Our wonderful billing specialist, Jeff, participated in an interview about his experience with Rejection Sensitivity and the impact it's had on his life. Take a read here!

An Interview on Rejection Sensitivity

Interviewer: Can you describe a specific instance where you felt intense rejection sensitivity? What happened, and how did it affect you emotionally and behaviorally?

Jeff: RS has always been pretty common in my life, especially when I'm working on solo projects. There have been numerous times when I have been working on projects for hours and hours, and get great feedback from everyone, and then one person negatively judges my work, and it absolutely crushes me to the point of abandoning it, no matter how great others think it is. I just feel like a complete failure and I feel embarrassed to show it to anyone else. 

Interviewer: How has rejection sensitivity influenced your relationships with your family, friends, and colleagues?

Jeff: I have very few friends because of rejection sensitivity. Usually if I am really good friends with someone and they reject something I do, even if it's constructive, I often pull away and lose contact with them. The feeling can be an extreme form of anger, pain, or both, and it often affects me for days. When it first happens the anger part insists that they were never a friend in the first place, and it's their loss if we're not friends, while the pain side literally feels like my heart is in my throat. It's hard to breathe and my chest feels like it's on fire. Over the course of a few days the intensity goes down quite a bit, and maybe I'll reach back out, but I often won't. My problem is from the very start I know it's an irrational reaction, but my brain overpowers my logic and makes it much larger than it has to be. 

Interviewer: How did you first realize that what you were experiencing was rejection sensitivity, and not just typical feelings of rejection or criticism?

Jeff: Probably around 17 years ago at my factory job in a previous life. I noticed that my emotional reactions to criticism were much more intense and prolonged compared to others. I looked it up one night and fell into that rabbit hole. It's also where I got the inkling I might have ADHD, and started becoming aware of the war that's constantly going on in my head between many voices telling me how I have to control my emotions, with each having a different way of controlling them. 

Interviewer: What coping strategies have you found most effective in managing your rejection sensitivity? Can you share any personal anecdotes about using these strategies?

Jeff: Talking openly with my partner about my feelings has helped me feel more supported and less isolated. I have also met a few other people with the same thing going on, and it helps to have others around me that understands the struggles that are inherent with RS. I have also been working on my emotional control, the most important thing I feel I have learned so far is having the ability to understand when I am in that state that I am there because that was a choice I made, I didn't have to get angry or upset, why do I have to care what they think? And ultimately it's not their fault that I had this strong reaction. Having that perspective has helped me get a lot of my emotions in check and come back to logical reasoning where I can now usually cope with criticism, though I still have a massive issue with conflict avoidance. 

Interviewer: Has rejection sensitivity affected your academic or professional life? If so, how?

Jeff: Plenty of times. There were plenty of times in my old job where I had really great ideas, but would not bring them up because upper management was stuck in the "old ways'' and I knew they were going to rip my idea apart, even though I knew for a fact it was more effective. In my academic life I've had a very recent one that I will talk about on our upcoming podcast, but a more distant one was when I started Capella University. As a perfectionist (which I hate being, thanks dad for pounding in my head to always do things right the first time), I prided myself on all the 4.0s I got on everything. I had one research paper that I was extremely interested in doing, it was about gentrification in the US, and I actually spent a lot more time on the paper than I did all my other papers, and in the end I got a 3.5 on it. Still great, right? No. I took it personally, I might as well not even have done it, and this time it was just pure anger. How could they give me a 3.5 when I spent hours upon hours more on it than I did all the other papers that I got a 4.0 on? It was also a topic I was extremely passionate about, and in the end I felt like all that effort was pointless because the instructor didn't see the passion I put into the paper, she only saw the flaws in my citations. I really felt like dropping out because what's the point in continuing if I can slack off and do papers at the last minute and get a perfect score, but actually put love and research into something, only for them to look past that and criticize something completely unrelated to the research? Luckily I was talked out of it, but I did harbor quite a bit of resentment towards that school until I transferred to Antioch. The rest of my papers at Capella were bare minimum, and a 4.0 every time. I hated it. 

Interviewer: How does rejection sensitivity impact your hobbies and projects, like woodworking or game development?

Jeff: Rejection sensitivity plays a huge part as to why I don't finish my projects. In addition to what I mentioned above, sometimes if I'm working on something and I see an issue I can't fix, or that I overlooked, I will just abandon it so I don't run the risk of someone criticizing it. To me, something not being seen at all is better than something being seen with a minor flaw that people might not even notice. It is the only reason I stopped making art. I used to make art all the time, loved it, and I was really great at it. At one point someone must have made a judgment against one of my pieces and that was the end of it. The last time I made a serious piece was 22 years ago, and I still fear making art because of what happened then. 

Interviewer: What role has therapy or professional help played in your journey with rejection sensitivity?

Jeff: My partner, of course, is a therapist, so she has been an invaluable resource in helping me work through all of my issues (I hate that word, but that's how I personally see them). I have made great strides in my personal development compared to who I was 5 years ago, but there is still quite a bit of deep rooted stuff that comes up every so often. I also noticed from us talking a lot of things are intertwined together, such as my perfectionism, rejection sensitivity, and conflict avoidance are all weaved together in most cases to some degree, and depending on the situation, I have to decide which of the three would be best to work on first, and it's not always clear. Take for example my art. I won't make art because I'm extremely fearful of someone rejecting it, but why would someone reject it? Because it's not perfect, and then when they reject it I feel like others will reject it and that will start conflict between me and others. Which one is the one I address first? This I feel is best answered by working with a therapist, as they have more knowledge about how different thought processes work together. Trying to do it yourself is going to lead to you believing you're broken because you just can't figure out how to fix yourself, because nothing works. 

Interviewer: How has your perspective on rejection sensitivity changed over time? Do you view it differently now than you did in the past?

Jeff: Working on my rejection sensitivity is a fairly recent thing. I have been working extensively on many things over the past 5 years, and this is one of my next steps. I still view it as a flaw, which I know I shouldn't, but I'll get there if/when I finish working on getting it fully managed. 

Interviewer: Are there any specific moments or achievements in your life that you’re particularly proud of overcoming rejection sensitivity?

Jeff: Going to school has helped my rejection sensitivity more than anything else. When I first started I never talked in class, and I only did bare minimum aside from that one paper. Now, at Antioch, I see my value and often evaluated by the instructors as being a major contributor to class discussions. I understand the content and often find myself challenging it, which has in turn also helped with my conflict avoidance. I think a lot of it is because it is a learning institute, people won't be rude, at least not in my experience, so I feel safe speaking my mind, knowing that I'm not going to be bashed or shamed for having my own thoughts about something. I realized a very large part of rejection sensitivity is just having confidence in yourself, so that when something goes wrong, having the "Okay, I can fix this!" instead of the "Of course this happened..." mentality plays a much bigger role than one would think. 

Interviewer: What advice would you give to others who might be experiencing rejection sensitivity?

Jeff: Find other people who are rejection sensitive, more than likely some members of your family have it too, find support groups online, or seek out a therapist. The most important thing in finding a therapist is to make sure you click with them, and find out if they have any lived experience with it, as someone who knows about it through books and someone who has been there are two completely different things. You have to live it to know how it feels, and someone who hasn't experienced it will not know how it feels, and therapy isn't going to be as effective then. Until then, if you feel yourself losing control, just step back and take a deep breath, it really works! Understand that the way you feel is a choice, tell yourself that, you don't have to care about what they say, and that oftentimes won't eliminate the sensitivity, but it will reduce its impact on you in the moment and offer you a little bit of clarity.