fear of rejection

How I Released My Fear of Rejection and Abandonment

One of the consequences of being a sensitive child growing up with emotionally unavailable parents was that I didn’t feel loved and accepted for who I was. I developed a strong fear of rejection and abandonment which lasted long into adulthood. It would most often come up in conversations with women, especially if I got the sense that they didn’t like me or didn’t seem to want to talk to me.

For example, I was at a birthday dinner for a female friend a few years ago and was sitting next to an attractive young woman who my friend worked with. We struck up a conversation which went quite well and lasted for several minutes. After a while when there was a lull in our conversation, she turned to the woman sitting on her other side and started talking with her instead of me. I broke out in a sweat. (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

12 Adult Signs That You Experienced Emotional Abandonment In Childhood

If we were surrounded by emotionally available adult caregivers as an infant, our developing brain and nervous system learned to regulate our emotions via a healthy emotional attachment to the adults around us. However if we were surrounded by emotionally unavailable adults who routinely dismissed, minimised or suppressed both their own emotions and ours, we experienced emotional abandonment.

Being denied the emotional connection we needed as an infant can have a traumatic effect on our developing brain. Emotional abandonment can lead to Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) or what Susan Anderson calls PTSD of Abandonment in adults. The primary result is that we fail to develop healthy adult emotional regulation and can often end up feeling overwhelmed by our own emotions. This effect can last long into adulthood until we find a way to address it.

Emotional abandonment is a massive problem even in communities and families that are otherwise free of overt abuse. It’s fairly easy to recognise when you’ve been on the receiving end of physical, sexual or emotional abuse as a child and most adults recognise that reaching out for help is the appropriate, responsible and shameless thing to do.

However, with emotional abandonment the problem is fundamentally one of neglect and this is more difficult to recognise. We typically only have our own experience of childhood to compare against in identifying what is and isn’t normal or healthy. When you’re just a kid and everyone around you is avoiding emotional connection, it’s hard not to conclude that this is how to live. (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

Handling Rejection When Approaching Women

Rejection is generally the number one fear most guys have when it comes to women. For many years, I was too terrified of rejection to approach the women I was attracted to, which is why I decided I needed to get them to approach me instead. It’s normal to fear rejection; it’s an instinctual response going back to the days when rejection from the tribe meant certain death. But that’s not the end of the story; rejection is no longer terminal and this fear can be overcome. I’m still working on overcoming my fear of rejection, and here are some simple strategies that I find helpful for handling it:

Remember It’s About Them, Not About You

Approach with a fun, playful, curious attitude.

Rejection stings because we turn it into a story about us: We get rejected and conclude that we’re not good enough, not worthy enough, not deserving enough, not interesting enough, not attractive enough. Any insecurity about ourselves is immediately linked to the women who we think has rejected us. Then we generalize and assume that if one woman rejects us, every woman will reject us because there is something wrong with us. It’s all about us.

The antidote to this is to remind us that rejection says more about them than it does about us.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago