I am the worst employee.

No man will ever love me.

I’m so stupid.

I deserved to get fired.

We’ve all echoed downer declarations like this at some point in our lives. They are the very real reactions from anyone who has faced rejection. Amidst stratospheric unemployment rates, even the most glass-half-full optimists may find their confidence drying up like dust.

Being fired from a job, turned down by a company (or 10 of them), going through a bad break-up, or being rejected by your first-choice college is simply part of life. It stings, makes us question ourselves, sometimes teaches us and toughens us.  But, eventually, after the new job, the stronger marriage, the hard-earned graduate degree, that rejection is just a passing scene in the rear-view mirror.

But, for those who are overly sensitive to rejection, these experiences can leave a lasting impression, so much so, that all encounters are spun negatively. Rejection becomes a pair of dark, distorted lenses through which all life is viewed.

While most of us can just adapt to rejection and take it in stride, others are deeply affected by even the slightest snub – real or imagined. A handshake not firmly returned, an email unanswered, an elevator door not held open, exclusionary conversation among the other dinner guests all may feel like emotional deportation to a person hypersensitive to rejection.

To Linda Stafford, PhD, the issue comes down not so much to the rejection itself, but how the person chooses to interpret the experience of being rejected. Her published study, “Interpersonal Rejection Sensitivity: Toward Exploration of a Construct,” in Issues in Mental Health Nursing explores the concept of the hypersensitive person’s reaction to rejection.

“Everyone gets rejected – one way or another, at some time or another,” says Stafford, an assistant professor of nursing at The University of Texas School of Nursing at Houston. “Some people are just more sensitive than others.”

Childhood messages live on

The way we see ourselves – positively or negatively – can be traced back to our childhoods and may be related to the way our parents or caregivers raised us.

“Our sense of self or self-concept certainly is very much related to early experiences and continued experiences through growth and development,” Stafford says. “When you think back on some of your earliest memories of your parents, other adults, and your peers saying positive things about you, those became part of what’s called a self system. You learned to expect that it’s not impossible for positive things to occur in your life.” However, she continues, “if you were given predominantly negative messages – ‘bad girl’ or ‘bad boy’ – those can follow you through life.”

Any message delivered consistently enough, often enough, can become a pattern, constructive or destructive. Daily rejection from today's challenged workforce certainly can send a powerful message that one is unworthy of being part of the 92 percent of the “currently employed.”

A poor or strong self-image is, in part, built by message patterns that children receive—and reverberate into adulthood. Stafford explains that becoming overly sensitive to rejection is likely caused by a continuous pattern of negative experiences.

“Chances are, one incident is not going to change one’s whole self concept,” she says. “It’s more likely to be cumulative experiences through the years that lead a person to misinterpret all negative events as being validation of their own lack of self worth,” Stafford says. The negative interpretations morph into proof that they are undesirable “and no one will want to be around them in an intimate, social, or occupational relationship.”

A domino affect eventually flattens the hypersensitive person, corrodes their relationships or reinforces the very fears of rejection that plague them. In effect, as Stafford describes in her paper, “Such cognitions tend to confirm the reality of the feared rejection by others, often referred to as a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Reframing the picture

“Rejection is an inevitable part of life, but it’s how we interpret these events mentally and how we respond to them that makes a big difference,” Stafford continues. “A person who already has a good sense of self would frame it very differently.”

Take the software engineering company that downsized 20 percent of its employees to cut costs. “One person will take it as, ‘This had nothing to do with my productivity as a worker. It was a corporate decision, and I will assertively seek out a new job,’” she says. “Whereas, the hypersensitive person will think, ‘This is just one more example of how inadequate I am. If I had really been as good as I should be, I wouldn’t have been one of the people laid off.’”

See? I knew you’d leave...

People’s immediate reactions to dealing with rejection can vary from sadness and depression to isolation and even aggression. “Some people will feel guilty and ashamed, and others will respond in very angry and negative ways,” she says. “There are a lot of paths a person can take.”

Further fear of being rejected may lead to forming types of coping mechanisms, like avoiding meeting new people or limiting social interactions to situations where they feel most comfortable. “The individual creates barriers to forming and maintaining relationships, which may be conveyed to others through avoiding new experiences, such as always having an excuse for not attending a social function,” Stafford says. “People who are avoidant very much want a relationship or they want to be engaged with people, but the thought of being rejected is so painful that they will really isolate themselves.”

Not getting invited to a friend’s party, being overlooked for that promotion, or never receiving the promised “I’ll call you” phone call can lead anyone to feel unwanted, at least temporarily. However, for the person who is hypersensitive to rejection, experiences like these seem to snowball. A person who expects rejection is likely to get it. Stafford writes, “Responses of family, friends and intimates that were initially supportive to the individual can change to frustration and detachment,” which eventually emotionally drains and distances these loved ones from the hypersensitive person.

“These individuals not only come to expect rejection but are hypervigilant to the slightest implication that they are less than adequate in some aspect of work performance or social skills, as well as in intimate relationships,” Stafford says. “It’s almost as though they are looking for evidence that they are not regarded as well as their peers.”

Sensitivity to rejection operates on a continuum from mild forms of anxiety to individuals who live with the fear of being rejected. For those with intense sensitivity to rejection, Stafford says help can be found through therapy where the person can learn more effective ways to think about rejection.

Sometimes, a simple reality check is in order. Economic downturns are cyclical. Like storm season, they are terrible, but temporary. And most assuredly, impersonal.

Sometimes, a simple gratitude check can shift perception. When we sit down with paper and pen, listing all things great and small on a ledger, rejection actually may end up being in the single digits compared to the number of times there was triumph.

Through awareness and support, we as loved ones, can offer help, too. “People who experience this relatively mildly, you would hope that others will see this as a call to be supportive and sensitive,” she says. “If you know someone who you feel is interpreting everything in a very rigid, good/bad, black/white, manner, challenge them on that. If someone is interpreting her life very negatively, challenge the person to reframe her thoughts – not only about herself but how she interprets events with other people and all those things we have to deal with.”

 

Last Updated: 3-25-2009

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