Rejected? Over it yet?
I was commissioned to write an article on coping with rejection, and I could only think of six words.
Get over it. We all do.
However, when you're paid by the word ... so I started my research. WOW. Big subject.
It still boiled down, all those thousands of words, to denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
Some comments I have seen on these blogs, I think acceptance is the hardest of the lot. Quite a few are still stuck on anger.
The trick seems to be to cry it out, rant a bit, make a doll and stick pins in it, burn it, rant a bit more, eat some ice-cream, and move on. Over-simplified? The past is the past, it can't be changed, and hugging the anger and pain is poisonous and destructive. Am I wrong? There are THOUSANDS of writers out there who seem to think it is a much bigger problem.
Comments (13)
I just don't understand why anyone would voluntarily hang on to that pain.
I would never show how much it hurts me...I will move on with my chin up. There were times when I cried...silent tears...all by myself but I got through it all in one piece, left all bad feelings behind and simply tried and try to be a happy and optimistic person cos I know many would have me
Like you said personal rejection by someone you loved deeply and they you at one time can be like going through a grieving process. It can depend how much time and emotion you invested in someone. It can take a long time to totally let go of hopes and dreams. But you are ultimately right, in order to move on and LIVE again we have to eventually let go of everything to do with them.
A difficult subject... But letting go is when we heal
Hope you have a great weekend Viv
Much better to accept what happened and put it down to experience and life and look to a better chapter as we turn the page. Some may just find it more exciting than what they had.
Sometimes it's not at all possible to get away from it and it's not a matter of choice.
Again I say it's animal and pretty much inevitable. In order to rise above or out of this dilemma one has to be very strong and determined to create one's own self worth.
Independence is a great healer but isolation can be very unhealthy.
Firstly, only talking about singles - not kids or work or any other rejection, only romantic.
Secondly, there's a lot of support in place for the other types of rejection, but next to none for romantic.
Rejection is easy to cope with. I simply write a story and murder her. She is dead and I had my revenge. Problem solved.
But a major rejection, such as that of a divorce (from the perspective of the dumpee more-so than the dumper) may invoke lifelong emotional scars that are not so easy to overcome and that may never be fully recovered from.
I think that it also is dependent on the number and frequency of the rejections that may also complicate subsequent coping mechanisms, and thus recovery strategies and abilities.
So I think it is difficult and perhaps unwise to try and write about rejection without distinguishing the various levels and frequency of such rejection in a person's life.
The Grief process that you describe (DABBA) also affects different people differently, and if the rejection (such as in a divorce) is sufficiently great, quite a few never get to the point of full acceptance and the relinquishing of underlying anger and perhaps depression.
JMO.