Dealing With Social Rejection
Do you remember your old school days when you were picked last for school’s sports team? Or when you were not asked for new year party. Or when teachers in the class didn’t look at you while teaching. Or you went to a party but people didn’t show interest in you. Or you asked your friend to go out but they refused. How did it feel in those situations?
It feels bad, rejected, ignored, right? These are rejections we experience every day.
We also do face many big rejections which hurt for a longer period of time like rejected by your lover or rejected for a job or rejected by family. All comes in the definition of rejection or to be precise social rejection. It hurts us every time, and sometimes very badly.
Is the pain of rejection a real pain?
When we say pain, it means physical pain like pain which comes from physical injury. But, what about social rejection? Is it anything similar to physical pain or it is just a metaphor of pain.
For a long time, scientist all over the world thought that rejection or social pain was not a real pain like a physical pain, but things have changed since last decade. Scientists came out with new extraordinary findings which show that social pain and physical pain both are same as far as the brain is concerned. Let’s see how physical pain and brain works.
If there is any physical pain in the body, one neuron in the brain immediately sends a pain signal to the other neuron and which gives us the feeling of pain. At the same time, the brain also releases opioids in the space between the two neurons just to minimize the effect of pain. So people whose brains are capable of releasing more opioids will experience less pain than those people whose brain release lesser opioids. That’s why we see we all have different capabilities to tolerate physical pain.
A few years ago an experiment was done between 3 people, and it was found that when they experienced a sense of rejection then the same region of the brain got activated which gets activated due to physical pain. When they faced rejection same neuron released pain signal to other neuron and to minimize that pain brain released opioids in the space between those neurons.
Psychologists are convinced that physical pain and social pain both are real and performed by the same brain part and in the same way. We might experience different flavor but both are real. In fact, we can’t differentiate between a physical and social pain. People with depression, anxiety are not capable of releasing enough opioids, and, hence, they experience more intense feeling of rejection than a normal person.
This mindblowing discovery gave much more opportunities to deal with the social pain and rejection. Psychologist now started giving same medicine for social rejection which they prescribe for a physical injury.
As we have the root of social pain in the brain, we have more options to deal with social pain and I will try to give a different way to deal with it and a few experiments done by me.
Is social rejection evolutionary?
If we want to find out the ways to deal with the social pain then we have to look into our brain and their evolutionary process. We mammals are born incapable, immature and an infant mammal can’t feed him/her and we need our caregiver to take care of ourselves so that we can survive. A baby needs her mother to feed her, to protect her. Our evolutionary process tells that we are given social pain so that we can survive.
Imagine if we did not experience social pain, then what would happen to us? We will simply die.
It is the social pain which makes a baby cry when he or she is separated from their caregiver. The same brain will be activated when baby feels rejected from their caregiver and make them cry to seek attention from their caregiver. Moreover, it is the same social pain which forces caregiver to stay close with the child. This social pain makes us possible to survive. Both physical and social pain are real and they have the same purpose of keeping us alive.
10 days 100 Rejection
Everything looks perfect now, and I am convinced that social rejection is necessary and it has been given to us with the best intentions. Then, why does social rejection make our life miserable every day?
Fear of rejection often stops us from doing anything or this is the rejection which hurts us every time. To find out the answers, I started reading books of the various neuroscientist. Then, I found one Chinese-American Entrepreneur Jia Jiang’s blog, his life was also miserable because of rejections, pain, and fear of rejection. He did something different to find out the answers, it was 100 days 100 rejections test. He started inviting rejections for the next 100 days. Motivated by him, I did the same experiment but in 10 days.
I decided to face rejections. I have understood that pain of rejection is a real pain and it is generated by our brain. I have also understood that the one who is able to release more opioids during a rejection will experience lesser pain. Then my job was to master my brain in such a way that every time I face a rejection, it will start releasing enough opioids to reduce the pain of rejection. It is same as immunity system of our body. A little background of my brain made my job easier.
I started inviting rejections, sometimes small ones, sometimes big ones. Every day I kept a target of getting more than 10 rejections and the goal was simple, it was to release more and more opioids in every next rejection.
I did things like, I asked one of my senior to lend me his brand new car and telling him that I am a learner. He refused and I tried to convince him but he still didn’t agree.
I proposed someone and unfortunately, I got rejected. It felt very bad, but in my mind, I was satisfied that the more pain of rejection I will feel, the more my brain will try to release opioids to damage that pain. There are other many experiments also and total 100 experiments in 10 days. You will be surprised that after a few experiments I didn’t feel that much bad. It is like I started getting saturated with it. I programmed my brain to release sufficient opioids. Fear of rejection seemed less fearful. I started looking at rejections as an opportunity. My perception about rejection changed. Rejection does not hurt me the way it used to 10 days ago. Everything was possible just because I started to face rejection.
Psychological facts about Rejection
In those 10 days, I learned more about rejection, my perception about rejection changed. I realized that rejection tells less about me but it tells more about the person who is rejecting us. But, the problem is that we take every rejection personally. When I asked for the car from my senior, his rejection told me about his insecurity about his car and his deep attachment to that car. It implied nothing about me. When I proposed that girl, It told more about her fear of being cheated another time, it implied nothing about me. I asked one of my close friends to go out with me for new year party but he refused. It told more about his social phobia, his social fear of being judged by other people, it implied nothing about me.
First of all, 99% of the time, rejection tells more about the person who is rejecting us. If 1% of the time it tells anything about us then it is giving us the opportunity to be a better person, for personal growth. It shows us where we must change to ourselves.
Sadly, we consider rejection as an indicator of our lack of worthiness, value and the moment we feel rejected we feel that we are rejected because we are unworthy.
This mindset should change. We must change our perception about rejection because the fact is different. The perception change will happen only when we will start facing rejections.
Can we numb Rejection?
As physical pain and rejection both are real and they are same for our brain. Then if we can numb our physical pain then we can also numb our social pain. The more we will become resilient to physical pain the more we will become resilient to social rejection. We can numb physical pain by social pain and social pain by becoming resilient to physical pain.
Conclusion
We mammals are incapable and we can’t do anything alone. You can’t build a house alone nor you can’t build a rocket alone. We need other human beings to survive. We, humans, are a social being and we are meant to be connected. We are happy when we are connected with other people and we will die when we are alone.
To make this world running, our brain is fitted with an organ which causes us physical as well as social pain in the same way. Without experiencing pain we will simply die.
The more we are connected with other people the more we are happy. We can change our perception of rejection and the way we experience it.
