Today I read Psychology Today for this first time. Particularly this article.
The premise of the article is that we are genetically programmed to hate rejection because back in the old days, people relied on a very close knit group of others for survival. So if your group started to hate you, you'd die pretty quickly. So when you got rejected, your brain would make you feel physical pain, which would kick in your "love me now" obsessive craziness, and you'd win their hearts back.
Today, when we meet new people all the time and are constantly being thrown into new situations, our little psyches just can't handle all the change. Or all the inevitable rejection. And so we freak out about being rejected by everyone...which is pointless (because we're not going to DIE if some dude doesn't call us back) and unhealthy.
Stats like, "Major depression, a condition tightly linked to rejection sensitivity, has been on the rise among all age groups except the elderly for well over a decade," simply made me sad. Does that mean I am a statistic? Majorly depressed?
Anyways, what the article said was all kinds of things feed into our rejection-sensitivity beyond our hard wiring. Like parents who over-praise, parents who rejected their children's need for attention, and basically parents. And some other stuff too. Like trauma.
And so, we're all really depressed, and really sensitive, and then someone calls us at 6:30 instead of 6:00 and we think the world is coming to an end and they don't love us any more. Literally, says the article.
This kind of freaked me out, because I feel like I've spent 10 years of my life whining about rejection with my girlfriends. If I had read this article when I was in college, think of all that whining time I could have spent learning to ski or something. I'm only now coming to a place in my life where I can see rejection for what it really is; someone else's problem, not mine. And apparently, I'm not the only one who felt like I was living in my own personal hell when the cute boy I dated in Winter of 1999 told me he didn't think our relationship was going anywhere (and thank goddess, because he was a total loser, living in his parent's basement, working a crap job and wearing ugly shoes).
The scariest part of the article by far was the part where they said people's rejection sensitivity could lead to bringing about the thing they most fear: rejection. Apparently the craziness induced by rejection sensitivity is more crazy than your average Dick or Jane can handle. And imagine if two rejection sensitive people get together. They'd be joined at the hip and pissed off every time one of the pair had to go to the bathroom. Though better being pissed off than being pissed on, my Dad always says.
Anyways, I hope you find this article as empowering as I did. Enjoy!
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