essay about being rejected

A Psychology Professor Explains The Best Way To Deal With Rejection

Psychologist mark leary deconstructs the pain we feel when we experience rejection and how to feel better about it..

By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | April 18, 2022

A new study published in Advances In Motivation Science examines the root causes behind the pain of rejection and our relentless pursuit to be accepted by other people .

I recently spoke to psychologist Mark Leary, a former faculty member at Duke University and co-author of the new research, to understand how our value fluctuates depending on our need to belong. Here is a summary of our conversation.

What inspired you to investigate the topic of acceptance and belonging and how did you study it?

My original interest in graduate school involved self-presentation — how people's behavior and emotions are affected by their concerns with others' impressions of them. After studying self-presentation for several years, it dawned on me that, although people manage their impressions for many practical reasons, such as to get a job or repair an embarrassing event, one primary reason that people are concerned with what others think of them is that they want to be accepted and belong to groups.

Making "bad" impressions on other people lowers the likelihood that we will be accepted, develop friendships and romantic relationships , be valued as a group member, and obtain other social rewards.

This realization led me to pivot toward studying how people seek social acceptance and belonging and the impact of acceptance and rejection on people's emotions, behaviors, and views of themselves. Over the past 30 years, we have conducted dozens of research studies that dealt in one way or another with acceptance and rejection, using several research methodologies.

For example, we have conducted controlled laboratory experiments in which we led participants to feel accepted or rejected and measured their responses. We also used questionnaires to ask people about their personal experiences with rejection, and we have studied personality variables that are related to differences in how people seek acceptance and react to rejection.

What sorts of things did you find in this research?

Let me mention just two things that consumed a good deal of our attention after we accidentally stumbled on them.

Being rejected obviously evokes strong negative emotions. However, as we studied emotional reactions to rejection, we realized that researchers had more-or-less overlooked a very important response to rejection: the emotion that we commonly call "hurt feelings."

After conducting several studies of hurt feelings, we concluded that, in fact, hurt feelings is the primary emotional response to rejection, the emotion that occurs most reliably when people feel rejected.

Our research showed that people's feelings are hurt by six primary kinds of events:

• Active disassociation (for example, a romantic breakup)
• Passive disassociation (not being included)
• Being unappreciated
• Being teased

All of these are events that make people feel rejected. Put simply, hurt feelings are the "rejection emotion."

Of course, people who are rejected often have other emotions as well, such as sadness , anxiety , and anger .

Our research showed that these emotions are not reactions to rejection itself but rather to the nature or implications of the rejecting event. For example, rejections that produce a sense of loss cause sadness, rejections that include a threat to well-being or uncertainty about the future cause anxiety, and rejections that are viewed as unjustified cause anger. Only hurt feelings are caused by perceived rejection itself.

A second set of unexpected findings involved self-esteem. As we studied reactions to acceptance and rejection, we found that rejection consistently lowered people's state self-esteem — how they felt about themselves at the moment.

Changes in self-esteem were so strongly and consistently associated with rejection that we concluded that self-esteem is part of the psychological system that monitors and responses to social feedback.

We proposed a new theory, sociometer theory, that suggested that state self-esteem is a subjective gauge of interpersonal acceptance and rejection, an internal reflection of others' feelings about the person.

Not only does state self-esteem reflect people's perceptions of the degree to which they have relational value to others, but increases and decreases in state self-esteem may calibrate people's interpersonal aspirations.

Acceptance increases self-esteem, emboldening people to be more socially confident, whereas rejection lowers self-esteem, leading people to be more socially cautious.

Taking this idea one step further suggests that, contrary to the popular view, people do not need or seek self-esteem for its own sake. Rather, people are motivated to behave in ways that increase acceptance and avoid rejection, and those behaviors are precisely those that raise self-esteem.

So, self-esteem is a psychological meter or gauge. Just as people don't put gas in their cars to simply make their fuel gauge move away from empty and toward full, people don't do things simply to make their self-esteem go up.

Can you briefly describe what makes a person accepted?

People feel accepted when they perceive that they have "relational value" to another person or group of people.

Other people value their relationships with us to varying degrees. Some people value their relationship with us very much, invest a great deal in their connection to us, and would be very distressed if the relationship ended. Other people value their relationship with us only moderately; they may like interacting with us but would be only mildly bothered if they never saw us again. Other people don't value having a relationship with us at all.

We experience "acceptance" when we think our relational value to other people is sufficiently high, but feel "rejected" when our relational value is not as high as we wish. Of course, we all know that some people naturally value us more than other people do, and not everyone values having a relationship with us. We feel rejected when we perceive that our relational value in a particular situation or to a particular person is not as high as we want it to be.

Importantly, people don't need to be actually rejected in order to have the subjective experience of rejection.

For example, people may feel rejected even when they know the other person accepts or even loves them if they believe that their relational value to the person is not as high as they wish at that moment. So our romantic partners can make us feel rejected and hurt our feelings in a particular situation even though we know that they accept and love us.

Your research talks about the far-reaching impact of acceptance and belonging motivation on human behavior. Can you expand a bit on the same? What behaviors did you analyze and what did you find?

In 1995, Roy Baumeister and I wrote an article in which we suggested that the desire for acceptance and belonging may be the most fundamental interpersonal motive — the motive that affects our social behavior more than any other motive. This doesn't mean that we are motivated to be accepted all of the time or by everybody we meet. But concerns with acceptance and belonging underlie a great deal of human behavior, motivating certain behaviors and constraining others.

After publication of this article, many researchers dove into how the motivation to be accepted and to belong affects people's behavior. This motive influences human behavior in many ways, but let mention just five important domains in which our behavior is affected by concerns with acceptance and belonging.

• First, everything people do to enhance their physical attractiveness is aimed toward increasing acceptance, whether that's daily grooming, getting a haircut, trying to lose weight, or cosmetic surgery.
• Likewise, almost everything people do to be liked is motivated by a desire for relational value and acceptance. Most conformity to group norms and social pressure is also motivated by a desire to belong. In order to be viewed as an acceptable, valuable group member, people must conform to basic group norms.
• Although many researchers have viewed achievement motivation as quite distinct from the motive to be accepted, in fact, a great deal of achievement-related behaviors are motivated by a desire to increase one's relational value and be accepted. Think of what would happen if achievement was met with criticism, devaluation, and rejection instead of praise and acceptance.
• Perhaps the most ongoing and pervasive effect of approval and belonging motivation is on all of the things we do to be viewed as a good friend, partner, employee, group member, or member of society. Interpersonal interactions and relationships are guided by social exchange rules regarding how the individuals are expected to treat one another. A number of such rules have been identified including reciprocity, honesty, fairness, dependability, cooperation , and some minimal level of concern for other people's needs.
• People obviously prefer to have connections with those who abide by social exchange rules because people who violate these rules are viewed as poor social exchange partners who might disadvantage other people. So, concerns with acceptance and belonging underlie a great deal of polite, civil, ethical, and prosocial behavior.

Note that I'm not saying that a desire for acceptance is the only reason people behave in ways that enhance their appearance, help them be liked, conform to group pressure, lead them to achieve, or follow social exchange rules. (Sometimes they do these things to manipulate or take advantage of other people, for example.) But a concern with acceptance and belonging appears to be the primary driver of these behaviors.

In this world of judgments, how do you advise people to start feeling more accepted in their own skin?

Although being accepted is exceptionally important for people's well-being, simply feeling accepted can create its own problems unless people's feelings of acceptance and rejection are accurately calibrated to their actual relational value to other people.

Like all monitoring systems, the psychological systems that monitor and respond to social cues work best when they provide reasonably accurate information about what other people think of us.

So, simply trying to feel more accepted in one's skin isn't necessarily helpful.

The problem, of course, is that it's very difficult to determine how valued and accepted you actually are. Other people usually don't provide explicit social feedback, and the social cues we use to infer what other people are thinking about us are often quite ambiguous. This leaves a great deal of room for people to either overestimate or underestimate their relational value in other people's eyes, both of which can create behavioral miscalculations and emotional problems.

To make matters worse, our research shows that people tend to underestimate their relational value, interpreting relatively neutral social feedback as if it is rejecting.

For example, we tend to have negative, rather than neutral, reactions to learning that someone feels neutral about us. What this means is that most people probably go through life feeling more rejected than they actually are.

And, a history of actual rejection — by neglectful parents or rejecting peers, for example — seems to increase people's tendency to underestimate their relational value.

Viewed in this way, the first step in addressing one's concerns with acceptance and rejection is to examine the evidence as objectively as possible, trying not to either sugar-coat others' reactions or read too much negativity into them.

