Why do I feel sick when someone rejects me as their partner? I feel I doubt many times to be myself

Dear S,

Many people hold a deep fear of being rejected by others – whether by partners, friends, groups, cliques in the workplace, etc. I don’t need to tell you that rejection is one of the most painful experiences a person can have. And being rejected in the arena of dating and romance often feels like the worst of the worst. 

When you say that rejection hurts so much it makes you feel sick, you are not alone, and you are not imagining it. Brain-imaging studies show that when subjects thought about an experience of rejection, there was activity in the same areas of are brain that are activated when we experience physical pain. It truly is a mind-body, all-consuming experience.

Having acknowledged all that, I will try to have this answer unpack some of the reasons why romantic rejection is as painful as it is. Understanding the reasons behind it does not remove the pain, of course. But I have found that it can help to alter a person’s perspective in a way that promotes healing and a readiness to move forward into potential new relationships with hope instead of fear.

Psychologist Guy Winch, who writes and speaks a lot about relationships, analyzes exactly what makes rejection so painful. He makes an important and often-overlooked point about where the greatest pain comes from. He says:

“The greatest damage rejection causes is usually self-inflicted. Just when our self-esteem is hurting most, we go and damage it even further.”

Isn’t that interesting? Yes, it hurts to be rejected by another person. But that initial blow is often followed by a storm of questions about yourself. Questions like, “What did I do wrong?” “What is wrong with me?” “Do I need to change something about myself to be loved?”

You summed it up really well when you said that rejection makes you have doubts about whether you can be yourself. That is such an automatic reaction – to wonder “what is wrong with ME?” 

This makes less sense when you think about the fact that you are likely to meet many more people in the course of your life who accept you than who reject you. 

The bottom line is this:  Although rejection feels very personal, it usually isn’t. That might be hard to believe, but it is generally true. So many factors go into  the choice someone makes about who to be with.

Please stay with me on this theme for a little while. The response I often get when I try to lead people down this road is, “How can rejection NOT be personal?” As a way of answering that question, I want to provide a couple of quotes from the book Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time by Rick Hanson, PhD.

“The thing is, most of what bumps into us in life – including emotional reactions from others, traffic jams, illness, or mistreatment at work – is like an impersonal log put in motion by ten thousand causes upstream.”

“Recognize the humbling yet wonderful truth: most of the time, we are bit players in other people’s dramas.”

You had said that you feel you always have the same pattern of relationships. If by that you mean that you are always the one being rejected and never the one doing the rejecting, I’m going to ask you to pull back from that belief and really examine it.

Of course, I have no way of knowing your life story. You might have had more than your fairshare of rejection. But if you are like most people, your mind will inflate the times you have been rejected, and minimize the times you haven’t.

The human mind is inclined to have a “negativity bias,” an inclination to see negatives more clearly than positives. This goes along with a tendency to disqualify the positive and magnify the negative. For example, your thoughts might go along the lines of: “A, B, and C rejected me. I was the one who wasn’t interested in D and E, but they don’t really count as much because…” (fill in the blank with any reasons your mind might supply in support of the narrative your sadness is generating right now.)

No one is completely immune from the pain of rejection, but people who have a strong sense of self-worth recover more quickly. It might be helpful for you to pursue counseling to help you build your self-esteem overall. I also recommend talking to friends and family about how they have survived similar experiences, and how they feel looking back on those lost relationships now.

You mention feeling used by another person and say that it’s hard for you to put limits. That part of your question calls for some important reflections apart from just the pain of being rejected.

Developing strong boundaries will help you look out for your own well-being.

You can decide how much of yourself to give to someone. You do not owe anyone physical or emotional intimacy before you are ready.

I wish for you a greater capacity to love and value yourself. You are worthy of love, acceptance, and belonging. The more you learn to truly believe that, the more likely it is that the right people and relationships will find you.

Julie