How to Handle Rejection with the Right Method
How do you handle rejection? Is it hard for you to accept failures or set backs? Are you looking for better ways to cope with being rejected?
Whether you like it or not, rejection is a part of life. People get rejected all the time from jobs, promotions, romantic interests, college admissions, organizations...the list goes on. It is essential to find ways to cope with rejection better and start believing, “I can accept what is happening to me,” rather than, “I can’t handle rejection.”
You may never like rejection, but you can learn how to navigate these tough situations better and start benefiting from the lessons you learned during the rejection process. If you are interested, keep reading!
Types of Rejection in Life
There is a point in everyone’s life when they will face rejection or hear the word “no.” We do not always get what we initially wanted, or we have to wait to receive that “yes” for a long time. Below are specific scenarios of people getting rejected. Can you relate to any of these situations?
Job Rejection
Finding a job can be a frustrating process. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in September that 5.8 million people are unemployed in America. Many people are applying for jobs every day, hearing no response, getting rejected, or being ghosted.
Receiving a rejection letter after interview could be really frustrating. Meanwhile, after multiple interviews (sometimes including unpaid work for the interviewer), potential candidates just get ghosted.
Job ghosting could happen early or later in the hiring process. The HR team may stop responding after one email or after three interviews! Sometimes, people would rather get a rejection letter than no response at all. That is, it gives them some closure and makes them feel like the employers didn’t just forget about them.
You may keep applying to different positions and even going on multiple interviews, only to be rejected for not being “qualified” enough or passed by another candidate. This rejection process can get tiring. Therefore, it is important to know how to handle rejection from a job.
Romantic Rejection
Think about someone you’ve had romantic feelings for. Have you ever worked up the courage to ask them out finally or share how you feel, only for them to reject you? Without a doubt, rejection stings, especially when it comes from someone you care about.
The person can reject you directly or show you they are not interested in different ways until you get the hint. For instance, they never have time to hang out; don’t respond to your calls or texts; hint that they are seeing other people; or mention that they are not interested in a romantic relationship.
Getting rejected by a romantic interested can make you question your self-esteem and worth. Why wasn’t I good enough? Why didn’t they like me?
Although it can be challenging, you have to respect the other person’s wishes and move on. Finding ways to cope with love rejection can help!
College Rejection
If you are a senior in high school or in college, you are probably applying to colleges or graduate school right now. Indeed, this can be a very stressful time in a student’s life. While already dealing with other stressors like homework, tests, SAT score, friendships, and relationships, these students now have to decide what college they will apply to and plan on attending.
Unfortunately, you can study hard for the SAT or GRE, write an excellent personal statement, and have a stellar transcript, only to be rejected by your dream university. The rejection email from your dream school or program could make you feel really defeated. You may think, “What’s my next move?”
Social Rejection
Besides romantic rejection, other types of social rejection occur when an individual is deliberately excluded from a social relationship or social interaction. It may occur at any age and can often begin in childhood. When it happens to children and adolescents, it includes bullying and alienation in school.
It can be brutal when children experience social rejection. Think of a teenager that has to move to new place or transfer to different schools. Each move causes a big challenge for the teen to try to fit in; the teen fears being rejected from all their peers and wonders how to handle social rejection.
Similarly, social rejection could happen for adults at workplace or in your friends circle. Besides peer rejection, familiar estrangement is another type of social rejection that could break people’s heart.
Why Does Rejection Hurt?
As mentioned before, being rejected can be painful to experience. Researchers found that some of the same regions of the brain that light up when someone is in physical pain also light up for images that induced social pain. That explains why it hurts so much after rejection.
Therefore, any type of rejection, whether that’d be professional, social, or romantic, can really hurt. Some may even experience “rejection trauma.” For example, after you receive multiple job rejection emails, it is natural to have a lingering fear of rejection again.
Guy Winch, Ph.D. explains that rejection also negatively affects our self-esteem and sense of belonging. When we get rejected, we put ourselves down, think we aren’t good enough, and feel left out or alone. In the case of love rejection, some may develop “romantic rejection depression.” It feels so good to be intensely in love, and yet, this terrific feeling could turn terrible when the relationship ends.
To some extent, romantic rejection resembles the bereavement of the loss of a loved one. With this loss, you may go through the stages of grief , including anger and depression. Naturally, rejection itself can leave you feeling worthless and incompetent, humiliated, stupid, unwanted, unloved, inferior, or not good enough. Rejection can be extremely distressing to the person who is rejected. The negative effects of rejection can be harmful to a person – this is why you may want to learn how to handle rejection better.
