Rejection reflection

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Rejection hits me hard. 

To be more precise: whenever I feel cast out, misunderstood, ignored, or just profoundly incorrect, my body has a physiological reaction. It's basically a fight-flight-freeze-fawn reaction that I am unable to stop.

It's not like I think I'm perfect, or that everyone will accept me for who I am. Expectations don't always align with reality, and making mistakes is part of life. Logically, I know these things. That doesn't make the response any less palpable.

I recently discovered that rejection sensitivity is the psychological term for this phenomenon. It can be a symptom related to a number of other issues, and particularly strong cases it's called rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD). 

Though I don't have any kind of diagnosis around it, naming the condition has brought a lot of clarity for me. When I started reflecting on it, I realized how frequently rejection sensitivity has influenced the course of my life. 

Rejected by authorities...

Me being sensitive to rejection seems almost inevitable, given my demeanor as a child. 

Teachers loved me because I was intelligent and well behaved. Other students liked me (even the bullies---though they still bullied me) because I was helpful and empathetic. Good behavior and high achievement became the established norm pretty early on. I was the stereotypical shy gifted kid, blowing past all the metrics in my elementary school years: 99th percentile, 12th-grade reading level, perfect attendance... It pretty much became my identity.

The flipside was that every mistake felt like a personal failure. 

Once in Kindergarten, I missed three (3) problems on a math worksheet. It was the worst grade I'd gotten up to that point, and I was devastated. I burst into tears and told my mom there must be some mistake. I was great at math. There was simply no way this paper was mine! 

An episode like that would leave me inconsolable for days, even weeks. Those frustrated, embarrassed tears were a frequent occurrence throughout my childhood. It didn't help that I was stubborn as hell and always had a rational explanation for my failures. 

I traumatized my Kindergarten teacher by peeing my pants once during recess and then refusing the backup sweatpants they offered. The thing is, it legitimately wasn't my fault. One of the supervisors refused to allow anyone to go inside to use the bathroom during recess. So I insisted that the school faculty and staff face the consequences of her actions. Nobody knew quite what to do with a six-year-old participating in principled rebellion.

I should have walked away feeling proud that I'd stood my ground. Instead it seemed like everyone was taking the side of a notoriously unkind adult instead of trying to understand my position. My mom eventually convinced me to accept the donor pants. I felt defeated, dejected. I still stand by my actions. 

In third grade I cried the first (maybe only?) time I "got my green card pulled" for talking too loudly in class during a group activity. It was the first time I'd been in trouble in that class. People tried to console me, but it felt more like pouring salt in my emotional wound. To her credit, my teacher defended my reaction. "If you were a model student and you got in trouble for the first time, how would you feel?"

In sixth grade, I burst into tears during gym class because I was called "out" in a game unfairly. They'd yelled for "everyone in a black shirt" to run, and my shirt was clearly a (very) dark green. Some kids even agreed with me, but it didn't matter. I didn't even care about the game; I just hated the feeling of a teacher invalidating my viewpoint.

It was even worse having something taken away that I felt I'd earned. Like in eighth grade, when I got an A- in spelling because the teacher had lost my (completed) homework. No rational argument or make-up task would convince the teacher to change it to an A or to allow some kind of makeup work, despite me getting perfect scores otherwise and winning the district spelling bee. 

I knew I'd turned in and aced every assignment. So in this case the exact point of failure was more difficult to pin down. Had my nervousness been mistaken for deception? Was the teacher simply being prideful? Was I somehow truly in the wrong, and just delusional for thinking otherwise?

That A- disqualified me from being a middle school valedictorian. The feeling of helplessness still lingers to this day. I concluded that the education system was not designed for someone like me. 

This attitude was only reinforced over time. In high school I was rejected from the National Honors Society for what was essentially a paperwork issue. My freshman year, I skipped half a day of school and was punished with a Saturday detention. I applied for NHS my junior year, neglecting to mention that detention, but ended up deciding not to join at that time. When I re-applied my senior year, I included it. Big mistake.

