and that's the thing that fascinated
scientists at the beginning when it came
to rejection why do they hurt so much
why does it hurt so much there's just so
many ways in which we can get rejected
we get turned down by potential dates we
get turned down by potential employers
our friends go to lunch with out us our
parents don't approve of our lifestyles
but all of them have one thing in common
and that is they really really hurt so
they wanted to study it the thing is you
have to be able to catch rejection in
action if you want to study it you know
you can't just take your research
assistance to a local singles bar and go
oh look that dude just got shut down
quick give him the questionnaire that's
not gonna work so how do you recreate it
so here's what they did and you're
sitting in the waiting room and there
two other people in the waiting room and
there's a ball on the table and one of
them takes the ball and goes up you know
and throws it to the other person and
the other person catches it to go and
throws it to you and you catch it
and you throw it back to the first
person who then goes and throws it to
the second and the second doesn't throw
to you throws it back to the first
person and now they are tossing the ball
and you're excluded now how would that
make you feel now most people think two
strangers in a waiting room didn't toss
me a ball big whoop I don't care but it
turns out we care quite a bit because
this is a paradigm that has been used
dozens and dozens of time and everyone
who goes through it reports feeling
significant emotional pain so they said
let's run the experiment again they took
them in and they go okay we come and
clean those our research assistants it
wasn't real the whole thing was rigged
now does it hurt and if you were like
yeah it still hurts
so scientists would like what is going
on in our brain here with this rejection
thing like how come it's so unreasonable
I mean we're telling people it wasn't
real and they're still hurting so they
put people in a functional MRI machine
they wanted to see literally what
happens in the brain and what they found
was shocking to them because what they
saw was at the same pathways in the
brain light up when we get rejected as
light up when we experience physical
pain they ran the experiment again and
gave half the group of people Tylenol
and the people who got tylenol reported
less emotional pain now I'm not
suggesting that you go out on your next
date
hacking tylenol why are we wired to
experience rejection so severely why and
the answer is because of our
evolutionary past because we grew up in
in tribes and we couldn't survive
outside them being ostracized from your
tribe was a death sentence but it also
explains why we feel things so harshly
and today we don't live in small pockets
of humanity so the opportunities for
rejection are innumerable so let's look
at how people typically respond to
rejection vodka they reach for the
bottle not a good idea turns out that
when you stuff your feelings down with
alcohol up again and the other thing we
often do is we turn to food we try drown
our sorrows with food now needless to
say these responses don't really work
very well so what do we need to do there
are several wounds we need to treat but
the most urgent of them is that we'd
need to do something to revive our
self-worth one of the ways that is most
common in terms of how people do that is
positive affirmations those are
statements like I am
attractive and worthy I'm going to be a
great success but when we do studies
about them what we find is that positive
affirmations don't work well why is that
why is it that when your self-esteem is
low telling yourself that you're going
to be successful and people are going to
love you and everything is going to be
great
why would that make you feel bad well
when a statement falls within the
boundaries of our belief system we'll
accept it and when a statement falls
outside the boundaries of our belief
system will reject it and so when you
are feeling really unworthy of love and
you're telling yourself unworthy of
success
your unconscious mind will reject that
statement so what should you do well
there is another kind of affirmation
that actually does work and that's the
one I'm going to suggest it's called
self affirmations and the thing about
self affirmations is they are generated
by you so you know they fall within the
boundary of your belief system because
you are the one that has to come up with
them make a list of five qualities
attributes that you have that you really
believe are valuable in whatever the
domain is and then you write a brief
essay one or two paragraphs about one of
the items on your list you really
elaborate why that's an important thing
and that will actually remind you of
self words that you actually have that
will make you feel better doing that now
some people say to me I've tried it it
didn't work and I'm like you've made the
list and you wrote the essay no no no I
just thought about those things and I
thought about why they were important no
no that's like saying I was hungry so I
thought about the food I had in my
fridge
turns out I'm still hungry you know no
you have to write the essay we have to
make the list because making the list is
like taking the food out of the fridge
and cooking it and writing the essay is
how you eat it it's how you absorb it
your brain means for you to think about
it to process it to write it that's how
the message gets absorbed because it's
so obvious to us that we need to monitor
our physical health we need to monitor
our
that's very very clear to us but it's
not clear to us at all that we you need
to monitor our psychological health and
really hope that the next time you
experience some kind of psychological
injury you won't just hurt though you'll
try applying emotional first-aid
you