- How do you overcome a fear of rejection?
This hits really close to home, because honestly,
this has been my central struggle for my entire life.
When I was younger, I really just craved acceptance.
I craved popularity, I craved being loved.
And that led to me being bullied mercilessly
in elementary school, as the harder I tried to fit in,
the harder I tried to be the class clown,
the harder I tried to impress people
with skills that I didn't have,
the more I was found to be annoying by my peers,
or pathetic by my peers, or an easy mark,
as someone they could bond over making fun of me.
They could bond over tearing me down and insulting me.
And if they did it hard enough and bad enough,
then I would cry, and that would be the ultimate reward
is just breaking me.
And that went on for about six or seven years
of my very young life.
Came home to a brother who was eight years older than me,
who is a wonderful man,
and with whom I have a very close relationship now,
but he was a bully.
He was one of my childhood bullies.
And you know, I've talked about it in other videos
how I worked through this,
in some ways how I, in middle school,
actually in the high school era,
like I started to reach out
to the other freaks and geeks, right, and include people,
and find the people who were sitting alone at lunch,
and were bullied.
And we started to bond together, right,
and band together, and gave each other acceptance.
But you know, my first girlfriend broke up with me,
and then the next four girlfriends broke up with me.
And I had a lot of successes in college.
You know, I was in a comedy club, I was popular,
I was well liked in a lot of ways.
And yet my greatest aspiration was to marry,
and to have a family, and to share my life with somebody,
and time and time again, I got my heart broken.
You know, "Two times is a pattern,
three times is a fact," is what they say.
So what about five times?
Like, it just really burned into my brain
that I was unlovable when you actually got to know me.
And this fear of rejection
had played into so much of what I do.
I was in the comedy clubs because I wanted acceptance,
because if the crowds cheered my name or laughed,
then I could feel good about myself.
And I did so many things, for fear of being turned down,
including the people that I dated.
Part of the reason those relationships didn't work
is 'cause I kept pretending to be
whatever they wanted me to be.
Whatever they needed me to be,
whatever they were looking for, I would chameleon into that.
And that's what we talked about, the personality types,
that's what a dreamer personality type often does,
because dreamers love to please people,
and love to show people a good time,
and for people to be happy with them.
And so I would keep changing who I was
for the people that I wanted to be with.
In my marriage, in the rest of my life,
it has shown up like minimizing, like justifying,
blame shifting, making excuses, being outright dishonest,
or telling half truths, or hiding the truth.
I've broken trust, you know,
I've hurt the people I care about,
all because I wanted them to like me.
The past year in particular
has been one of my greatest years of growth,
because I realized,
and this is to the meat of the question,
I just wanted to give you some background,
how do we overcome a fear of rejection?
When rejection is no longer scary.
And how do we make rejection no longer scary?
By embracing that we are enough.
In my case, I didn't truly love myself.
In my case, I was always looking to others,
perhaps from childhood, to affirm my worth.
If my peers, instead of bullying me, accepted me,
then I had worth.
Or if they included me in the group,
even if the whole reason and the whole point
to have me in the group was to have someone
to kick around and make fun of,
at least I belonged somewhere, right?
That my entire life, my love wasn't good enough for me.
Loving myself, I didn't understand the concept.
I had a rational surface level appreciation of it.
Yes, love yourself, it's a great and beautiful thing.
but I didn't realize when I was sad,
I could be the one to comfort me.
And if you're a God person, people say,
"Well, you've always got God."
And I personally believe that.
But I also know that God leaves you hanging sometimes,
not because of a lack of love, but for your growth.
My conception of God is a lot like Crush
in "Finding Nemo," when his little son,
like, falls out of the Eastern Australian current, the EAC,
and Marlon's freaking out, like, "We gotta go save him."
And he is like, "Chill out, bro,
let us see what Squirt does solo."
And Squirt like struggles and fights,
and gets back to his father,
and his dad's like, "I knew you could do it, yay."
Like, I do believe in a higher power that's there for me,
and that helps me.
But so often I've realized,
because I conceptualize God as a Father,
there are times when my son wants me
to go have a conversation with his friend,
or his friend's parents, because they've had some struggle.
And I'm like, "You're coming with,
and you're doing the talking.
I'm just here so you're not alone, right?"
That, very often, even if I'm right,
and there is a God, and God loves us,
and God gives us power and strength,
that there's still a lot of the time
that he expects you to step up and do it.
And for years, I've let my wife, I've let my parents,
I've let other people do things for me,
and I would shine like where I wanted to shine.
And I know we're talking about a concept,
and this isn't meant to be a confessional,
but I get real and vulnerable with you
because I want you to embrace that it's okay
that you are struggling with this.
I'm somebody that,
I don't say this with any amount of vanity,
I just say this matter of factly,
I'm aware that there are a fair amount of people
who look up to me.
There are things that I've accomplished that are admirable.
There is advice that I give that is helpful,
and I wrestle with this.
Okay, there's no shame in this.
Overcoming fear of rejection looks like,
look in the mirror for who you see,
and find love for what you already are.
And by that, I mean most of us who struggle
with a fear of rejection are not very rejecting of others.
We're very accepting of others.
