We regret to inform you that you are rejected. – How to Cope with Life’s Great Rejections

There is a podcast I recently came across titled We Regret to Inform You. Each episode tells the story of someone who has triumphed over rejection. One episode I found particularly interesting focused on the rise of Lady Gaga. It chronicles her hardship as she went from someone her peers bullied to a music icon.

Rejection is Unavoidable

Rejection has occurred to everyone. It hurts. It hurts whether it has been by a potential employer, a potential lover, a parent, or a friend. In this piece, I will write from the first-person perspective, where one person rejects another. However, you could just as easily insert “We” for “I” when considering the individual or group turning away from accepting you.

Rejection is Personal and It Hurts

Regardless of the context, the reality of rejection boils down to – you are not what I want or what I am looking for, and you do not have what it takes for me to proceed. Rejection is personal. One person, group, or organization formally conveys that you possess insufficient value to go forward or relate to you as you wish they would. Said another way, you or your proposal mean less to the other person than what you wish. It is refusal, nonacceptance, a spurning of you and no one else, regardless of why this has occurred. Let us not sugarcoat it. We may use all sorts of euphemisms to make it easier to experience when it happens; it is a natural reaction all humans will experience to feel pain when rejected.

The painful feeling will be proportional to how badly you want acceptance of yourself or what you propose. REBT theory argues that the greater you want something, the more value it has to you, and the more likely you will transform that desire and think of it as an imperative. Said it another way: the more you cherish something, the more significant will be the difficulty you will have to hold the attitude that you do not have to have it. REBT theory teaches us that it is our nature to convert our desires into absolute necessities. It is from this mindset that our suffering emanates.

REBT can help you to free yourself of the emotional suffering you feel when rejected. Reader, note that you cannot avoid pain when rejected. REBT makes a clear distinction, much like Buddhism does, that life inevitably involves pain, sometimes great pain. REBT and Buddhism agree that with a healthy mindset, suffering is optional, as hard as it might be to adopt that mindset. The suffering you experience in response to rejection is optional. REBT will help guide you toward healthy pain, avoiding unhealthy suffering. With this healthy pain, you will be free to change what you can to continue to pursue your goals or to adapt to reality and find alternative ways to find meaning and happiness.

Two Components of Unhealthy Suffering When Rejected

You must address two components to achieve healthy disappointment, sadness, or sorrow in the face of rejection. One component is a non-ego component to your unhealthy suffering; the other is an ego component. Both are likely to be present when the matter is significant to you. It doesn’t matter which component you address first. The important thing is to understand both and work on these two contributing factors to prevail over rejection.

Non-ego Disturbance

When you face rejection, you experience deprivation of the pleasure and meaning you seek. That deprivation can range from mild to moderate to extreme pain or suffering. REBT puts forth a realistic model of emotion. The greater your desire, the more intensely you experience either healthy pain or unhealthy suffering. The attitude underpinning your emotional experience is “I want this goal very much (job, love, relationship, friendship, school admission, etc.). Without it, I will experience painful deprivation.” 

According to REBT theory, this is a healthy attitude because you naturally have human desires. Wants, wishes, and desires are typically healthy and often unique to you. Biology and culture influence your preferences, goals, and values. Keep those desires. You will have difficulty not having your wishes and be kidding yourself in any attempt to deny wanting what you desire.

Unhealthy Attitude of Non-ego Disturbance

I strongly want this (job, love, relationship, friendship, school admission); therefore, I must have it. It is unbearable not to have it. I cannot stand the deprivation that follows from this rejection.

Evaluate Your Rigid Attitude

REBT teaches you to question your rigid attitudes and assumptions. Must you have what you greatly desire? Where is that written? Where is the evidence that you must have what you want? Furthermore, does it help you to think with imperatives? What impact does it have on your adaptation to rejection? Does it undermine your creativity and persistence to keep trying?

Furthermore, where is the evidence that you cannot bear the deprivation of not getting what you want? Yes, you would have great pleasure or meaning from achieving your aims, but is it true that you cannot stand the deprivation you now face? How do you define the inability to withstand rejection and the associated deprivation? Is it true that you cannot exist without it, or do the facts suggest it is hard to live without what you want?

You are Unique, Not Special – Rejection Happens, and You Can Withstand It

The sound philosophical answer to these questions is that you do not have to experience the pleasure you crave no matter how much you desire it. You are unique but not special. The universe is indifferent to your strongest desires and passions. Deprivation is part of the human experience. Accept it and make the most of life despite it. Keep trying to get what you want if it is sufficiently important to you, as you can spend your limited time as you wish. However, see that you can exist and have some happiness even if you continue to fail to achieve your aims.

To experience a healthy disappointment or sorrow for rejection, you need to see that you can bear the absence of those pleasurable feelings you would have regardless of how deep that deprivation is to you. In REBT, we encourage you to see that you can tolerate far more pain, deprivation, and adversity than you often think you can, and the sooner you come to this epiphany, the sooner you will relinquish your unhealthy suffering. What will remain as a result of your attitude is healthy pain and sorrow. This healthy negative feeling is the best you can do. It will enable you to move on and live well despite the rejection you have experienced or to keep trying. That choice is yours.