With that information in hand, we can bolster our feelings of acceptance in three ways:

• By learning to dismiss the negative reactions of people whose opinions of us really don't matter,
• Seeking connections with people to whom we would have higher relational value,
• Or, if needed, making changes in ourselves that might increase the degree to which other people value having connections with us.

How does this fear of judgments impact the psychological health of a person?

Excessive concerns about negative evaluations and possible rejection obviously undermine psychological well-being.

People who have a high fear of negative evaluation tend to score higher in social anxiety because social anxiety arises from the belief that one will not be perceived in ways that promote acceptance.

Fear of negative evaluation also makes people particularly vigilant to cues that might reflect rejection and to a tendency to give a worst-case reading to cues and feedback that might convey low relational value.

These concerns also lead to reticence and inhibition, to shyness, in an effort not to say or do things that might lower one's relational value further.

Can this have physical impacts as well?

Anything that increases anxiety and stress can certainly have undesired physical effects, so people who are excessively concerned with rejection have some sorts of problems as people with other ongoing sources of anxiety and stress, cardiovascular, and gastrointestinal problems.

How can medical professionals like therapists and psychologists help in such cases?

When helping people deal with rejections, mental health professionals, as well as friends, parents, and others, can help the person work through a couple of issues.

First, is the person's perception of the situation accurate? Is his or her relational value as low as he or she thinks it is? If the answer is "no" — that is, the person is perceiving rejection where none exists — then steps can be taken to try to correct the misperception.

However, if the answer is "yes," the best response depends on the nature of the situation, the cause of the rejection, and whether the rejection was a one-time thing (a romantic breakup, for example) or an ongoing pattern of being excluded, ignored, or bullied by others.

We can help the person troubled by rejection understand the nature of the rejection and his or her role in it, then formulate a plan both to deal emotionally with the rejection and, if needed, to take practical steps to reduce the likelihood of similar events in the future.

Did something unexpected emerge from your research? Something beyond the hypothesis?

We certainly knew from the beginning that people are universally concerned with being accepted and react strongly when they experience rejection. What surprised me is how little it takes to make people feel relationally devalued and rejected.

In our experimental studies in which we led research participants to feel rejected, we obviously had to use very weak methods to induce rejection for ethical reasons. In almost all of these studies, the participants did not know one another and had no reason to think they would ever meet again.

In fact, in some studies, participants never saw one another or learned each others' identities, and they interacted over an intercom or by exchanging written answers on sheets of people. And the nature of the rejections was quite minor.

For example, participants were told that another participant preferred to work with another person rather than them on a laboratory task or received feedback that another participant had rated them as average rather than positively. Importantly, none of these minor "rejections" had any consequences on the participants' lives.

But even though these were seemingly meaningless rejections with no consequences whatsoever by people the participants didn't know and would never see again, we consistently got strong effects.

Participants who were rejected in our studies consistently experienced more negative emotions (hurt feelings, sadness, anxiety, and sometimes anger), showed a loss of state self-esteem and had very negative views of those who had rejected them.

Given that such trivial rejection experiences had such powerful effects, it's not surprising that concerns with rejection permeate our lives.

Rejection: Dealing with the Challenges of Being Turned Down

Rejection – a word that carries a weight and stings the heart. It’s something that most of us have experienced at some point in our lives, whether it be in relationships, job applications, or creative endeavors. The feeling of being denied or dismissed can leave us feeling dejected and questioning our worth. But what if I told you that rejection is not always a negative thing?

In its simplest definition, rejection refers to the act of refusing or dismissing something or someone. However, when we delve deeper into the concept, we realize that it is more than just a mere outcome. Rejection is an opportunity for growth and learning. It pushes us out of our comfort zones and forces us to reassess our approach.

When faced with rejection, it’s important to remember that it doesn’t define us as individuals. Instead of dwelling on the disappointment, we should embrace rejection as a stepping stone toward success. By analyzing the reasons behind the rejection and identifying areas for improvement, we can adapt our strategies and come back stronger than before.

Rejection is an inevitable part of life, but how we respond to it determines our future trajectory. So let’s reframe our perspective on rejection and view it as a catalyst for personal development rather than an obstacle to overcome. Embrace the lessons learned from each rejection and use them as fuel to propel yourself forward on your journey toward success.

Understanding Rejection

Rejection is a universal experience that we all encounter at some point in our lives. It can come in various forms, whether it’s being turned down for a job, rejected by a romantic interest, or receiving negative feedback on a project. While rejection may initially leave us feeling disheartened and discouraged, it is important to understand that it is not necessarily a reflection of our worth or abilities.

One key aspect of understanding rejection is recognizing that it is often subjective and influenced by numerous factors beyond our control. The decision-making process of others can be influenced by personal biases, preferences, or even external circumstances. This means that sometimes rejection has more to do with the other person rather than ourselves.

It’s also crucial to acknowledge that rejection can serve as an opportunity for growth and self-improvement. By reflecting on the experience and seeking constructive feedback, we can learn valuable lessons about ourselves and our approach. This introspection allows us to identify areas for development and make necessary adjustments moving forward.

Moreover, understanding rejection requires maintaining a positive mindset and resilience. Instead of dwelling on the disappointment, we should strive to view rejection as redirection towards something better suited for us. Embracing this perspective empowers us to persevere through setbacks and continue pursuing our goals with renewed determination.

Lastly, it’s important to remember that everyone experiences rejection at some point in their lives – even the most successful individuals have faced their fair share of rejections along the way. Recognizing this commonality helps us realize that we are not alone in this journey and provides solace during difficult times.

In the end, understanding rejection involves recognizing its subjectivity, viewing it as an opportunity for growth, maintaining a positive mindset, and acknowledging its universality among all individuals. By embracing these perspectives, we can navigate through rejection with grace while continuing on our path toward success.

Common Types of Rejection

Rejection is an inevitable part of life, and it can come in various forms. Understanding the common types of rejection can help us navigate through difficult situations with resilience and perspective. Here are a few examples:

• Professional Rejection: In the professional realm, rejection often manifests as job rejections or unsuccessful pitches for projects. It can be disheartening to receive a “thank you, but no” email after putting hours of effort into an application or proposal. However, it’s important to remember that these rejections are not personal attacks on our abilities or worth. Rather, they are opportunities to learn and grow from experiences.
• Romantic Rejection: Romantic rejection is another type we encounter in life. Whether it’s getting turned down for a date or experiencing heartbreak after a breakup , romantic rejection can be emotionally challenging. It’s essential to understand that compatibility plays a significant role in relationships and that rejection doesn’t necessarily reflect our value as individuals.
• Social Rejection: Social rejection occurs when we feel excluded or ignored by friends, acquaintances, or social groups. It may happen due to differences in interests and opinions or simply because people have their own circles already established. While social acceptance is desirable, it’s important not to internalize every instance of exclusion as a judgment of our character.
• Creative Rejection: Artistic pursuits often involve facing creative rejection at some point along the way. Writers receive countless manuscript rejections before finding the right publisher; musicians face criticism before achieving recognition; painters have their works declined from exhibitions before receiving accolades later on. Creative rejection is subjective and should be seen as an opportunity for improvement rather than a reflection of talent.
• Self-Rejection: Lastly, self-rejection can be one of the most damaging types we experience internally. When we doubt ourselves and undermine our abilities without giving ourselves a chance to succeed, we are essentially rejecting our own potential. Overcoming self-rejection requires building self-esteem, embracing self-compassion, and challenging negative thoughts.

By recognizing these common types of rejection, we can reframe our perspective and approach them as opportunities for growth rather than personal setbacks. It’s important to remember that rejection is a natural part of life’s journey and doesn’t define who we are or what we’re capable of achieving.

Dealing with Professional Rejection

So, you’ve put your heart and soul into a project or a job application, only to be met with that dreaded email or phone call – the one that starts with “We regret to inform you…” Professional rejection can be tough to handle, but it’s an inevitable part of life for many of us. Here are some tips on how to navigate through the disappointment and come out stronger on the other side:

• Acknowledge Your Emotions: When faced with professional rejection, it’s natural to feel a range of emotions, such as disappointment, frustration, or even anger. Allow yourself to acknowledge and process these feelings without judgment. It’s okay to take some time for self-care and reflection before moving forward.
• Learn from the Experience: Every rejection is an opportunity for growth and learning. Take a step back and evaluate what could have been done differently or improved upon in your approach. Perhaps there were gaps in your skills or areas where you could have showcased your strengths better. Use this feedback as valuable insight for future endeavors.
• Seek Feedback: If possible, reach out to the person who delivered the rejection and politely ask for constructive feedback on why you weren’t selected or chosen. This information can provide valuable insights into areas where you can improve in order to increase your chances of success in the future.
• Maintain Perspective: Remember that professional rejection is not a reflection of your worth as an individual or professional. Often, there are multiple factors at play beyond your control – from internal company dynamics to specific requirements they were looking for at that particular moment. Keep a positive mindset and remind yourself that setbacks are temporary hurdles on the path towards success.
• Stay Motivated and Persevere: It’s easy to let professional rejection knock down your confidence and motivation, but don’t let it define you! Surround yourself with supportive friends, mentors, or colleagues who can uplift you during this challenging time. Keep pushing forward, staying determined, and focusing on your long-term goals.

