The Psychological Effects Of Rejection: Why Emotional Pain Hurts
Social rejection leads to emotional pain for many people. This may be because it tends to activate the same regions of the brain that typically activate when a person is experiencing physical pain. Rejection can lead to a variety of positive and negative impacts, depending on how an individual responds to it. It can be healthy to take time to process your emotions, examine the circumstances of the rejection, and seek insight and guidance from an in-person or online therapist after experiencing rejection.
The relationship between physical and emotional pain
Experiencing rejection can threaten our need for social acceptance. This need is typically not trivial or inconsequential – it is normally hardwired into our brains as a survival mechanism.
In general, living in groups of people was evolutionarily advantageous in the early days of human beings. It typically brought about several benefits, such as warning systems to alert others to the presence of predators and the division of labor, which often enabled more complicated achievements than would be possible for one person acting alone, such as the construction of buildings.
Today, human brains tend to continue to associate social acceptance with survival, even though society has generally progressed to a point where, hypothetically, one person could survive independently without assistance from others.
Considering the strong evolutionary drive for social acceptance, scientists have assessed whether the emotional pain one experiences from social rejection can be compared to physical pain. When scanning the brains of participants who had been told to think about a social rejection (in this case, a former romantic partner ending their relationship), the dorsal anterior cingulate and anterior insula brain regions were usually activated. These sections of the brain are normally associated with the experience of physical pain.
Scientists have also found that treatments for physical pain may treat emotional pain as well. Rejection could potentially be alleviated by using anti-inflammatory medication, which researchers found usually caused less activity in the pain-related regions of the brain when study participants experienced a mild social rejection.
Psychological impacts of painful rejection
Different people can react to the same feelings of rejection differently. For example, some people may respond to rejection with anger, outrage, and aggression, which can lead to further rejection. Others may react by becoming more conscientious and paying more attention to the needs of the people around them.
In addition, rejection can have more psychological effects than immediate pain. It can lead to a variety of emotional, cognitive, and physical responses.
Common effects of rejection may include the following:
- A lower sense of self-esteem
- Increased irritability, frustration, and anger
- A greater probability of developing depression
- Higher levels of anxiety
- Reduced performance on cognitive and intellectual tasks
- Worsened sleep quality, including a higher likelihood of sleep disturbances
- A weakened immune system
- Lower levels of impulse control
- Feeling less socially connected to other people, which can lead to a vicious cycle in which rejected people reject other people and perpetuate their own social isolation
- Increased aggressive behavior
- Paying more attention to social cues
- An increased desire for conformity or the need to “fit in”
- A greater tendency to experience jealousy, sadness, or insecurity in relationships
- Acting more friendly
- A higher likelihood of helping other people
How to handle rejection in a healthy way
Rejection can result in complicated and unpleasant feelings. However, it may also be an opportunity to learn about yourself and lessen the possibility of future rejection. Methods to handle rejection that may lead to personal growth can include the following:
Process your emotions
Hurt feelings might be the toughest side effect of rejection. With social acceptance as an evolutionary drive, rejection can sometimes seem like the end of the world. If you are experiencing pain after being rejected, it can be important not to run away from that sensation. Trying to stifle or numb your unhappiness could lead to behaviors like angry outbursts and substance use, potentially leading to further rejection and contributing to a vicious cycle.
If you are struggling with substance use, contact the SAMHSA National Helpline at (800) 662-4357 to receive support and resources. Support is available 24/7.
Negative feelings can be helpful signals, so understanding why you’re hurt may give you beneficial information that can inform future decision-making. Some ways to process your unhappy feelings may include journaling, meditating, exercising, creating art, or talking about your experience to someone you trust.
Examine the circumstances of the rejection
Once you have processed your hurt feelings and gotten some distance from the situation, you may be able to look at your rejection through more objective eyes and analyze what happened. Here is where you may be able to start learning from the rejection.
It may take certain levels of reflective abilities and self-awareness to rationally examine your rejection without being clouded by emotions, and it can be helpful to talk the situation through with someone who knows you well to gain a different perspective. If you can objectively reflect on the rejection, you may take away strategies and ways to potentially alter the outcome of similar situations in the future.
Benefits of online therapy
One helpful way to talk through your emotions with someone else and process your experiences with rejection with a neutral observer can be to talk to a licensed therapist. However, if you are encountering depressive symptoms from rejection, reaching out to a therapist and scheduling an appointment to meet in person may seem overwhelming. In this instance, you may want to consider online therapy, which can be accessed from your home, meaning you may feel more comfortable opening up about what can be a painful experience.
