself in the situation where you have the opportunity. To allow yourself to know that you are lovable.