Dealing with professional rejection can be disheartening, but it’s important to remember that it happens to everyone at some point in their career. By embracing the experience as an opportunity for growth, seeking feedback, and maintaining a positive mindset, you can transform rejection into motivation and ultimately achieve your professional aspirations.

Coping with Personal Rejection

Dealing with rejection can be a challenging and emotionally draining experience. Whether it’s being turned down for a job, being rejected by a romantic partner, or receiving negative feedback on your work, personal rejection can leave you feeling hurt, confused, and even questioning your self-worth. However, it’s important to remember that rejection is a natural part of life, and everyone experiences it at some point.

Here are some strategies to help you cope with personal rejection:

• Allow yourself to feel: It’s completely normal to feel disappointed and upset after facing rejection. Give yourself permission to acknowledge these emotions and allow yourself time to process them. Ignoring or suppressing your feelings will only prolong the healing process.
• Don’t take it personally: Remember that rejection is not a reflection of your value as an individual. Often, it has more to do with external factors such as timing, circumstances, or the preferences of others. Try not to internalize the rejection and instead focus on learning from the experience.
• Seek support: Reach out to trusted friends or family members who can provide emotional support during this challenging time. Talking about your feelings with someone who cares about you can help alleviate the pain of rejection and provide valuable perspective.
• Practice self-care: Engage in activities that bring you joy and help boost your self-esteem. Take care of yourself physically by exercising regularly, eating nutritious meals, and getting enough sleep. Engaging in hobbies or pursuing interests outside of the situation that caused the rejection can also be beneficial in shifting your focus away from negativity.
• Learn from the experience: Use this opportunity for growth by reflecting on what you could have done differently or what lessons you can take away from the situation. Rejection often provides valuable insights into areas where we can improve ourselves or our approach.

Remember that coping with personal rejection takes time; there is no quick fix for overcoming these feelings completely. However, by implementing these strategies and being kind to yourself throughout the process, you’ll gradually build resilience and emerge stronger from the experience.

Overcoming Fear of Rejection

Facing the fear of rejection can be a daunting task for many individuals. It’s natural to feel apprehensive about putting ourselves out there and risking rejection, whether it’s in relationships, career opportunities, or personal endeavors. However, overcoming this fear is crucial for personal growth and success. Here are some strategies that can help us conquer our fear of rejection:

• Recognize the power of mindset: Our thoughts and beliefs play a significant role in shaping our experiences. Instead of viewing rejection as a reflection of our worth or abilities, we should reframe it as an opportunity for growth and learning. Embracing a positive mindset allows us to bounce back from rejections with resilience and determination.
• Build self-confidence: Confidence acts as a shield against the fear of rejection. By working on building our self-esteem and acknowledging our strengths, we become better equipped to handle potential setbacks. Engaging in activities that challenge us, setting achievable goals, and celebrating small victories along the way can boost our confidence levels.
• Face your fears gradually: Taking small steps outside our comfort zone helps desensitize us to the fear of rejection. Start by seeking out low-stakes situations where you have less attachment to the outcome. As you gain confidence and experience positive outcomes, gradually increase the level of risk involved.
• Learn from each experience: Every instance of rejection is an opportunity for self-reflection and growth. Instead of dwelling on what went wrong or blaming ourselves excessively, we should focus on extracting valuable lessons from each experience. By analyzing what worked well and areas for improvement, we can refine our approach moving forward.
• Surround yourself with support: Having a strong support system can make all the difference when facing the fear of rejection. Seek out friends, family members, or mentors who uplift and encourage you during challenging times. They will provide valuable perspective and remind you that setbacks are temporary roadblocks on the path to success.

Remember, overcoming the fear of rejection is an ongoing journey. It requires patience, persistence, and a willingness to step outside our comfort zones. By adopting a positive mindset, building self-confidence, gradually facing our fears, learning from each experience, and surrounding ourselves with support, we can overcome this fear and reach new heights in our personal and professional lives.

Building Resilience to Rejection

Rejection is an inevitable part of life. Whether it’s a job application, a romantic relationship, or a creative endeavor, we all face rejection at some point. It can be disheartening and demoralizing, but it doesn’t have to define us. Building resilience to rejection is essential for maintaining our mental well-being and pursuing our goals with confidence.

Here are a few strategies that can help strengthen your resilience in the face of rejection:

• Embrace a Growth Mindset: Instead of viewing rejection as a personal failure, adopt a growth mindset that sees setbacks as opportunities for growth and learning. Understand that even the most successful people have faced multiple rejections before achieving their goals. By reframing rejection as feedback and focusing on self-improvement, you’ll develop the resilience needed to bounce back stronger.
• Cultivate Self-Compassion: Rejection often triggers feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy. To counteract these negative emotions, practice self-compassion. Treat yourself with kindness and understanding, acknowledging that rejection is not necessarily a reflection of your worth or abilities. Embrace self-care activities such as exercise, meditation, or engaging in hobbies that bring you joy.
• Seek Support from Others: Surround yourself with supportive friends, family members, or mentors who can provide encouragement during challenging times. Sharing your experiences and seeking guidance from those who have overcome similar obstacles can offer valuable insights and perspectives.
• Learn From Rejection: Use each experience of rejection as an opportunity for growth by reflecting on what went wrong and how you could improve in future endeavors. Analyze any patterns or common themes in the rejections you encounter and make adjustments accordingly.
• Set Realistic Expectations: While it’s important to dream big and aim high, setting unrealistic expectations can lead to repeated disappointment when faced with rejection. Be mindful of setting achievable goals and timelines, allowing yourself room to learn and grow along the way.

Remember, building resilience to rejection is an ongoing process. It takes time and practice to strengthen your ability to bounce back from setbacks. By adopting a growth mindset, practicing self-compassion, seeking support, learning from rejection, and setting realistic expectations, you can develop the resilience needed to persevere in the face of adversity.

Turning Rejection into Motivation

When faced with rejection, it’s natural to feel disheartened and discouraged. However, instead of letting rejection bring you down, you have the power to turn it into motivation and fuel for success. Here are a few ways to transform rejection into a driving force:

• Embrace the lessons: Every rejection holds valuable lessons if you’re willing to learn from them. Take the time to reflect on what went wrong and identify areas where you can improve. Whether it’s honing your skills, expanding your knowledge, or enhancing your approach, use each setback as an opportunity for growth.
• Reframe your mindset: Rather than viewing rejection as a personal failure, reframe it as redirection towards something better suited for you. Understand that setbacks are not indicative of your worth or capabilities but rather part of the journey toward finding the right path. Adopting a positive mindset will help you bounce back stronger and more determined.
• Set new goals: Rejections can serve as powerful motivators to reassess and refine your goals. Use this setback as a chance to evaluate whether your aspirations align with your true passions and values. Adjusting your goals based on newfound insights can lead you toward more fulfilling opportunities that resonate deeply with who you are.
• Seek support: Surround yourself with individuals who believe in you and uplift your spirits during challenging times. Reach out to mentors, friends, or colleagues who can offer guidance and encouragement when facing rejection’s sting. Their support can provide fresh perspectives and inspire renewed determination.
• Persevere relentlessly: Remember that success rarely comes without multiple rejections along the way – some of history’s most successful individuals faced numerous setbacks before achieving greatness. Stay resilient in pursuing your dreams despite any negativity encountered along the path.

By embracing these strategies, turning rejection into motivation becomes achievable even during difficult times in our lives or careers.

As we navigate through life’s ups and downs, it’s important to remember that rejection is not a reflection of our worth or abilities. Instead, it can be the catalyst for personal growth and future success if we choose to harness its power. So, let rejection fuel your motivation and propel you towards even greater achievements.