Important to Cope With Rejection the Right Way
Indeed, learning to cope with rejection is an essential skill as we learn, grow, and experience life. Some of the reasons include:
- Reacting poorly to losing, failing, or being rejected can make you seem like a sore loser
- Although being rejected in a romantic situation may hurt, you still have to respect the other person’s boundaries and wants. It takes courage to ask someone out, but it also isn’t easy to reject someone and say “no,”, especially for people-pleasers
- Job rejection can happen quite often; you don’t want to let it stop you from keeping pushing forward and trying again
- Dealing with rejection in a healthy way helps you become stronger and face challenges with more resilience
How to Handle Rejection – The REJECT Method
Understandably, being rejected can be painful and unsettling to experience. That is why it can take some time to be able to handle rejection in a healthy way. We have made an easy-to-remember system to help you manage this process better using the acronym “REJECT”.
Let’s go through R – E – J – E- C- T now!
R is for Refrain from Answering Right Away
When you get rejected, whether through an email, text message or in person, allow yourself to pause for a moment. Sometimes, we might feel angry or disappointed in the heat of the moment. You can benefit from taking a step back, collecting your thoughts, and calming down.
In particular, you don’t want to say anything you’ll regret later on from responding so quickly. An angry or aggressive reaction could burn bridges, damage other opportunities, and eventually hurt yourself.
E is for Embrace Your Emotions
You may face a lot of unwanted emotions when dealing with rejection, but suppressing your feelings will not do you any good. When you neglect your feelings, you never get a chance to deal with them properly.
Allow yourself to cry if you want to, vent to a friend, or process these emotions alone. It’s okay to feel vulnerable or down for a while; rejection can be tough but so are you! Give yourself time to let your feelings exist and be processed.
J is for Just Breathe
Take a deep breath and engage in activities to help you cope with rejection or feel better. Mindfulness practices help people find peace in the present moment and center themselves again. Engaging in hobbies has been seen to reduce stress and increase self-esteem. Just do whatever brings you comfort when you are facing obstacles in life!
E is for Evaluate
After the initial shock and emotional reaction to rejection pass, allow yourself to think back on what happened. Reflect on the scenario and evaluate how you may have ended up here. Although this process can be painful, you can learn a lot from it.
It’s important to reevaluate your behaviors and plans for your next step. For instance, your resume may need to be improved or you need to prepare more for interviews. If you want more insight into the situation, go to a trusted friend or loved one and ask their opinion on the situation.
Something very important to learn is, DON’T BE TOO HARD ON YOURSELF. There are not always clear reasons for rejection. For instance, you may believe you didn’t get the job because you are not good enough; yet the real reason my be the CEO hired her friend’s daughter. Learn from the past while also showing yourself compassion!
C is for Consider
By being honest with yourself and the situation, you can grow and learn to be better for next time. Consider these lessons when planning your next step ahead. Rejection can sting, but it can also lead you to new opportunities or situations you would have never expected to come across! Use all the closed doors in your life as lessons for the time when you finally will walk through and achieve! These rejections can help empower yourself to develop resilience – resilience is your ability to recover or bounce back from a setback.
T is for Try Again
Don’t let rejection stop you from moving forward and pushing ahead! You have so much potential within you. The best way to handle rejection is to understand that rejection is just a bump in the road to success that is waiting for you.
Keep putting yourself out there. Change your mindset and accept that rejection is part of life. You’ll never know what opportunities are out there until you try again!
Reminders for Rejection
- Self-improvement and development can help us improve our lives, but we don’t always need to be in this process. We should be able to appreciate who we are and accept that person. In some cases when we get rejected, it doesn’t actually have anything to do with us and doesn’t mean we have to correct anything. Sometimes, we are already qualified, but someone else just came along who was considered a better option for the position.
- Being rejected doesn’t make you lose your worth – you are always worthy even when you fail. This is why working on self-esteem and internal worth is key to a happy life.
- You will be the one to give rejection at certain points in your life; remember the pain you’ve felt when you were rejected. Use this memory to spread as much kindness and empathy as you can. Try your best to be courteous and respectful with your rejection.
- You might find that you are happier with how your life turned out after a certain rejection in your life – life can always unfold in different ways! You will never miss out on what is meant for you!
Consider Therapy to Cope with Rejection
If you find it hard to handle rejection, you are not alone! Therapy can help you manage stress or anxiety surrounding rejection and find support.
If you want help dealing with rejection, Mind Connections wants to help you! Our therapists can support you in building self-esteem, dealing with any stage of a relationship (even your single life or stages of rejection), or providing job coaching to help you cope with rejection.
Content Creator, Victoria Gallo; Reviewed by Dr. June Cao