24 January 2017—At some point, be it among projects or schoolwork, exclusive friendships or love interests, you’ve faced one of humanity’s most extreme fears—rejection. It’s not easy to argue against the fact that rejection hurts. The word itself is almost an onomatopoeia. The sound of it reflects that gut-wrenching feeling that arises when it happens to you. However, rejection is not always a bad thing, and people don’t often acknowledge the long-term benefits of being able to deal with rejection. Ultimately, openness to rejection is necessary and beneficial to build up emotional resilience and help to inoculate us against the extreme effects of disappointment.

By standard definition, resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity. How can you learn to bounce back if there’s never any adversity? A study titled, “Whatever Happened to ´What Might Have Been?´” (Hicks & King, 2007), coordinated by researcher Laura King at the University of Missouri, acknowledges the positive impact an unpleasant loss or rejection can have on us if we take the time to reflect on and embrace the negative experience. Those who allow themselves time to think about their losses and respond to rejections in ways that are “mindfully present to their negative feelings” are, in the long run, more likely to build up a stronger emotional and rational maturity and obtain happiness.

By avoiding (progress based on a fear of) rejection, negative and less resilient responses to undesired trials could potentially be more common, if we are not able to confront a negative situation. Allowing yourself to reflect on the disappointment and general negative emotions that frequently accompany rejection can also allow for you to be more appreciative and sensitive to the happiness you feel later on, desensitizing the idea of rejection into a natural life experience that makes way for maturity and overall mental resilience.

As your emotional maturity grows, so does your ability to empathize. By opening yourself up to social scenarios that risk rejection, you are better able to recognize and familiarize yourself with the emotions others have after their (possibly very similar) trials. Scientists at the University of Chicago observed prosocial behaviors in rats, saying that social experience is what drives empathy in them, especially toward unfamiliar mice. “Prosocial behavior seems to be determined only by social experience,” claims Inbal Barthel, Ph.D., and leader of the study at the University. Your potential to sympathize, or even empathize with others is further increased by your range of social exposure.

In another study, Roy Baumeister likens the ability to strengthen self-control to a physical “strength-model,” saying, “Just as exercise can make muscles stronger, there are signs that regular exertions of self-control can improve willpower strength” (Rodgers, Sarria, Decety, 2014). Many other human capacities function on that principle: the more you can exercise resilience to the opportunity of rejection and allow a break for the ability to rebuild, the further you allow yourself to improve on the outcome and eventually desensitize the anxiety of taking action. The same goes with your brain’s capability to exercise empathy for a variety of perspectives and feelings.

In the same way that social exposure can improve upon empathy, it can also allow for you to be more open-minded towards others and their criticism. Situations that provide unexpected or undesired outcomes stretch your resilience and your empathy in the sense that they widen your perspective. Because of this, you will likely be able to accept others’ views and opinions. Reflecting on multiple personal trials helps to not only desensitize and move forward from the pain, but to move forward with an open mind that allows for us to learn to reflect neutrally and plan for the future by seeing how the constructive critique of others can motivate us to change or use the outcome to our advantage.

Open-mindedness is often the goal that is maintained when professionals practice exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is, by definition, “treatment that involves repeated real, visualized, or simulated subjection to or confrontation with a feared situation, object or a traumatic event or memory in order to achieve habituation.” This kind of therapy is commonly used to treat anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders, or general phobias and anxieties that are detrimental to progressing in our lives. More specifically, there is rejection therapy, which challenges you to confront rejection and incorporate it into your daily routine.

Jason Comely, a freelance IT, had constructed this sort of “therapy” after confronting his own, personal fear of being rejected. “I had nowhere to go, and no one to hang out with. And so I just broke down and started crying. I realized I was afraid. I asked myself; afraid of what? I thought, I’m afraid of rejection.”

Comely’s confrontation with himself led him to make a change to his daily routine, “I needed to get rejected at least once every single day by someone.”