In this article, we have explored the topic of rejection from various angles and delved into its impact on individuals. Rejection is a universal experience that can be difficult to navigate, but it’s important to remember that it is a natural part of life. Let’s recap some key takeaways:

• Rejection builds resilience: While being rejected may initially feel disheartening, it offers an opportunity for personal growth and development. Each rejection can serve as a stepping stone towards success if we approach it with the right mindset.
• Learning from rejection: Instead of dwelling on the negative emotions associated with rejection, we should strive to extract lessons from these experiences. Reflecting on what went wrong can provide valuable insights and help us improve in the future.
• Overcoming fear of rejection: Fear of rejection often holds us back from taking risks or pursuing our dreams. By acknowledging and confronting this fear head-on, we can liberate ourselves and open doors to new opportunities.
• Developing resilience strategies: It’s crucial to develop coping mechanisms that enable us to bounce back from rejection stronger than before. This may include seeking support from loved ones, practicing self-care, or engaging in activities that boost our confidence.
• Embracing perseverance: Rejection should not be seen as a definitive outcome; rather, it serves as a temporary setback on our journey toward success. Embracing perseverance allows us to stay motivated and continue striving for our goals despite obstacles along the way.

Remember, everyone faces rejection at some point in their lives – even the most successful individuals have experienced setbacks along their path to achievement. By reframing our perspective and viewing rejection as an opportunity for growth rather than a personal failure, we can harness its power to propel us forward.

So embrace those rejections, learn from them, and keep pushing towards your goals with unwavering determination – because success often lies just beyond the walls of rejection!

Related Posts

Can You Be in Love with Two People: Unpacking the Complexity of Human Emotions

Emotions vs Feelings: Understanding the Intricate Differences

Why getting better about being rejected can help you succeed in life

Getting the thin instead of thick envelope from the college admissions office. Picked last for the kickball team. Being told, “let’s just be friends.”

Rejection hurts no matter if it’s the big kind (not getting that job that was so right for you) or less significant ( getting turned down by a Tinder match ).

Our feelings are hurt, our self-esteem takes a hit, and it unsettles our feeling of belonging, says Guy Winch, PhD , psychologist and author of " Emotional First Aid: Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Hurts ". “Even very mild rejection can really sting,” he tells NBC News BETTER.

But there are ways we can handle it, so that the fear of rejection doesn’t stop us from putting ourselves out there.

“Concern with rejection is perfectly normal,” explains Mark R. Leary, PhD , professor of psychology and neuroscience at the Interdisciplinary Behavioral Research Center at Duke University, where he researches human emotions and social motivations. “But being excessively worried about it — to the point that we do not do things that might benefit us — can compromise the quality of our life,” Leary says.

Rejection actually fires up a pain response in the brain

Leary defines rejection as when we perceive our relational value (how much others value their relationship with us) drops below some desired threshold. What makes the bite in rejection so particularly gnarly may be because it fires up some of the same pain signals in the brain that get involved when we stub our toe or throw out our back, Leary explains.

Research , for example, in which functional MRI scans compared brain activity in people who’d experienced rejection with brain activity in people who’d experienced physical pain, found that many of the same regions of the brain lit up (and those regions had previously been linked to physical pain).

Subsequent research found that the pain we feel from rejection is so akin to that we feel from physical pain that taking acetaminophen (such as Tylenol) after experiencing rejection actually reduced how much pain people reported feeling — and brain scans showed neural pain signaling was lessened, too.

The pain we feel from rejection is part of what’s helped humans survive

Psychologists suspect all of this hurt is likely a relic of our evolutionary past — and something that’s helped mankind survive for millennia.

The physical pain you feel when you grab the handle of a pot of boiling water, is a signal to tell you to let go (so you don’t continue to burn your hand). Similarly, the sting of rejection sends a signal that something is wrong in terms of your social wellbeing, Leary says. In prehistoric times, social rejection could have had dire consequences.

“When our prehistoric ancestors lived in small nomadic bands on the plains of Africa, being rejected from the clan would have been a death sentence,” Leary explains. “No one would have survived out there alone with just a sharp rock.”

Therefore the people who were more likely to be sensitive to rejection and more likely to take it as a signal to change their behavior before being shunned, would have been the ones who were more likely to survive and reproduce.

So, we exist today, thousands of years later, as descendants of those prehuman “cool kids” — the ones who were more successful at being valued and accepted (because the kids who didn’t have anyone to eat lunch with wouldn’t have made it).

So even today, Leary says, “rejection gets our attention and forces us to consider our social circumstances.”

It’s the likely explanation as to why we tend to feel more stung by rejection, even, than by failure, Winch adds. Failure is very task-specific (we don’t complete a goal or achieve something) , whereas there’s an interpersonal dynamic to rejection, he says.

'Forget Willpower' Why planning for failure can help you reach your goals

When it comes to better dealing with rejection, you’re going to have to turn off autopilot mode.

The problem is that we tend to face more opportunities to be rejected than ever before in human history (thanks to technology like social media and the Internet). And even though there’s still an interpersonal dynamic, most of the online and real-life rejections most of us face today don’t threaten our survival so much as they did thousands of years ago, Leary says.

The problem is that we tend to face more opportunities to be rejected than ever before in human history (thanks to technology like the social media and the Internet).

But, we’re still wired to react as though they do. “Our brains don’t easily tell the difference between rejections that matter and those that don’t unless we consciously think about it and override our automatic reactions,” Leary says.

You override that response by recognizing when the hurt we’re feeling is rejection, and better responding to the inevitable hurt we feel. “It’s up to us — how we respond and how we handle it in our heads and in our actions,” Winch explains.

Taking these steps can help:

1. Focus on what you do bring to the table

Because most rejection won’t leave you doomed to survive alone in the wilderness, the natural rejection reaction — to withdraw and not put ourselves out there again — isn’t an adaptive response, Winch says. Instead make efforts to revive self-esteem, focus on our positive qualities, and remember why our attributes might be appreciated by someone else in a different situation. All of those things build resilience, so you’ll be better prepared to cope going ahead, he says.

2. Ask yourself if it really matters or you really care

“Responses to rejection are often automatic, even when it doesn’t matter,” Leary says. Research shows we tend to feel a similar hurt after getting rejected by people we don’t necessarily care about — or even those we don’t like — as we do after being rejected by people who matter to us. (One study found that even when the group doing the rejecting was a reviled one — in this case the Klu Klux Klan — rejection still hurt.)

We need to get better at distinguishing whose rejection matters to us (whose we should care about, like that by family or a close friend) versus the inconsequential kind, Leary says.

3. Remember, a lot of times rejection isn’t personal

Most of the rejections we face aren’t personal, Winch says. You didn’t get the job because someone else had previously known and worked with the team, not because you weren’t good enough. Your friend didn’t “like” your Instagram post because she didn’t see it — or didn’t have a free finger to click that button.

Sometimes rejection can be personal, Winch says. “But a lot of times it’s not.”

4. Choose to assume the best rather than the worst

We need to train ourselves to make allowances, rather than assume the worst. Maybe he didn’t text for a second date because he got a job offer out of state or his on-again-off-again ex got back in touch. Maybe it had nothing to do with not liking you.

We oftentimes have no idea what’s going on on the other side of the situation, Winch says. And to be more resilient, we need to sometimes choose the assumption that’s less painful and less hurtful.

5. And do get back out there

The “don’t pay attention to what other people think” lecture parents give when a kid doesn’t get invited to the popular kid's party in middle school doesn’t really help, Winch says. “Now you’re not only feeling bad, you’re now feeling like a major loser for feeling bad.”

Planning something else with friends goes much farther to reinforce you you’re not actually a loser — and you are part of your tribe. We need to reteach ourselves and those around us to get back out there after rejection (whether it’s applying for other jobs or not taking a dating hiatus). Withdrawing doesn’t help the overall goal, Winch says.

MORE FROM BETTER

• How to manage stress so that it doesn't hurt your health
• Stressed? Here's how to tap into a zen feeling (almost) instantly
• How to bounce back from 'headline stress disorder'
• Why the simple act of being in nature helps you de-stress

Want more tips like these? NBC News BETTER is obsessed with finding easier, healthier and smarter ways to live. Sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Everyone Gets Rejected — Here’s How to Move On

Resilience is the key to your success.

The key to achieving your career ambitions comes down to one question: How many times are you willing to pick yourself up after falling down?

• The rate at which you achieve your goals is always going to be a combination of volume, probability, timing, luck, and resilience. In other words, you need to be resilient in the face of rejection.
• The next time you face a setback try using an exercise, titled G.R.O.W., to overcome it.
• Ground yourself in the situation; recognize what you can control; organize your resources; work with your community for support.

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here .

