effects of rejection - part 1

My inner healing was never quick and easy, but by connecting the dots, I learned that who I was for the first three decades of my life were the effects of rejection in my childhood that took place right inside the walls of our home.

In the process of knowing myself more, I brought myself back to the experiences that shaped my personality and behaviors and saw how wounded I was. It was not easy to face my demons and pain from the past, but it was necessary for my healing. 

Writing about rejection is a sensitive matter to me, but I believe that my experiences could serve the readers of Shifting Psyche. The scope I wish to address is too big to fit in a single article, so I break them into three parts.

What Is Rejection?

To better understand the effects of rejection in our childhood, we have to pinpoint and assess the experiences that shaped and destroyed us.

Rejection, by definition, is the act of refusing to accept, use, or believe someone or something. While nobody wants to be rejected, no one can escape from it. In fact, from birth to the day we die, we will get rejections in one way or another.

However, rejection is most powerful in children. From ages 0 to 7, children are not capable of knowing what is right and wrong. They simply absorb everything that people and circumstances throw at them. In other words, children are defenseless.

Could you imagine a defenseless child getting bombarded with emotional neglect, comparison, and negative judgments from adults around them? As dreadful as it could be, the truth is, it happened to you, too. It happened to all of us and might still affect us in adulthood.

In this article (Part 1), I shared the most detrimental effects of rejection in childhood that show in our personalities and behaviors.

1. It kills self-worth and confidence

Have you ever been compared with someone and the memory of it is still in you?

Tracing how comparison has affected your feelings, thoughts, and beliefs will make you more aware of how rejection controls your perception and responses.

Journaling Guide:

Write down your memories of being compared with another person. What were you compared to? How did you feel about it? How did it affect your thoughts and behavior?

One of my strongest memories of rejection was when my mother would constantly compare me with my (late) eldest sister. Each time she brushed my hair after a bath, she would mention my sister’s beautiful, bouncy, and silky hair and compare it with my dry and dead hair. She would then stare at me through the mirror and say, ‘Your sister was so beautiful, very far from how you look.’

As a child, I simply believed and accepted everything she said. They became my truths. It didn’t bother me though, until my aunt brought me and my cousins on an excursion and asked us to pose for photos. While they excitedly projected themselves into the frame, I anxiously looked for a corner to hide.

I didn’t like being photographed. I felt that a camera didn’t deserve my ugly face. 

In dating, I avoided men who showed interest in me because I didn’t believe that someone could like and fall for me. I was at the lowest point of my self-worth and confidence and felt I didn’t deserve anything good in life. I rejected love from other people because, to me, I did not deserve love at all.

Losing confidence and self-worth restricts us from seeing the beautiful and good about us. We feel that we don’t deserve appreciation, value, and love, and become the victim in our own lives.

Self-worth and confidence are the drivers of our hopes and dreams. But the beauty of getting older is it empowers us to know our truths and abolishes people’s opinions that do not contribute to our joy and dreams.

2. We seek for acceptance and belongingness by pleasing people

All of us have pleased other people at least once in our lives, but the intensity of this behavior is significantly high with people suffering from the effects of rejection they’ve had in childhood.

People-pleasing behavior results from significant and regular emotional neglect from people we trust and love. Although it sometimes appears indirectly, emotional neglect is one face of rejection. They have one goal, which is, to make us feel unworthy of someone’s time and attention.

When we feel rejected through neglect, it feels as if they don’t want us to be part of their lives, so we lose our sense of belongingness. A child’s natural response to this is to retrieve the love, attention, and support that was taken away from him. This is where the act of people-pleasing starts. We all crave love because love is our very nature.

Growing up feeling unaccepted and unwanted inside our home, I got easily attached to people who made me feel seen and heard. I was like a predator who was always on the lookout for prey – someone who’d make me feel that I mattered, and I would do everything to make that person stay in my life.

When we are desperate for acceptance and belongingness, we are willing to do crazy things. The consequences could be dangerous as it manifests in various forms of emotional and mental challenges.

One example of the emotional challenge was I frequently suffered from letting go of my friends and moving forward because I was too attached to the love and worth they showed me. I got extremely sad and lonely which led to anxiety.

3. It creates a bad self-image and disturbing behaviors

When a rejection gets to you, the thing you got rejected for becomes your truth. And most of the time, these are self-destructive.

I used to believe that I was extremely ugly and that my face strained other people’s eyes. And to prevent getting shamed, I unconsciously nagged at people even if they were kind and gentle. It was my way of protecting myself from possible attacks. I reject them even before they reject me.

I also loathe my face and gave up on taking care of myself. All of this was because of the rejection for being less beautiful than my sister. The effects of rejection in our childhood could destroy our lives. It is not easy not to get affected when we are deeply hurt.

4. We become fearful of going out of our comfort zones

Rejection is scary. It means that we are not good enough to meet someone’s standards.

The fear we developed from rejection branches out to various sorts of fear. When we think we are not good enough, fear will devour us and stop us from trying new hobbies or skills. And when we refrain from trying things, especially those out of our comfort zone, we get stuck in life and not experience growth.

The fear of getting out of our comfort zones limits us to discover and fulfill our life purpose. I always believe that the reason for our existence here on earth is to find out and personify our purpose. And if we live in fear because of our past experiences, we will fail to participate in the highest essence of life.

This negative effect of rejection has the heaviest impact on our lives because it stops us from becoming the person we are called to be.

It is in bravery to face our fears and act on our dreams that we find ourselves serving our purpose and humanity.

a photo representing effects of rejection

Being mindful of our behavior and perceptions is the key to realizing how rejection affects us in non-serving and destructive ways. Try to reflect on your painful experiences in childhood and see how the effects of rejection control your life.

Our personalities, how we understand life, and the actions we choose to take are products of our experiences and the unique identity that the Great Creator planted in us. We have to consciously and willingly participate in the requisites of our mission.

Dealing With Rejection Series:

You can read other parts of the series on the links below:

Part 1: How Rejection In Childhood Harms Our Life As Adults

Part 2. Heal Yourself From Rejection Trauma

Part 3: How To Handle Rejections In Adulthood