After completing 30 hours of community service on behalf of the organization, participating in a fundraiser, and completing all the paperwork to apply, I was informed that a board needed to review some discrepancies in my application. Eventually I was called to defend my position to a roundtable of familiar teachers and counselors. 

I told them the truth: I'd left the incident off my junior-year paperwork because I was filling it out myself and it didn't seem significant at the time. Senior year, a counselor explicitly told me I should include any disciplinary measures I'd incurred, lest I be accused later of hiding something. I assured the board I was not trying to hide anything or manipulate any system; I was changing my approach because of advice I'd received. They asked a few surface-level questions about why I'd skipped school in the first place. I explained that I was trying to help a friend through a tough time and admitted that I could have handled the situation better.

Regardless, the board rejected my application. Not because I'd skipped, but because I'd failed to disclose it in my first application. What really stung was that the people sitting at that table knew me. I was a model student and citizen. That one Saturday detention was the only disciplinary measure I'd incurred in my high school career. Yet for some reason ten or more of my teachers, counselors, and mentors had deemed me unworthy, derailing my college application process.

In the long term, it shattered my trust in any authority and left me deeply cynical. What other lesson could I possibly take away?

Rejected by my peers...

The qualities that made me generally likeable also made me a target for bullying and exploitation. I was too kind not to help and too passive to set boundaries. Often I became an unwitting conspirator or confidant, which resulted in me trying to carry around everyone else's baggage along with (or perhaps instead of) my own. People would confide in me like I was their therapist, then ask me to finish their homework for them.

I was happy to oblige because it made me more popular at school. 

In high school I had a falling out with my best friend. He had made some comments that offended some of our mutual friends, including my girlfriend at the time. Nobody was willing to broach the subject, and I was the most "neutral" person involved, so I confronted him one day hoping for some kind of apology. He immediately stopped talking to me because of it. 

We didn't speak for an entire summer. It was the most devastating social castigation I'd experienced up to that time. I cried a lot in those three months, but rarely in front of anyone else. By that time I'd learned that a boy openly weeping would just invite further rejection. 

And it happened because I was trying to defend other people's sensibilities. 

It's difficult to describe the mindset that takes over in these situations. I'm not sure I'd call it imposter syndrome. I'm confident in my skills and talents. But most of the time, I can't bring myself to believe or assert that I'm better than others. Especially when I get negative feedback. 

Or, worse, no feedback at all.

As a freshman in college, I entered an American Idol-style competition at my school. I'd written a heartfelt song that several dorm-mates said they enjoyed, and I was ready to try it on a larger audience. 

The day of the event, I was in the zone. Watching the other competitors, I felt confident that I was a contender. The audience (several cafeteria tables of college students) cheered receptively at the performances. Most of the judges' comments were positive, with a few kindly phrased criticisms sprinkled in. My performance was spot-on, and I was ready for at least a lukewarm reception. 

Instead, I got nothing. No applause, no comments. Just blank stares. One judge broke the awkward silence: "Well, all right then. Thank you for that." I hesitantly stepped off the stage, still hoping for a delayed reaction of some kind. 

It never came. I was baffled, then devastated. 

Don't get me wrong; I've played and enjoyed shows for single-digit audiences. It's a bit of a blow to my ego when people don't want to listen, but I try not to take it personally. Even at that point I'd tried my hand at busking, and most of my shows were for people out for a drink or a shopping trip; the music was just happenstance for them. I considered it a bonus if a few people nodded their heads or threw a tip my way. 

This felt different. Everyone was there specifically to watch and judge this performance, and they gave me nothing. Like what they'd just witnessed was so strange as to be outside their ability to judge. I felt like an alien. 

To be honest, I felt that way almost all the time when I was at SLU. Every day brought all new reminders that I was not wealthy, or virtuous, or normal enough to be there. It's one major reason I wouldn't have stayed past the first year, even if we could have afforded it. Of course I can't blame anyone at SLU for that. But it still hurt.