Rejection sucks. Always has, always will.

• Raj Tawney is a freelance writer in New York . He’s currently working on a memoir about his multiracial American identity.

Partner Center

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

student opinion

Have You Ever Benefited From Rejection?

Axel Webber didn’t get into Juilliard — but he did become an internet star. In your life, has rejection ever been a blessing in disguise?

By Callie Holtermann

Think about a time when you experienced rejection. How did it feel in the moment? How do you feel about it now?

Looking back, are there setbacks that you are now grateful to have experienced? Do you believe that rejection can sometimes be a good thing?

An aspiring actor named Axel Webber went viral on TikTok this week — not for achieving his goal of getting into the Juilliard School, but for being rejected. He received reassuring comments from thousands of strangers, as well as messages of support from influential artists like Charlie Puth, Diplo and Jeremy O. Harris.

In “ When Axel Webber Was Rejected From Juilliard, the Internet Stepped In ,” Taylor Lorenz writes:

On Monday morning, Axel Webber, a 22-year-old from Cumming, Ga., a town outside Atlanta, posted a TikTok updating his followers on an audition he’d completed the day before on Zoom for the Juilliard School’s undergraduate drama program. For the past month, Mr. Webber had used the platform to talk about his dreams of attending the prestigious, highly competitive drama school and the big audition that was required for the admissions process. When the verdict from Juilliard came in, Mr. Webber pulled up the message on his computer and read it aloud for his audience of 2.4 million followers on TikTok. It was a rejection. “You are no longer under consideration for admission for Fall 2022,” he read. Mr. Webber looked crestfallen. “Now, we’re going to have to find a different way to be an actor. Thanks for watching the journey,” he said. A Juilliard spokesperson declined to comment about Mr. Webber’s admission for this article. On Monday night, tens of thousands of Mr. Webber’s fans flooded Juilliard’s Instagram account to express their anger. “U R DONE, SOOO DONE FOR NOT GETTING AXEL IN 💀💀💀🤚🏽🤚🏽🤚🏽,” a top comment reads. It has over 21,000 likes. Users started the hashtag #JusticeForAxel and left more than a thousand one-star reviews of Juilliard on Google, tanking the school’s search results with negative reviews. Some fans spoke of planning an in-person protest at Juilliard’s campus to voice their frustration. “I do appreciate all the responses,” Mr. Webber said, “but people are absolutely tearing them to shreds. I’m grateful, but we don’t have to bash Juilliard. I want to spread positivity.”

Students, read the entire article , and then tell us:

When have you experienced rejection? Have the consequences of a rejection ever been different, or even better, than you thought they would have been?

Why do you think so many people rallied behind Mr. Webber online? Did you relate to any aspect of his story?

Do you think that it is important to openly discuss the times we fail to achieve our goals? Why or why not? Why do you think Mr. Webber chose to share his experience?

Some of the people quoted in the article, including the playwright Jeremy O. Harris, now think Mr. Webber’s story may be a marketing ploy. Do you think the story is authentic? Why or why not?

How important do you think elite credentials like a Juilliard degree are to achieving success? Do you think that Mr. Webber is better off for not having gotten in to the school? Why or why not?

Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column . Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Callie Holtermann joined The Learning Network as a senior news assistant in 2020. More about Callie Holtermann

Rejection Sensitivity

Coping with rejection in the academic world, everyone experiences rejection, but you can use it to improve your work..

Posted July 29, 2022 | Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

• Even though having work rejected happens to all academics, it is a terrible feeling.
• Nearly all rejection is a necessary part of improving the quality of work.
• Reframing rejection to be an event that is productive rather than personal is a key to academic success.

Rejection happens to every academic. Papers are not published, grants are not funded, proposals are rejected, and jobs are not achieved. Most academics have many times more rejections than successes. Rejection is best thought of not as a failure but as a necessary step toward success. Knowing this information does not help. Yet rejection stings.

Experienced academics will say, “It is part of the job. Get over it.” This is as useful as classic useless advice like, “Calm down” and “Have you tried not being depressed ?” There are many coping strategies that people use to address rejection. Here is how I think about rejection:

Rejection is part of life. A potential romantic partner is not sufficiently interested. You fail a driving test. A financial investment does not work out as planned. We rarely get everything we want. But some rejection cuts deeper. Imagine being a poet, actor, or artist where your work's rejection reflects your ability to tap into deep elements of your soul.

Academic rejection is also personal as it reflects on our ability, skill, and suitability for a highly competitive career . I think it is a good idea to normalize rejection in academic work. But no matter what anyone says, rejection is simply terrible.

Rejected papers and unfunded projects are ego blows and reinforce our anxiety -driven imposter syndrome . Some reviews feature unnecessarily personal attacks. That style of review hurts the vulnerable and crushes the ego. I am not sure why mean-spirited comments about how “the author would benefit by having a native English speaker edit the paper prior to submission” or how “the author must be an undergraduate student” help improve a paper. When there are actual or perceived personal attacks, I seek consultation with an experienced colleague to ensure I perceive the review accurately.

I often bring less-than-helpful personal reviews to the attention of the editor. Reviewers need to be accountable for their work, and punching down on the vulnerable is not cool. A bit pedantic, but it does help to stand up for yourself and contribute to the productive tone of peer reviews in the future. More useful, mine for nuggets of useful information along with the dreck of personal attacks.

Other reviews and decisions appear to be arbitrary. Or the reviews appear careless and haphazard, which is not unusual for manuscript reviews. After all, reviewers are usually volunteers. You can challenge a review or appeal a decision. But seriously, don’t do that. Move on to another journal. Most appeals reek of late-night texts to your ex. They are just not that into you. You don’t want to publish where the people do not appreciate your work, and you can do better. Remember that are thousands of journals out there. Even worse is when a review is spot-on and perfectly identifies errors. These accurate negative reviews might hurt, worst of all.

The ability to cope with inevitable rejections may be one of the best predictors of success in academia. To continue to work and produce high-quality work despite a reinforcement schedule that is delayed in the best of times and is random and lean in the worst of times requires mindful consideration of what rejection means and how your work can benefit from rejection.

Basic Strategies

It is the work, dummy . I have a single-minded focus on improving. If the editorial decision is accept, then I hope the reviews improve the product. If the editorial decision is reject, then I hope the reviews improve the product. I am not better or worse at my job due to rejection. There is always another project. And there is a home for every paper. You were not rejected. Your manuscript was denied publication in a journal that likely rejects far more than 50 percent of submissions. Repeat after me: it is not me. It is the work.

Make the work better. After rejection, learn, get better, find a new home for your project, get help from a colleague or mentor, improve it, and persist. Even a paper that completely crashes and burns with some fatal flaw can be salvaged for parts for the next project: several paragraphs from the intro, descriptions of some methods, formatting of results, figure designs, and the like can be used to make the next project better.

Rejection is a luxury . Weirdly, I am usually grateful that a random reviewer volunteers their time and expertise to keep me from embarrassing myself by publishing substandard work. Yeah, it’s a love-hate thing. Thanks for teaching me some new things and for finding the flaws I missed, but I am still resentful of you, Reviewer #2. A bit absurd, but it works for me.

Think strategically. Many negative reviews are because little research was put into the fit of the work with the target journal. Carefully read papers published under the editorship of the current editor. Your paper needs to fit perfectly with the type and style of the topic and methods. If the thought is, “I want to publish in Top of the Mountain Journal X , so I will argue my paper that does not quite fit but is different and special….”

Then you are going to have a bad time. Your paper will be rejected. Moreover, a poor fit between paper and journal almost ensures that the reviews will not be productive, or you will receive the merciful rapid desk reject. If you think your work is so pure, brilliant, and perfect that writing in a tone or using a method consistent with the journal’s style and mission is below you, then you will have a bad time.

Editors not only evaluate the quality of research and manuscripts but also curate a collection of scholarship in a volume. Time invested in finding the perfect journal to match your work is time well spent. The same applies to grant proposals for funding agencies.

Have multiple projects rolling into the pipeline . I like to have at least two projects under review at any one time. I am not an especially prolific author of manuscripts, probably below average for a top research university. However, I want to have multiple projects under review to protect my ego. When an inevitable rejection arrives, I have the hope that the next paper will receive a better fate.

Having only one project under review is quite stressful . This is a highly motivating state for me to get something new into the review pipeline. Placing too many personal resources into a single paper that is “your baby” or “put your heart and soul” into a manuscript is a poor use of emotional resources. You produced a thing. Hopefully, you will produce more and increasingly better things.

Share the load . Share the load and the emotional blows of rejections with others. Co-authoring papers has many advantages. An underrated advantage is shared responsibility and commiseration when experiencing rejection. Being a member of an academic writing group that honestly shares ups and downs is also a therapeutic resource.

Being ground down . No single rejection bothers me anymore. A recent situation was that five consecutive projects were rejected. The cumulative effect of the rejections got me down. I wondered if I was experiencing some cognitive decline or was somehow blackballed from publishing. I was afraid to submit another paper. No less than eight people reviewed the next article before I clicked the submit button. I received an Accepted with minor revisions decision, and all was right with the world.

When that rejection comes, here are the stages I go through:

• Profanity. Then I put it away and go on with my day.
• I schedule an hour in my calendar within the week to review the comments carefully.
• I highlight the reviewers’ points, areas, and topics to be revised. Also, note when the reviewers got something wrong because that usually means I was not clear enough.
• Develop a submission strategy to the same journal or a new journal.
• The same journal means point-by-point addressing of the reviewers’ concerns. A new journal means documentation is not needed. But note that even in a new journal, the same reviewer might be assigned due to subject area expertise—and they want to see their ideas incorporated into a new draft.
• In my writing queue, I finish my current project before undertaking major revisions of a rejected paper (FYI—in my mind, Revise and Resubmit decisions are the same as rejections—a lot of work to be done).
• Make revisions (or reanalyze data, rerun the experiment, or whatever is required) with the new journal or improve the fit with the rejecting journal.
• Rework cover letter because the last cover letter didn’t work.
• Submit. Keep those balls in the air and juggle as fast as you can.
• Thank your co-authors. Toast your submission with the adult beverage of your choice. Celebrating submissions is far healthier than celebrating acceptances.

Rejections stink. No way around it. When I worked at a hospital, and my children were asked what their dad does, they would say, “He works at a hospital and helps kids.” When I moved to academia, and they were asked the same question, they would say, “He stares at his computer all day and swears a lot.” Laugh at your rejections. Learn from your rejections. And always have a new project underway. Then your rejections will lead to success.

Steven R. Shaw, Ph.D., is an associate professor of Educational and Counselling Psychology at McGill University in Montreal, QC, Canada.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Therapy Center NEW
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

Understanding what emotional intelligence looks like and the steps needed to improve it could light a path to a more emotionally adept world.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

Featured Topics

Featured series.

A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.

Explore the Gazette

Read the latest.

Complex questions, innovative approaches

Early warning sign of extinction?

So much for summers of love

The upside of rejection.

Corydon Ireland

Harvard News Office

Successes talk about their failures

Want a dose of veritas? Even at a place like Harvard, rejection and failure are regular visitors.

Everyone has a story of a job, a paper, a fellowship application that failed to make the grade. Some rejections sting even years later.

Consider Xiao-Li Meng. He’s a Harvard Ph.D., chairman of a prestigious Harvard department (Statistics), and until this year was editor of one of his discipline’s strongest journals.

But Meng has suffered setbacks, including a rejection letter from one graduate school in his native China (despite near-perfect grades).

As master of probability, he would be the first to tell you that the odds of rejection, for all of us, are perfect.

And he would be the first to tell you that failure is sometimes the pathway to wisdom, or to new opportunity.

Meng was part of a panel last week (April 15) aptly called “Reflections on Rejections,” sponsored by Harvard’s Bureau of Study Counsel (BSC).

Those brave enough to come to the session at the Office of Career Services (around 20 listeners) got a reward: a pink button stamped “Rejected” and a booklet of 28 Harvard stories of personal failure.

The essays include one by a Harvard grad turned down by Starbucks. Others tell tales — softened by the mercy of passing time — of being rejected as novelists, column writers, business school students, lawyers, and jewelry makers.

Then there’s George Church. He repeated ninth grade and flunked out of a Duke University Ph.D. program.

But revenge is sweet. Church enrolled at Harvard the following year, earned a doctorate in 1984, and went on to write the first automated DNA sequencing software, win 10 patents (with others pending), and serve on 22 scientific advisory boards. He’s now a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Computational Genetics.

Despite present-day success, all of the Harvard essayists had experiences with rejection “that stayed with them years and years,” said booklet editor Abigail Lipson, who is the BSC director.

The staying power of rejection was evident to the panelists.

Meng remembers a single flubbed test in college that kept him from eating or sleeping for days.

But he remembers, too, what landed him at Harvard: his rejection from graduate school in China. “I’m really thankful they rejected me,” said Meng. “That’s why I’m here today.”

The panelist agreed that failure is sometimes the nudge you need to send your life in another, more fruitful, direction.

Patricia Hernandez ’04, a research associate at Harvard Business School, came to Harvard with her sights set on medical school — then hit a wall of C-plus grades in her science courses. “I should have realized my passions were elsewhere,” she said — as in the passion she is cultivating now for research and psychology.

“Rejection,” said Hernandez, “is a great signaling tool.”

Lipson called those redirecting moments of rejection “a sharp left” along a career path.

Panelist Lowry Pei ’67 is a professor of English at Simmons College. His first novel was a smash hit — and the next six were all turned down.

“I have harvested a hell of a lot of rejections,” he said, reflecting on the fickle publishing world. “Eventually you decide it’s not about the product, but about the process.” (Pei ended up posting all his novels online.)

Meng is a department administrator and was until recently a journal editor — positions that have allowed him to understand the process of rejection “from the other side,” he said.

“Once I became an editor, I became incredibly brutal” — obliged to review 400 papers a year and still maintain a 15 percent acceptance rate.

With perspective from both sides, Meng offered those suffering rejection what he called “three F-words” of advice: Forget it for 48 hours. Find a way to improve. And “forgive those who rejected you,” said Meng. “Sooner or later, with all your good intentions, you will reject others.”

Meng’s contribution to the booklet was a two-page “statistical theory of rejection.” Its five theorems were a wise invitation to relax.

“For any acceptance worth competing for,” one offered, “the probability of a randomly selected applicant being rejected is higher than the probability of being accepted.”

Another theorem stated what is both obvious and hard to accept: “The probability that you will be accepted for everything you compete for is zero.”

In the audience for the 90-minute panel were students standing at ground zero of a troubled economy, including several seniors 50 days from graduation (and still jobless).

One had been applying for work since February — and the rejections were piling up. She learned one thing, at least, she said. A Harvard degree is no guarantee of landing employment.

Lipson agreed. “There is no one,” she said, “who has never been rejected.”

Share this article

You might like.

Seven projects awarded Star-Friedman Challenge grants

Fossil record stretching millions of years shows tiny ocean creatures on the move before Earth heats up

Despite ‘hippie’ reputation, male bonobos fight three times as often as chimps, study finds

When math is the dream

Dora Woodruff was drawn to beauty of numbers as child. Next up: Ph.D. at MIT.

Seem like Lyme disease risk is getting worse? It is.

The risk of Lyme disease has increased due to climate change and warmer temperature. A rheumatologist offers advice on how to best avoid ticks while going outdoors.

Three will receive 2024 Harvard Medal

In recognition of their extraordinary service

• Bipolar Disorder
• Therapy Center
• When To See a Therapist
• Types of Therapy
• Best Online Therapy
• Best Couples Therapy
• Best Family Therapy
• Managing Stress
• Sleep and Dreaming
• Understanding Emotions
• Self-Improvement
• Healthy Relationships
• Student Resources
• Personality Types
• Guided Meditations
• Verywell Mind Insights
• 2023 Verywell Mind 25
• Mental Health in the Classroom
• Editorial Process
• Meet Our Review Board
• Crisis Support

How to Deal With Rejection

Dr. Amy Marschall is an autistic clinical psychologist with ADHD, working with children and adolescents who also identify with these neurotypes among others. She is certified in TF-CBT and telemental health.

Dr. Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and a professor at Yeshiva University’s clinical psychology doctoral program.

Charday Penn / Getty Images

Why Rejection Is So Painful

How can i deal with a fear of rejection.

Rejection is when we seek out a connection and the object of that connection turns us down.

All people experience forms of rejection throughout their lives, whether they are turned down for a job they wanted, turned down for a date, or experience a friend or romantic partner ending their relationship .

Sometimes, rejection is harsh, and the rejecter might be rude or cruel in their rebuff. Other times, they may let us down gently, and we still experience a strong emotional reaction to the rejection.

Learn about types of rejection and how to cope with rejection in a healthy way.

Press Play for Advice On Dealing With Rejection

Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares strategies for dealing with rejection. Click below to listen now.

Follow Now : Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Google Podcasts / Amazon Music

Emotional pain can be intense and can even manifest physically. Research has found that the network for psychological pain overlaps to some extent with brain regions involved in physical pain. In other words, we can literally feel something like rejection as physical pain.

We Often Engage in Cognitive Distortion

Sometimes we experience specific rejection as universal rejection. For example, if someone does not get a job that they really wanted, they may take the rejection and feel as if they're not qualified for any job in their field instead of believing that the position was just not a good fit.

This is a form of cognitive distortion that makes the rejection seem larger than it really is.

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria

Some people, particularly autistic people or those with ADHD , experience rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD). While RSD is not an official diagnostic term, RSD manifests as strong and severe emotional pain in response to real or perceived rejection. It can be difficult to cope with and cause strong emotional responses.

If you have a history of childhood trauma , you may be more sensitive to rejection as it may trigger memories of abuse and mistreatment.

Additionally, just like different people have different levels of tolerance for physical pain, some experience emotional pain more intensely than others.

Types Of Rejection

Rejection comes in many settings and in different forms. While all rejection is typically painful, you may have stronger reactions to some types of rejection compared to others.

In other words, you may have a different response to the same type of rejection depending on your vulnerability or investment as well.

Relationship and Dating Rejection

When many people think about rejection, they first think about romantic relationships. And during the dating process, rejection may occur at various times in romantic relationships.

Here are some instances of relationship-related rejection:

• Rejection from a stranger : If you ask a stranger on a date and they say no, that is a form of rejection. This might be upsetting, but you might be able to roll with this experience because they did not know you very well and simply might not have been interested. 
• Rejection from someone after a few dates: Someone might agree to a date and then either decline to continue seeing you or ghost you after a few dates. This tends to sting more than an initial rejection, as the person got to know you better before deciding they did not want to see you anymore.
• Rejection from a long-term partner : More significant rejection occurs when you and your partner are in a committed, long-term relationship, and they end that relationship. Sometimes, the relationship is fizzling out, and both parties see it coming. Other times, one person feels blindsided about the breakup. Regardless, breakups tend to be stressful and difficult for everyone involved.

Social Rejection

Not all relationships are romantic. For many, social rejection can be as significant and often even more painful than romantic rejection.

Here are some examples of social rejection:

• When someone doesn't want to be your friend : Being “dumped” by a friend can be incredibly painful. Sometimes friendships end due to circumstances, and you can gradually lose touch, but other times, friends experience a conflict and end the friendship abruptly.
• Not being invited to an event or party : If you find out that some of your friends are planning to get together for a gathering and you have not been invited for some reason (maybe it's an event for couples only and you're single) you may feel rejected.
• Some people still reject those who are neurodivergent/have mental health conditions : Autistic individuals often experience social rejection if they are unable to mask and conform to neurotypical communication styles and standards of behavior. This can leave the autistic person confused if they do not understand what they did “wrong” or why the friend ended the relationship.

Professional Rejection

Rejection can also occur in the professional setting.

Here are some examples:

• Not being accepted to a college of your choice : If you have your heart set on a college of your choice and you receive a rejection letter, you may question your intelligence and your abilities.
• Not receiving a job offer : It can hurt if you get turned down for a job you really wanted and you may feel that you aren't good enough for any other job.
• Not receiving a promotion : You were hoping for a promotion and you may have put in a lot of work and feel that you deserve career success. When you're denied a promotion, it's normal to feel frustrated or even angry that it did not work out.

How Can I Move Past Rejection?

Emotions do not have a set timeline, so you might feel upset or hurt by a rejection for a while. While unpleasant, this is OK!  Here are some healthy and unhealthy ways for coping with and growing from rejection.

Healthy Ways to Cope With Rejection

• Let go of self-blame. Sometimes rejection happens because of a mistake we made, but ruminating on blame can get in the way of moving forward.
• See opportunities for growth. Even if the rejection is due to a mistake, you can take the opportunity to learn from it and change how you would approach a similar situation in the future.
• Engage in self-care . It can be easy to get “stuck” in feelings of rejection, especially if you deal with rejection-sensitive dysphoria . Be gentle with yourself, and utilize coping skills that help you care for yourself.
• Feel your emotions. Emotions demand to be felt. It can be tempting to bottle up unpleasant feelings to move past them faster, but this can cause them to come back more intensely later. It is OK to honor your feelings.
• List your successes. Remember that rejection is specific to the situation, even if it feels bigger than that. It can help to remind yourself of times when you were successful.

Unhealthy Ways to Cope With Rejection

• Don’t take it personally . Again, rejection in one situation is not an indication of your overall worth. Remember that it is specific and situational, and it likely has nothing to do with you.
• Don’t compare yourself to others. Rejection can sting even more when we see someone else succeeding where we feel we fell short. We are all on our own journey, and it is OK if your story looks different from someone else’s.
• Don’t downplay your feelings. Rejection is painful. You may feel tempted to downplay your emotional reaction if you feel like others have it worse, but your feelings are still valid and deserve to be felt.
• Don’t give up. You can grow past this and be successful in the future!

As you go through life, you will inevitably encounter rejection. Understand that you can overcome these painful feelings and move forward. Remember that you are not alone, and your experience is valid. It takes vulnerability and courage to keep trying in the face of rejection, and you can get somewhere amazing when you continue pushing forward.

Eisenberger NI. The neural bases of social pain: evidence for shared representations with physical pain .  Psychosomatic Medicine . 2012;74(2):126-135.

Cacioppo, S., Frum, C., Asp, E. et al. A Quantitative Meta-Analysis of Functional Imaging Studies of Social Rejection . Sci Rep 3, 2027 (2013).

Deguchi NK, Asakura T, Omiya T. Self-stigma of families of persons with autism spectrum disorder: a scoping review .  Rev J Autism Dev Disord . 2021;8(3):373-388.

By Amy Marschall, PsyD Dr. Amy Marschall is an autistic clinical psychologist with ADHD, working with children and adolescents who also identify with these neurotypes among others. She is certified in TF-CBT and telemental health.

Joan Didion Essay About Being Rejected by Her Top College

• February 23, 2021

David Bersell

By Joan Didion

This piece, about the author’s college rejection from her first-choice college, appeared in The Saturday Evening Post April 16, 1968.

“Dear Joan,” the letter begins, although the writer did not know me at all. The letter is dated April 25, 1952, and for a long time now it has been in a drawer in my mother’s house, the kind of back-bedroom drawer given over to class prophecies and dried butterfly orchids and newspaper photographs that show eight bridesmaids and two flower girls inspecting a sixpence in a bride’s shoe. What slight emotional investment I ever had in dried butterfly orchids and pictures of myself as a bridesmaid has proved evanescent, but I still have an investment in the letter, which, except for the “Dear Joan,” is mimeographed. I got the letter out as an object lesson for a 17-year-old cousin who is unable to eat or sleep as she waits to hear from what she keeps calling the colleges of her choice.

Here is what the letter says: “The Committee on Admissions asks me to inform you that it is unable to take favorable action upon your application for admission to Stanford University. While you have met the minimum requirements, we regret that because of the severity of the competition, the committee cannot include you in the group to be admitted. The Committee joins me in extending you every good wish for the successful continuation of your education. Sincerely yours, Rixford K. Snyder, Director of Admissions.”

I remember quite clearly the afternoon I opened that letter. I stood reading and re-reading it, my sweater and my books fallen on the hall floor, trying to interpret the words in some less final way, the phrases “unable to take” and “favorable action” fading in and out of focus until the sentence made no sense at all. We lived then in a big dark Victorian house, and I had a sharp and dolorous image of myself growing old in it, never going to school anywhere, the spinster in Washington Square . I went upstairs to my room and locked the door and for a couple of hours I cried.

For a while I sat on the floor of my closet and buried my face in an old quilted robe and later, after the situation’s real humiliations (all my friends who applied to Stanford had been admitted) had faded into safe theatrics, I sat on the edge of the bathtub and thought about swallowing the contents of an old bottle of codeine-and-Empirin.  I saw myself in an oxygen tent, with Rixford K. Snyder hovering outside, although how the news was to reach Rixford K. Snyder was a plot point that troubled me even as I counted out the tablets.

Of course I did not take the tablets. I spent the rest of the spring in sullen but mild rebellion, sitting around drive-ins, listening to Tulsa evangelists on the car radio, and in the summer I fell in love with someone who wanted to be a golf pro, and I spent a lot of time watching him practice putting, and in the fall I went to a junior college a couple of hours a day and made up the credits I needed to go to the University of California at Berkeley. The next year a friend at Stanford asked me to write him a paper on Conrad’s Nostromo , and I did, and he got an A on it.  I got a B- on the same paper at Berkeley, and the specter of Rixford K. Snyder was exorcised.

So it worked out all right, my single experience in that most conventional middle-class confrontation, the child vs. the Admissions Committee. But that was in the benign world of country California in 1952, and I think it must be more difficult for children I know now, children whose lives from the age of two or three are a series of perilously programmed steps, each of which must be successfully negotiated in order to avoid just such a letter as mine from one or another of the Rixford K. Snyders of the world.

An acquaintance told me recently that there were ninety applicants for the seven openings in the kindergarten of an expensive school in which she hoped to enroll her four-year-old, and that she was frantic because none of the four-year-old’s letters of recommendation had mentioned the child’s “interest in art.” Had I been raised under that pressure, I suspect, I would have taken the codeine-and-Empirin on that April afternoon in 1952. My rejection was different, my humiliation private: No parental hopes rode on whether I was admitted to Stanford, or anywhere. Of course my mother and father wanted me to be happy, and of course they expected that happiness would necessarily entail accomplishment, but the terms of that accomplishment were my affair.

Their idea of their own and of my worth remained independent of where, or even if, I went to college. Our social situation was static, and the question of “right” schools, so traditionally urgent to the upwardly mobile, did not arise. When my father was told that I had been rejected by Stanford, he shrugged and offered me a drink.

I think about that shrug with a great deal of appreciation whenever I hear parents talking about their children’s “chances.” What makes me uneasy is the sense that they are merging their children’s chances with their own, demanding of a child that he make good not only for himself but for the greater glory of his father and mother. Of course there are more children than “desirable” openings. But we are deluding ourselves if we pretend that desirable schools benefit the child alone. (“I wouldn’t care at all about his getting into Yale if it weren’t for Vietnam,” a father told me not long ago, quite unconscious of his own speciousness; it would have been malicious of me to suggest that one could also get a deferment at Long Beach State.)

Getting into college has become an ugly business, malignant in its consumption and diversion of time and energy and true interests, and not its least deleterious aspect is how the children themselves accept it. They talk casually and unattractively of their “first, second and third choices,” of how their “first-choice” application (to Stephens, say) does not actually reflect their first choice (their first choice was Smith, but their adviser said their chances were low, so why “waste” the application?); they are calculating about the expectation of rejections, about their “backup” possibilities, about getting the right sport and the right extracurricular activities to “balance” the application, about juggling confirmations when their third choice accepts before their first choices answers. They are wise in the white lie here, the small self-aggrandizement there, in the importance of letters from “names” their parents scarcely know. I have heard conversations among 16-year-olds who were exceeded in their skill at manipulative self-promotion only by applicants for large literary grants.

And of course none of it matters very much at all, none of these early successes, early failures. I wonder if we had better not find some way to let our children know this, some way to extricate our expectations from theirs, some way to let them work through their own rejections and sullen rebellions and interludes with golf pros, unassisted by anxious prompting from the wings. Finding one’s role at 17 is problem enough, without being handed somebody else’s script.

Joan Didion is an iconic American writer who launched her career in the 1960s after winning an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the ’60s and the Hollywood lifestyle. For more info about Joan Didion, you can visit her website. 

Recent Articles

College essay faqs for professionals, how to turn challenging experiences into effective college essays, the easiest way to write your college application personal statement (#classof2025), help your students write standout college essays, embrace the college essay cliché, learn more about college entrance essays.

• November 18, 2021

Top 5 College Essay Myths & Facts

• June 15, 2023

Tell Your Child to Trust Themself!

• July 31, 2023

How to Answer Any Supplemental College Essay

Get the inside scoop, stick with us, and we'll help take some of the pressure off with relevant, helpful (but not too frequent) emails..

© Wow Writing Workshop

Revise an Unsuccessful College Admissions Essay

Rework a college essay from a rejected early decision or early action application to sell your strengths before you reapply.

Reapply to College With a Revised Essay

Letizia Le Fur | Getty Images

In your revised college application essay, highlight any academic improvements you've made.

Did your dream college reject or defer your carefully crafted early action or early decision application? This is the bad news – but the good news is that, although rejection hurts , you may have a chance to restate your case.

Typically, colleges that defer students who applied via early action or early decision will reconsider those applications with the regular decision cycle.

Some may request updated materials, such as midyear grade reports or standardized test scores, while others may request students not send additional information – be sure to confirm with the school. For students who were rejected, the following advice is applicable if you wish to reapply in next year’s application cycle.

Of course, your second application will need to be more than a repeat of your first. You can change many elements, depending on how much time separates your submissions.

The most important change, however, will be revising your college essay . This is the one part of your application over which you have total control.

Your grades , after all, are the result of four years of work. Letters of recommendation are ultimately drawn from others' opinions. Even if you must submit an otherwise identical application, be sure to rework your admissions essay with these essential strategies.

Acknowledge Your Previous Rejection

First, explicitly acknowledge that this is your second time applying for admission. Resending an essay that is identical to your first signals wishful thinking, with the unspoken assumption that maybe you'll get lucky this time.

The admissions department knows this is your second attempt, but the point is to prove that you are not depending on a lucky break. Rather, you are reapplying because you are passionate about the institution and because you would like the admissions committee to reconsider in light of new information.

Highlight Improvements to Your Application

Clearly outline any aspect of your application that has changed for the better. If you have new SAT or ACT scores, an updated GPA or recently completed a significant project at school, mention these accomplishments. If at all possible, address them in a narrative about your long-term work toward improving yourself.

For example, if you participated in a gap year , highlight the activities that have deepened your understanding of the world and your place in it. Has this affected the major you wish to pursue?

You should speak to your determination to attend your first-choice school.

For instance, focus on the college's attributes that first came to mind when you learned you weren't accepted. Was it the English professor you met on a tour, whose literature class you had hoped to enroll in? Was it the architecture on the central quad? Whatever it is, make it personal but keep a level head.

Above all, be sure to address any specific element that you know, or suspect, caused your rejection. You can do this by highlighting improved test scores or the class you chose for your last semester of high school that addresses a weakness in your transcript.

Just as with the other tip, be sure to display self-awareness. It is important that you understand why your initial application may have been insufficient. If you aren't sure and you can't request specific feedback from the admissions committee, you can always cite the overall competitiveness of the applicant pool .

Discover what

Sell Your Strengths

Finally, don't rely on passion alone to state your case. "I want this so much" is one of the least compelling arguments possible. It is taken for granted that an applicant wishes to be accepted.

Instead, focus on how you will contribute to the college. What unique perspectives or unusual experiences do you have? What leadership roles in student groups or as a volunteer did you hold?

If your original admissions essay focused on a story from your past, reference this in your new essay. You don't have to throw out your entire original essay.

Consider this – if you are applying to art school , you can cite atypical experiences that other art students may not have, such as growing up abroad, an unusual part-time job that has influenced your artistic style and so on.

If you are hoping to pursue a STEM field , emphasize your art projects, backpacking trips or work at an animal shelter, for example – all items that will make the student body more diverse if you are accepted.

Remember, above all, that this rejection does not define you. Reframe it as a learning experience. Be brave, retool your application and forge on.

Tags: students , education , college admissions , colleges , STEM education , STEM

About College Admissions Playbook

Stressed about getting into college? College Admissions Playbook, authored by Varsity Tutors , offers prospective college students advice on Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, SAT and ACT exams and the college application process. Varsity Tutors, an advertiser with U.S. News & World Report, is a live learning platform that connects students with personalized instruction to accelerate academic achievement. The company's end-to-end offerings also include mobile learning apps, online learning environments and other tutoring and test prep-focused technologies. Got a question? Email [email protected] .

Ask an Alum: Making the Most Out of College

You May Also Like

Columbia gives ultimatum to protesters.

Lauren Camera April 29, 2024

Photos: Pro-Palestinian Student Protests

Aneeta Mathur-Ashton and Avi Gupta April 26, 2024

How to Win a Fulbright Scholarship

Cole Claybourn and Ilana Kowarski April 26, 2024

Honors Colleges and Programs

Sarah Wood April 26, 2024

Find a Job in the Age of AI

Angie Kamath April 25, 2024

Protests Boil Over on College Campuses

Lauren Camera April 22, 2024

Supporting Low-Income College Applicants

Shavar Jeffries April 16, 2024

Supporting Black Women in Higher Ed

Zainab Okolo April 15, 2024

Law Schools With the Highest LSATs

Ilana Kowarski and Cole Claybourn April 11, 2024

Today NAIA, Tomorrow Title IX?

Lauren Camera April 9, 2024