Everyday, for one hundred days, Comely put an effort toward interacting with new people and setting himself up for rejection. It seems like a simple task, asking someone for a ride, or asking for a discount on something at the store everyday. But for most people, a fear of rejection is something that can easily stop them from being productive and getting things done. So naturally, it can be a challenge to approach someone new and ask something you’d usually never ask in fear of being humiliated. On the other hand, familiarizing yourself with the possibility of an unwelcome outcome will help keep an open mind to both a negative result, and alternative perspectives.

Of course, it is true that long-term ostracism can sometimes lead to more severe adverse responses, such as depressive symptoms or anxiety. In fact, a UCLA-led collaboration of psychologists report that rejection is registered much the same way by our brains as physical pain. “In the English language we use physical metaphors to describe social pain like ‘a broken heart’ and ‘hurt feelings,'” said Naomi I. Eisenberger, lead author of the study at UCLA, “Now we see that there is good reason for this” (Eisenberger, 2003). When it comes to registering and being conscious of exclusion, fMRI scans suggested that the brain has higher levels of activity near the anterior cingulate. This part of the brain is located in the center of the brain, responsible largely for also processing physical pain. Eisenberger explains, “There’s something about exclusion from others that is perceived as being as harmful to our survival as something that can physically hurt us, and our body automatically knows this.” The researchers theorize that it’s possible there’s some connection between the pain of social rejection and the importance of developing social bonds in many animals. It also further confirms how well-rooted and important our need for social connection and exposure is.

Despite this, newer research looks closer at the way our brains register social rejection, referencing the study mentioned prior. “Physical pain and social rejection do activate similar regions of the brain,” says Choong-Wan Woo, graduate student at University of Colorado, “But by using a new analysis tool, we were able to look more closely and see that they are actually quite different.” The upshot is that we feel social pain similarly to physical pain, but the mechanics are different enough that you can’t just take an aspirin and expect social pain to go away. Instead, you need to increase your resistance to it.

Rejection is inevitable. Throughout your life, you will face numerous experiences that will risk rejection or failure and you will no doubt become discouraged. Even so, being able to use that discouragement as an adversity to bounce back from is, in the long run, so much more valuable to your emotional resilience than avoiding rejection as much as possible.  

RELATED RESEARCH:

“Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion,” Naomi I. Eisenberger, Matthew D. Lieberman, and Kipling D. Williams. Science 10 October 2003

“Separate neural representations for physical pain and social rejection,” Choong-Wan Woo,  Leonie Koban,  Ethan Kross,  Martin A. Lindquist,  Marie T. Banich,  Luka Ruzic,  Jessica R. Andrews-Hanna &  Tor D. Wager. Nature Communications 5, 17 November 2014

King, Laura A., and Joshua A. Hicks. “Whatever Happened to ‘What Might Have Been?‘” Fortnight 62.7 (1976): 625-36; American Psychological Association, Inc., Oct. 2007. Web.

Daniels, Bryan C. “What’s the Rush? Taking Time to Acknowledge Loss Is Not That Bad.” EurekAlert! AAAS, 19 Dec. 2007. Web. 03 Jan. 2017.

Fischer, Dennis. Science Fiction Film Directors, 1895-1998, McFarland & Co. (2000)

“Pro-social behavior in rats is modulated by social experience,” David A Rodgers, Maria Sol Bernardez Sarria and Jean Decety. eLife

“Right Supramarginal Gyrus Is Crucial to Overcome Emotional Egocentricity Bias in Social Judgments,”  Giorgia Silani, Claus Lamm, Christian C. Ruff, and Tania Singer. The Journal of Neuroscience, 25 September 2013.

Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs and Dianne M. Tice, “The Strength Model of Self-Control,” in Current Directions in Psychological Science (2007)

“Reducing Social Stress Elicits Emotional Contagion of Pain in Mouse and Human Strangers,” Loren J. Martin, Georgia Hathaway, Kelsey Isbester, Sara Mirali, Erinn L. Acland, Nils Niederstrasser, Peter M. Slepian, Zina Trost, Jennifer A. Bartz, Robert M. Sapolsky, Wendy F. Sternberg, Daniel J. Levitin, Jeffrey S. Mogil. Current Biology (2015), published online Jan. 15, 2015.