Effectiveness of online therapy
Scientific research has demonstrated that attending therapy online may be as effective as attending traditional in-person therapy sessions. One study found that online therapy can be a helpful method of reducing perfectionist tendencies, a personality trait that may be associated with experiences of rejection. If you need help processing your rejection experiences, online therapy may be beneficial.
Takeaway
What are the psychological effects of rejection on a person’s mental health and overall well-being?
Rejection can feel like a punch to your confidence, leaving you stressed and down. Research shows that if those feelings build up, it can lead to deeper struggles like anxiety or depression.
How does rejection trigger emotional pain in the brain, leading to anxiety?
A fMRI study found that the brain treats rejection like physical pain, which is why it stings so much. It can leave you anxious about future interactions, making social situations harder to handle.
How does rejection impact a person’s feelings and emotions, and how does this affect their mental health?
Rejection stirs up emotions like sadness or frustration, which can feel overwhelming. From a natural selection standpoint, the discomfort of rejection serves as an early warning system to deter people from social isolation. However, when left unchecked, these emotions can wear on your mental health over time.
Additional questions about rejection
Read below for more commonly asked questions about psychology and rejection.
Can the psychological effects of rejection increase anxiety and affect daily mental health?
Repeated rejection can make anxiety worse and make it harder to reach out to others. It can leave you exhausted, mentally drained, and affect your sleep and focus.
In addition to causing depressed mood or anxiety, the negative consequences of rejection can lead to the development of an insecure attachment style and enduring challenges with interpersonal relationships. This is particularly true if the rejection occurs during early child development.
Why does rejection cause intense feelings of emotional pain in the brain?
Your brain sees rejection as a threat to connection, which is why it hurts so deeply. We’re wired to need belonging, so social rejection can feel like a loss.
Rejection directly impacts our perceived “relational value,” or how valuable we believe our close relationships are to others. Neural evidence suggests that this relational devaluation activates the same brain areas as when we experience physical pain. Since the biological consequences of poor social bonding can impact survival and reproduction potential, it’s thought that the pain of rejection serves the fundamental need of keeping people bonded.
How can prolonged emotions of rejection harm your mental health and trigger anxiety?
Frequently experiencing rejection can wear down your self-esteem and make negative thoughts harder to shake. When strong emotional reactions to rejection persist, it can leave you feeling stuck, stressed, and anxious. This experience may lead you to become more guarded, protective, reactive, jealous, or anxious about other relationships in your life, too.
For example, if you experience prolonged feelings of rejection in a romantic relationship, you might become clingy, ask for constant reassurance from your partner, find it difficult to trust them or ruminate on past experiences. You might read too far into any perceived slights or facial expressions, trying to identify signs of rejection. This may be considered an “anxious attachment style,” and it commonly develops when people have inconsistent early experiences with caregivers or family members. Counterintuitively, the fear of abandonment can make some people difficult to be around, as they are more likely to have angry outbursts, threaten others, or even engage in physical abuse.
What areas of the brain are involved in processing the psychological effects of rejection and emotional pain?
Parts of your brain, like the anterior cingulate cortex and insula, react to rejection as if it’s physical pain. Social psychology researchers believe that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and other brain areas react to social pain and physical pain in the same way because social rejection is a type of injury to social relationships that requires our attention. That’s why emotional rejection can feel just as real as getting hurt physically.
These difficult emotions can have a significant impact on both individual mental health and society overall. For example, a recent study found that students who were not accepted by other participants during group activities were more likely to behave aggressively. And Mark Leary, PhD, a neuroscientist at Duke University, discovered that the perpetrators of school shootings are often individuals suffering from social ostracization.
What coping strategies can help reduce the psychological effects of rejection and ease anxiety?
Rejection sometimes means that we did something wrong or needed to change our behavior, but oftentimes we fixate on one rejection and generalize it to ourselves. For example, if you didn’t get a job you wanted, you might think, “I’ll never get another job because I’m clearly a terrible candidate.”
Taking care of yourself, spending time with people who lift you up, and slowing down can help you heal from rejection. Focusing on what makes you strong can shift your mindset and get you back on track. Even when things are difficult, these strategies can help you cultivate positive emotions and self-compassion.
Why does the brain respond to rejection with such strong emotions and feelings of pain?
Rejection triggers strong emotions because we’re wired to crave connection from a human evolution standpoint. That emotional sting is a sign to focus on meaningful relationships and avoid isolation.
Can improving mental health help lessen the psychological effects of rejection and overwhelming emotions?
“Rejection sensitivity,” or the heightened negative reaction when you feel rejected, can cause strong negative emotions and mental health problems. Building healthy habits and leaning on support—whether through friends or therapy—can help you handle rejection better. Strengthening your resilience makes it easier to move forward when setbacks happen.
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