We welcome them in, warts and all, whatever your flaws are,
I love you, I see you, I want you here.
We treat them with compassion,
because to us, just like any other person,
they're a collection of strengths,
and a collection of weaknesses.
And their weaknesses don't make them
any less worthy of love.
And yet with ourselves, for whatever reason,
we think we're freaking special,
that our weaknesses mean that we don't deserve love,
that we have to hide them.
And maybe that's what we were taught.
Maybe we were raised by or surrounded by intolerant people.
I wasn't raised by intolerant people,
my parents were wonderful.
I was surrounded by intolerant people every day at school,
and sometimes at home with my brother,
and sometimes with my sisters.
But if someone mistreats you because of your weaknesses,
it's not because you're unlovable,
or you deserve rejection.
It's because they wrestle with intolerance.
It's because they have things that they haven't learned
to unconditionally love.
They haven't learned to see people and to love them.
And when I talk about unconditional love,
I'm not talking about unconditional,
you're welcome in my life.
I love people that I don't welcome in my life,
'cause I don't trust them, I get that.
But that's not what I'm talking about.
And loving yourself unconditionally,
and realizing that when I'm sad, I can comfort myself,
that all the power to accomplish anything
that I need to accomplish is already within me.
And if you believe in God, great,
then believe that God gave you that power.
But it's still within you.
The skills are there, the tools are there,
the ability to learn is there.
Next thing is to recognize where the need
for acceptance outside of yourself came from.
To some extent, it's a natural human thing, right?
We look for acceptance outside of ourselves.
But where does that come from?
Usually it comes from a memory, or a series of memories
where we were rejected.
So how do you work through that?
You ask yourself, how were you not safe, accepted,
or loved for who you naturally are?
What coping mechanisms did you learn
as you sought acceptance?
And are you willing and ready now to forgive yourself
for coping mechanisms that you've outgrown, right?
Look at how you cope with rejection,
and ask yourself is this serving me now?
Does it help me now?
If the answer's yes, great.
If the answer's not, we look for healthy replacements.
But recognize the good job you did in keeping yourself safe.
This is something that I've had to do a lot lately,
which is to give myself a lot of compassion.
And sometimes we don't want to forgive ourselves,
until the people in our lives have forgiven us.
But we can't put a timeline on their forgiveness.
And forgiving ourselves
isn't just letting ourselves off the hook.
It is saying, okay, that's what I did.
Maybe it was the best I knew how to do then.
Maybe I knew what to do better, and I didn't.
But holding a grudge towards myself,
being down on myself doesn't help me out of this.
It doesn't help me believe that I can change.
It just weighs me down.
Forgiveness is necessary.
Guilt serves a purpose, but guilt should be short term.
Guilt should be, I recognize what I did was harmful,
and I'm pivoting towards new behaviors now.
And then you leave the guilt behind,
because it served its purpose.
Make sure you show yourself love and compassion,
because the people that reject you,
again, it may be their intolerance,
maybe it's that you hurt them,
and they're still licking their wounds,
and they're still recovering,
and they can't give you love and compassion.
And the whole fear of rejection
came from you needing to get love and compassion
from somebody else in the first place.
How powerful it is to give that to yourself,
and to not see that as a weak, soft consolation prize.
Well, I'm loving myself 'cause nobody else will.
Or I'm having compassion for myself,
'cause nobody else will, 'cause I'm a loser.
No, you're loving yourself because that's where it starts.
And if the people in your life
can't give you love and compassion,
maybe it's not 'cause you're a loser.
Maybe it's because they can't, they're not ready.
Give them the grace and the space they need to heal.
When you look at your coping mechanisms, is this serving me?
You also ask yourself,
is this how I want to keep showing up in my life?
In my case, I realized
that I didn't want to cause anybody else pain,
because of my insecurity, or my fear of rejection.
That what I wanted was to be honest, no matter what.
Even if it was embarrassing, even if it was unpleasant,
because I wanted to look at my,
I wanted to look in the mirror,
because I wanted to look in the mirror
and see an honest man.
I also decided that people couldn't trust me,
unless I was real with them,
which meant laying bare all of my weaknesses,
my flaws, and my vulnerabilities,
and trusting them with those things,
instead of being ashamed of them and hiding them.
Not everybody's going to accept your flawed, broken self.
That's okay, you will find the people who do,
and in the meantime, you can give that to yourself.
The thing that's been most helpful for me,
something that I learned from Alicia,
is to release the old beliefs,
to release the old beliefs that are no longer serving me,
and to receive the truth of the reality
that I want to create,
that believing that I already am,
or that I can be something,
means that I'm already creating it in my brain,
and I'm making space for it to become real.
The way to overcome a fear of rejection,
and to not lose your identity in the process,
is to love yourself with all your broken parts.
And you ask yourself how, how do I do that?
It's actually easier than you think.
Give the same grace and compassion
that you give to others, to yourself.
And if you're not really giving grace
and compassion to anybody, get started.
Thank you for joining me,
as we learn more about our emotions,
and how to move through them, towards something healthier,
something more positive.
I hope to join us for the next time.
I'm Jonathan Decker, signing off.
(gentle music)