... Rejected by society?

As an adult, my viewpoint often conflicts with the world around me, which leads to constant struggle. I often find myself confused by prevalent viewpoints in our society, and I feel alien when I try to explain ideas or opinions that seem self-evident to me. People accuse me of being argumentative or "trying to sound smart."

I swear, I'm not. I'm trying to connect and share. 

It's really hard to feel like people are listening to me. I share personal details to connect with people, and they don't seem to retain anything. I give sound, balanced advice, and people roundly ignore it (often to their own detriment). It feels like people either don't hear me, don't believe me, or just don't care what I have to say. 

In my work life, I have a tendency to play into unhealthy power dynamics. My career has largely been a series of companies and bosses who take advantage of my talent and then put me down to make themselves feel better. It's been awful for my mental health, and it has destroyed any sense of motivation or ambition I may have had. Until recently, I assumed that was just working life, and that I must be deficient for not being able to deal with it.

Social media is probably a net negative for me. I'm on Reddit, but I rarely post or comment. Once I ventured to make an innocuous comment about a video game that I've played for decades. One person responded along the lines of "I don't think anyone else had the same experience." For some reason that hurt a lot and reinforced my habit of silence on that platform.

And Facebook... Well, don't even get me started. When I first joined in 2006, it was college students only, which gave me an automatic sense of belonging. It was a good way to keep in touch with friends who had moved across the country.

Since then it has slowly devolved into a platform for public shouting matches where nobody wins. And whenever I engage, I always lose. I've likely written several novels worth of comments I ended up not posting because I was afraid someone would judge me too harshly or reject my ideas out of hand. The worst part is that most of that rejection comes from people who aren't interested in open, honest discussion. 

I guess that's the crux of adult life for me. Nobody seems to consider their words or flesh out their ideas the way I do, and earnest attempts to communicate leave me feeling even more confused and dejected. I am frequently interrupted, ignored, or insulted into submission. 

It feels like playing chess on an active football field.

Rejected by myself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "To be great is to be misunderstood." I took this quote as a mantra for a long time, because it at least made me feel valuable in some abstract way. But in my reality, it comes with a pretty harsh addendum: "To be misunderstood is to be rejected."

All of the situations I've described read as rejection to my brain. Further proof that my perspective is inferior. That I must be a failure. And honestly, these examples are just the worst of it. This has been my default existence for as long as I can remember.

I've been writing songs for over 20 years, and I'm petrified to publish any of them. I have a strong curiosity in a broad range of subjects that I'm too nervous to pursue. I'm a smart, attentive listener with well balanced advice that nobody will ever get the chance to follow.

People tell me I have a lot to offer this world; that I was "meant to do great things." Maybe so. Still, I keep to myself for fear of making waves.

Rejecting sensitivity... Or at least trying.

Until I learned the term rejection sensitivity, I never even considered that my tendencies could be anything but a character flaw. I've always just been sensitive. It's a bit of a Catch-22 situation, and it took a lot of processing to realize how much it has steered the course of my life. 

Now that I'm able to name the issue and confront it, my life has improved vastly. I still get strong feelings of rejection, but now I know the physiological response will subside.  I know it's just part of my biology and not a personal failing. Practicing patience and awareness helps guide my thoughts away from the strong emotions in the moment, and I'm usually able to process the situation faster and more effectively. Staying consistent with exercise, meditation, and breathing techniques keep me more in tune with my body. The more I reinforce those positive behaviors, the easier easier it is to deal with the next time. 

Most importantly, I'm less afraid to speak my truth. Rather than taking my emotional response as a signal of my wrong-ness, I let it pass and remind myself that my feelings and opinions are valid. I can say my piece without getting caught up in other people's responses. I'm eager to start catching what life throws at me instead of constantly giving up on hard things.

Rejection still hurts. But I'm done letting it rule my life.