Darius Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 Part two in the series I'm doing on the fear of rejection. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AynRand Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 Very nice video series, really informative. Great perspective of of the fear of rejection. My original thought's on loneliness were evolutionary based, like when somebody rejects you it could strike a nerve that you are doing something wrong, and the better you perceive that person that's rejecting you the better they have done from evolution, so when you are rejected that interferes with basic evolutionary processes of survival and reproduction. I hope that made sense, but you view has certainly expanded my thoughts on this issue. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 Darius, Do you think that our unconscious fear of rejection, say with regard to public speaking, is in some cases affected by a rational, instantaneous assessment of our present circumstance (e.g. who is in the audience) or do these deeper emotions inevitably follow from past trauma like neglect? Another way of asking this would be once we have dealt with our abuse and gone through therapy / self discovery, how reliable is our 'gut feeling' fear for predicting the danger of a given situation? Great video! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darius Posted December 31, 2014 Author Share Posted December 31, 2014 AynRand, it's good to know my video created some new thoughts on the subject for you. Matt D, from what I have observed and experienced both in my self-work and my work with clients, the feelings of social fear and anxiety most people struggle with are way too strong compared to the situation at hand. Sure, one can feel strong fear when talking in a serial killers' convention, but this scenario is not highly realistic. Or perhaps if you are trying to close a $10 million deal and a lot of things are at stake. Or if you are in front of a group of armed soldiers or policemen or politicians, and you haven't payed your taxes for years, and you are insulting and threatening them (but why would you do that?). In other words, social phobia / fear / anxiety is, as all emotions are, valid to the degree it accurately reflects the situation we are in. If there indeed is serious danger to our wellbeing or our property, then the fear we feel at the moment adequately warns us about what is going on. The problem is, these are not the issues most people are struggling with. Most people who suffer from fear of rejection experience it on daily basis and in daily situations: What will this person think of me if I say this? Should I do that? Can I say this? But what if they won't like me? What if they will think I'm stupid or uninteresting? And so on... The fear a person feels in those situations is way too strong compared to their situation, as objectively there is no real danger to their wellbeing or property but the person usually feels something truly terrible will happen. Quite the contrary; usually pretending to be someone who you are not and trying to please others at the expense of yourself can cost you a lot of resources. And, as I've mentioned, all those irrational thoughts and fears, as all irrational emotional reactions and disturbing thoughts, come from one's early environment and their bond with their primal caregivers. What happens when you work on yourself, though, is that those irrational fears go away—meaning they fundamentally indeed were related to the past, because the external situations didn't change. I hope this helps!I'll talk about all of this in the next couple of videos. They're done, but that I plan to upload them after the holiday season is over. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 Darius, you said that very well. Thanks! Indeed all fears are not created equal. I think you are saying that a fear of rejection cannot occur if we have sufficiently worked on ourselves because those who reject us are not worthy of our fears! Other kinds of fears, like walking into a lion's den, are rational and will produce a justifiable emotion. I can understand why telling someone that his or her fear is irrational would be disorienting for that person. We rely on our fear to process danger and if that feeling is in fact dysfunctional we would rather deny than believe we are broken and unable to function (in the wild this would be a certain death sentence). I think it's important to point out to people that their emotion processing ability is not broken but rather locked in a dungeon. I look forward to watching the next videos in the series. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darius Posted January 4, 2015 Author Share Posted January 4, 2015 Matt D, you're welcome. And yes, the emotional reaction, per se, is correct. All emotional reactions give us valuable information about our life. The problem is that quite often a person's emotional reaction is not a reaction to the present, but to the past (or at least for the most part). When I say "inadequate," I mean that such a reaction—objectively and in the context of the current situation—is either too strong (overwhelming anger when you drop something down) or too weak (i.e., repressed or minimized anger when somebody violates your boundaries). My point in the series is that the fear of rejection we feel as adults is the unprocessed fear of abandonment we felt when we were children—because as adults we are not dependent and helpless anymore. Remembering it and reminding people of it can be very useful, liberating, and empowering.I'll probably eventually record a video based on the comments in this thread. By the way, part three is already up: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts