Stop Letting Fear of Rejection Drive Your Life With These Simple Steps

Is setting boundaries intimidating because you worry that people will get mad or abandon you if you do?

Do you avoid telling the truth or setting limits out of fear?

Or do you people to keep the peace and avoid rejection?

If you’re nodding your head, this episode is for you because I’m talking about how fear of rejection is the common root of many of our self-abandoning behaviors, what this fear costs us, and steps you can take to overcome it.

https://youtu.be/SoeVEXpQ9fg

Prefer the audio? Listen here.

Why Are We Afraid of Rejection?

Fear of rejection is extremely common in humans. From a biological and physiological perspective, back in the cave people days, we needed the community to survive. Rejection meant death. This fear is a survival mechanism for us.

We can also develop a fear of rejection based on what we witnessed in childhood.

If you come from a long line of people-pleasers who placate others or walk on eggshells, you may have learned to avoid rejection or anger early on.

Sometimes, we can be so sensitive to rejection that we’re not even discerning about the quality of the human who might be rejecting us!

Here’s an example.

Years ago, a therapy client was freaking out because she thought a guy she had just started texting was going to ghost her.

I suggested we back up and asked her why she liked him. At the end of the session, it became clear she didn’t. She was just hypersensitive to any perceived amount of potential rejection.

Based on how amplified her fear was, I suspected that her fear wasn’t really about a guy she didn’t even like. I thought she was having a transference from an old injury. I was right- she had a rejecting mother and a punitive father.

Our family of origin influences our relationship with rejection in different ways.

I was like my client when I was younger, trying hard not to be judged or rejected.

I was such a people-pleaser that I wanted everyone in my high school to like me, even if I didn’t like them. And if they didn’t, I took it personally. Why don’t they like me? I’m perfectly likable. Everyone likes me! 

Why? Because I felt rejected by my father after feeling like I was born the wrong gender. (You can read about my father wound here.)

Regardless of what we experienced in our family of origin, most of us don’t want to be rejected because it doesn’t feel good!

Cost of Living with Fear of Rejection

It’s costly to let our fear of rejection drive our decisions.

When we make decisions from this place of fear, we people-please, self-abandon, over-function, and end up resentful.

Our decision-making suffers, too. Our fear of rejection can override the desire to know the truth of how we feel like my client freaking out before questioning whether she liked the guy.

One of the most significant costs of living with fear of rejection is not being authentically known. 

We often give people corrupted data about ourselves by not telling the truth to avoid rejection. It matters, even if it’s small.

The other day, I showed one of my sons a TikTok video of tap-dancing brothers I like. He said, “I’ve never really been into tap. It’s not my thing.”

He wasn’t saying anything bad about me liking it, but him telling the truth allowed me to know him more authentically.

Have you been in this situation? Did you tell the truth or feign enthusiasm only for a pal to continue sharing stuff with you that you have no interest in? (I think a lot of us do the latter!)

Being authentically known has to be one of your top priorities in life because it’s the thing that makes life satisfying and deepens the intimacy in your relationships.

Think about the relationships in your life where you don’t feel known. Isn’t it painful to feel like it’s either all about the other person, or like they have a misperception of you?

“Let them misunderstand you” energy is circulating online, which I get, but I also don’t want you to behave in ways that encourage people to misunderstand or not know you.

Fear of rejection also comes at the expense of our self-worth. Even when we disagree, ‘ ‘Going along to get along’ reinforces the idea that we must hide parts of ourselves.

Eventually, this behavior wears away at our self-esteem. It also creates anxiety because trying to avoid rejection at every turn requires hypervigilance.

We may have a fear-based narrative running through our minds about things that haven’t even happened. There’s all this anticipatory planning that goes into avoiding rejection when it might not even occur.

This takes a lot of bandwidth. I usually tell my therapy clients, “Let’s try to manage this if it happens, once, rather than mentally running through it dozens of times.”

We want to be mindful of this negative, fearful, catastrophic voice and narrative to prevent it from overly informing our behaviors and decisions.

Overcoming Fear of Rejection

You may live your life trying to avoid rejection for many reasons. To overcome this fear, you first need to raise your awareness around why you relate to it the way you do.

In the guide, you’ll find questions to uncover your rejection blueprint. The more you understand your relationship with rejection, the easier it becomes to change your behavior.

I also want you to consider embracing the idea that you and your relationships are not that fragile. It’s okay to disagree with someone or set a boundary.

The child within us often drives and amplifies our fears of abandonment or rejection. The fear is more about them than it is about the adult you.

Looking at what you’ve experienced and accomplished as an adult can help you recognize how resilient you are. We’ve all survived rejections in some form or another and we’re still here.

To assure your inner kid that you’ll be okay, find evidence of times when you’ve asserted yourself and it worked out or wasn’t a big deal. Most of us have this proof, but it can be harder to access when we’re in a state of fear.

And if a relationship ends because you’re no longer willing to self-abandon, it has to be okay because any relationship built on your self-abandonment is not healthy.

This is why we need to prioritize our relationship with ourselves over our fears of rejection. Doing so empowers us to make better decisions, talk true, and be true to ourselves. And we’re the only ones who can!

The right people and circumstances will find you when you’re authentic. When you’re acting ‘as if,’ placating, or walking on eggshells, you’re not being yourself. You’re attempting to manage or control other people’s feelings, thoughts, or judgments of you, which is exhausting.

If our relationships inspire us to act this way, we have to question whether they’re right for us.

Another way to raise awareness around your fear of rejection is to take an inventory. In which relationships does this fear come up the most?

To get to the bottom of it, you can use the 3 Qs, which I’ve included in the guide. Ask yourself, 1) who does this person remind me of? 2) where have I felt like this before? 3) how or why is this behavioral dynamic familiar to me?

Those 3 Qs can help you figure out whether you’re having a transference like my client was. For example, if you had a rejecting and cold parent, and you’re particularly sensitive to rejection from your boss, your boss may remind you of that parent.

The last idea I have for you comes from my mother. She taught me to take my fears down the “what if?” highway when I was younger.

If I had done this with my client, who was afraid of being ghosted, it might have looked like this:

“I’m so afraid; I feel like this person is stepping away from me!”

“Okay, if they are stepping away, then what?”

“I’m going to feel bad.”

“Okay, then what?”

“I’ll feel sad I didn’t get to know them.”

“Okay, then what?”

“I’ll feel rejected and embarrassed.”

“Okay, then what?”

Eventually, the answer is then nothing. Life goes on. You swipe left or right on the next person. The sun still comes up tomorrow.

Walking down the “what if?” highway and repeatedly asking, then what? regarding things that feel catastrophic can help you gain perspective.

Even in terrible scenarios, unless something is life-threatening, the sun will come up tomorrow. You’ll make it through.

I hope this episode empowers you to start taking steps to overcome living in fear of rejection. If it did, let me know in the comments or on Instagram!

Have an amazing week and as always, take care of you.

P.S. If you enjoy the topics I cover here, I invite you to join my membership where I host four Q&A calls every month and answer your questions on boundaries, relationships, codependency, and more. When you join, you also get access to my four signature courses. Get all the details and sign up here! I’d love to have you.