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Were you abandoned, betrayed or rejected by someone you loved?
We can help you reclaim your freedom and maturity.
Rejection is part of life
It is not likely that everyone will always
love you. It is more likely that you will sometimes feel rejected and disappointed.
And sometimes, you may have done the rejecting.
This is not about your application being
ignored, or you being neglected for promotion, or a loan application being refused.
This is about about feeling rejected for who you are by someone you love or
respect, for example by your partner - or your parents - or your child.
Being rejected by friends or colleagues can be unpleasant,
but being rejected by family members or a life partner can trigger overwhelming
emotions. Rejection or betrayal by a significant person may change your
beliefs and motivation, your relationships and your ability to succeed.
Maturity & Rejection
Your maturity predicts how you respond to rejection. Mature
people may acknowledge the situation, deal with self-pity, pick themselves up, remember
their past successes,
accept reality as it is and move on with their lives. If you don't know how to do
that
- maybe get our coaching.
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Your coaching is not what I expected ...
it is far sweeter. |
Sometimes, a minor rejection can cause you to relive major
rejections and trigger huge emotions from past relationship disappointments.
This is often called age regression. Childhood memories often include
feeling helpless and resourceless if feeling rejected.
During age regression, you might feel that your world
is falling apart, that there can be no future happiness, that you cannot live
without a certain person, that life doesn't make sense anymore. This is very
different to adult consciousness.
An experience of rejection often provokes self-doubt and low
self-image. Then we might react with defense mechanisms - spontaneous strategies
that strive to suppress the unpleasant feelings and make us feel temporarily
better.
This feels like an almost automatic brain response, supported
by conscious contribution. You might notice your mind creating angry, aggressive
thoughts that diminish the value and importance of the other person. It's easy
to go with those urges, to accept and feed them, even if you know that they are
not healthy. They bring short term relief, but if you yield to those thoughts,
you lose an opportunity to change your emotional habits.
The most common defense from self-doubt and humiliation is
anger and aggression. Obsessions, stalking, criticism, revenge and gossip are
often sad attempts to repair one's self-image.
Besides aggression to the person who rejected us, you might
seek approval and power. The way you do it depends of what you learned as a
child to be effective. Complaining and acting like a victim to get sympathy is
common, as well as self-medicating by obsessive shopping or cookies, but other
ways of seeking relief can be more destructive, such as promiscuity and drugs.
We can coach you through and past all this. We can help you
assimilate and resolve the unpleasant emotional consequences of being rejected;
and change any habits that lead to further rejection.
Who Rejected You?
It seems to be less important who rejected you than
what that person represented in your life. For example, a partner might
represent family, a servant, respect, stability, security, success,
Note that a rejection can trigger emotions from earlier
relationship disappointments. People who were abandoned as children may, as
adults, either cling to people and fear their abandonment or avoid
commitments to prevent further suffering.
Why were you rejected?
If you feel rejected, you may be somewhat obsessed with,
"Why did he / she / they do that?"
Don't waste too much time pondering their motives. For whatever
reason - they prefer distance from you right now. Let it go at that and focus on
your own security. Do you have a place to live? Do you have an income?
Do you have food? Do you need emotional first aid?
When parents reject or abandon children, the most common
justifications and prejudices that we hear are poverty, divorce, AIDS,
addictions, pregnancy and sexual preferences. Children who reject a parent may
be rejecting the parents behavior, beliefs or values; or be manipulated by the
other parent, or as a way
to end emotional incest.
Handing Rejection
- Appreciate honesty. Appreciate that someone is honest
enough to tell you that he or she is not prepared to continue a relationship
with you right now.
- Give people time. Don't try to push people into
justifying their decisions or giving you another chance.
- Separate your emotions from what happened.
People are different and think very differently. If
someone wants distance from you, that need not mean that a person is
rejecting your love forever or that you are somehow bad.
- Discuss the situation with a trusted friend. Don't whine,
complain or act like a victim. Present the facts as you understand them.
- Consciously improve other relationships.
We can help
you manage your emotions and evaluate your relationship habits and
possibilities. We can help you assess your relationships and your
goals. We can help you define appropriate goals and remove emotional
blocks to achieving them.
Relationship Disappointments
Bonds are emotionally connections between people.
Bonding between children and parents, for example, results in a shared sense of
attachment. Damage to this ongoing sense of connection can distort or
damage relationships. Severe relationship damage may be called
attachment disorders.
Relationship disappointments refer to your reactions
to relationship events, often based on injustice and guilt. Disappointments
can generate enormous suffering, and are both the cause and effect of
unhealthy relationships. The consequences of entanglements
include depression and illness.
Children and immature adults often make excuses, blame
others, complain and justify their behavior. Most people seem to suffer
long before they seek ways to dissolve their emotional suffering. For
most people, suffering seems to be an essential step towards health.
Some people seem to be unconsciously attracted to experience
of rejection. They might choose good partners, but do everything to sabotage the
relationship, or they might feel attracted to people who are likely to reject
them: unavailable people, authorities, aggressive or emotionally withdrawn
people.
This may indicate some long-term internal issues that those
people are trying to resolve by re-creating the difficult situations. It may
also mean that the problem originated in childhood, considering its persistence
and the person's inability to change it rationally.
Relationship Disappointments & Identity Loss
Family members are usually alert to
justice and guilt, and respond to perceived injustice following the examples
set by parents and grandparents. A common response
to relationship disappointments and injustice is what we call
identity loss, especially in children Four common
forms of identity loss are:
- Cannot choose own life goals (Identifications)
- Cannot change beliefs or behavior (Relationship Bonds)
- Cannot make decisions without conflict (Identity Conflict)
- Cannot describe, feel or express emotions (Identity Loss)
We often coach people to resolve identity loss. This seems to
solve so many problems that it is at the center of our individual work.
Identifications occur if on person identifies with
another person and (unconsciously) expresses emotions and attitudes of the role
model. (Watching
cinema often produces short-term identification lasting only a few minutes). Some
common identifications have predictable sets of symptoms:
- Identification with a victim : chronic anger,
suspicion, vandalism and possibly violence
- Identification with a dead person: chronic
sadness, melancholy and possibly suicide
- Identification with a hero: chronic fear, anxiety
attacks and possibly agoraphobia
Relationship Bonds often cause people to stay in
unpleasant relationships despite having good reasons
to leave. They may be emotionally bonded - feeling helpless and hopeless
- with limiting beliefs such as "I must do as I am told",
"I don't deserve better" or "I cannot leave".
(Such unpleasant beliefs are often conditions for difficult relationships
to continue.)
Identity Conflict causes people to swing between two
personalities. A decision or promise made in one
persona may be forgotten or ignored in the other. (In extreme cases,
a person may be diagnosed with bipolar disorder or, if amnesic of
their personality changes, with multiple personalities.)
Identity Loss indicates a lost sense of self. This can
follow child abuse or trauma. Such people often function in a robot-like manner
and may not participate in life. The symptoms may be also called post-traumatic
stress disorder, chronic depression or codependence. We have solutions ...
contact us.
Do you cause family
or friends to suffer
because you have emotional problems and you won't get help?
Act now to manage your
emotions and build happier relationships.
Online
Coaching for Rejection
Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers
& Kosjenka Muk 2008-2012 All rights reserved.
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