6 Ways to Cope with Rejection

By Therese J. Borchard

Your husband ditches you for a girl half his age after 23 years of marriage. The tenth job interview you’ve been on results in another ding letter. Your friends get together for a beer and don’t extend an invitation to you. We all endure rejection, but for us sensitive types, it can be devastating and the stings can last years or even an eternity. “Humans have a fundamental need to belong. Just as we have needs for food and water, we also have needs for positive and lasting relationships,” says C. Nathan DeWall, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky. Recent research finds that rejection has serious implications not only for a person’s psychological state, but also for a society in general. According to Kirsten Weir of the American Psychological Association, social rejection can influence emotion, cognition, and even physical health. How do you move on and believe in yourself after such heartbreak? Here are a few places to start.

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Get a Superficial Boost

Depending on how deflated you feel, you might not have the capability of going deep and feeling the pain. Confronting the intensity of an emotion can disable a person if he or she is in a fragile state. An alternative? Starting with something a bit more superficial like hair highlights to ease the pain.

Researchers from Ruhr Universität and the University of Basel found that persons who underwent plastic surgery felt less anxious and had more self-esteem than the patients who didn’t, which isn’t to say you need to run off and get yourself worked on. The study merely reiterates my philosophy that sometimes a manicure can be just as effective as a therapist appointment, or maybe you could get a manicure on your way to your therapist.

Make a Self-Esteem File

I’ve discussed my self-esteem file before. It’s basically a folder that holds every compliment anyone has ever given to me. Secure, stable, confident people don’t need one, but folks like myself who battle low self-esteem every other day have to be reminded of their good qualities on a regular basis. I suggest asking two or three of your best friends to list ten of your best qualities and put those in a folder to jumpstart the project. That’s what I did seven years ago. My therapist asked me to make a list of ten of my best qualities and I couldn’t do it. So she told me to ask my friends. I was embarrassed. Ashamed. Why should I need to do this? But my self-esteem file has saved me from weeks of self-loathing.