Ego disturbance 

The second component you will need to address when rejected is ego disturbance. Ego disturbance is emotional suffering associated with your personhood, essence, or ego. Ellis argued that humans are quick to think in nonsequiturs. A non sequitur is a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement. For example, the mathematical expression one plus one equals seven is a non sequitur. In verbal reasoning, humans will often think as follows:

I strongly want this (job, love, relationship, friendship, school admission); therefore, I must have it. Because I have failed to get what I have to have, this proves I am a failure.

There are two illogical jumps within the above-linked attitudes. The first is going from wanting something to having to have it. There is no empirical evidence to support the idea that because you want something desperately, you must obtain it. This way of reasoning flies in the face of everyday experience, but humans think this way to cause and maintain their emotional upset (i.e., unhealthy suffering). The second illogical conclusion is that because you have failed to get what you want, that proves you are a failure.

Alternatively, it is logical to reason, “I strongly want this (job, love, relationship, friendship, school admission); however, it does not follow that I must have it. Even though I have yet to get what I strongly desire and have thus far expended great effort, this proves only that I have been unable to obtain my goal thus far. If I continue to try, who knows what the future holds? Furthermore, not achieving my goal in the short-term or even if I never reach my dream does not make me a failure. It proves I am an imperfect human. Failure may reflect that I do not have what it takes to succeed with this goal. I can acknowledge my imperfection and how it may limit me, but this does not prove I am a failure. That would be an overstatement, an abstract, overgeneralized way of thinking that will only make me experience unhealthy suffering beyond the healthy pain I cannot avoid for having failed in my quest.”

In REBT, we encourage you to discipline your mind and resist your inclination to think with nonsequiturs. We encourage you to spot such illogical reasoning sequences and then cultivate the skill to rethink the matter with a logical sequence of thoughts. You can evaluate your thinking by asking questions like:

1. Yes, I failed in this goal. However, how does that mean I am a failure?
2. Does the empirical evidence suggest I fail in everything I do?
3. Because I strongly want to succeed, I am inclined to define myself as a failure. Must I define myself in this way?
4. Does a definition of myself hold the same weight as empirical evidence about what I accomplish or fail to achieve? Is there proof I am a failure, or am I merely subjectively putting forth this definition?
5. What are the emotional consequences of defining myself as a failure in this arbitrary way?
6. Does putting forth this definition help me function?
7. How might I describe myself instead of defining myself to acknowledge my failure but not globally define myself in this self-harming way?

Stop Defining Yourself and Use Empirically Based Thinking

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy encourages you to avoid subjective definitions and value empirical observations. REBT trains you to reason logically, identify and relinquish arbitrary definitions, stick with the observed facts, describe yourself, and talk to yourself in a way that helps you function well. REBT teaches you to hold healthy attitudes that are flexible and non-extreme about what you do. Although the empirical evidence may show you have failed thus far in your goal and that this is disappointing and sad, the empirical facts also show you have succeeded in other endeavors. We cannot say that you will continue to fail. We do not know and will not know until you cease to exist. As long as you are alive, the opportunity to succeed exists if you continue to try. The evidence shows you are alive, have strengths that have led to successes, weaknesses that have led to failures, and that you can learn from doing. Therefore, it makes logical sense to unconditionally accept yourself and describe yourself as a flawed human with aliveness who may be able to improve with work and practice.

Cultivate Unconditional Self-Acceptance

Unconditional self-acceptance is a profound philosophical change. Most people accept themselves with conditions and suffer when rejected. Unconditional self-acceptance cannot exist when we reason with nonsequiturs. It takes effort to spot our nonsequiturs, especially when we strongly want to achieve a particular goal. The struggle to reason properly is well worth making. It opens doors to immense emotional freedom and strength to cope with rejection without the self-rejection that leads to immense emotional suffering.

Summary

Rejection occurs to everyone, and it is extremely painful when we have a strong interest in a goal we have failed to achieve. According to REBT theory, humans will suffer unhealthy negative feelings due to two emotional processes.

Firstly, humans will think rigidly about their goals. You will transform your strongest wishes to gain pleasure into an imperative that this must occur. Then, you will be at risk to reason in an extreme way about the deprivation you face and think it is unbearable. REBT refers to this process as non-ego disturbance. It is a disturbance about the denial of pleasure.

Compounding your emotional suffering when rejected beyond the deprivation of pleasure you feel, you will then create ego disturbance. Ego disturbance in REBT is emotional disturbance about your essence as a person. Again, you start with a rigid attitude to get what you desperately desire and then reason illogically about being rejected. You go from “I want to achieve this goal” to “I absolutely must achieve my goal (a rigid transformation of your strong desire), and therefore my failure reflects that I am a failure.”

REBT helps you whether you are rejected for a job by another person for love, friendship, or school admission. REBT helps you discipline your mind so that you reason logically and avoid subjectively defining yourself as a failure for your flaws and having failed. It teaches you to combat this pernicious way of reasoning so that you live happily despite the deprivation you feel. It frees you to either make further attempts to overcome rejection or move on to new goals that provide alternative paths to pleasure.