How to heal your self-esteem from the pain of rejection

Rejection hurts.

You can have the deepest, strongest growth mindset and the self-confidence of Thor, but rejection still hurts.

It comes in many forms — the date that said no, the editor that spits back your article, the committee that rejected your proposal, or the promotion you earned but didn’t get.

These are hard blows to your self-esteem; like physical blows, they hurt.

Research has shown that the experience of rejection activates the same parts of the brain that are activated by physical pain.

Rejection does, in fact, hurt, and the brain responds accordingly.

Like all wounds, it takes time for the pain to heal, requiring self-compassion.

Advice like “learn from it and improve the next time” doesn’t really help in the moment.

In fact, it might make you feel as if someone is dismissing you and telling you to just “get over it.” You can’t always do that.

You may want to ignore it and move on, but like all wounds that haven’t healed, the hurt lingers and can impair forward movement.

It also may flare up in irritation, anger, or, in its most serious form, depression.

On the other hand, you may ruminate on it, reliving the pain repeatedly.

This is akin to picking off a scab on a wound that hasn’t healed. It just deepens the pain and prolongs the healing.

You may drive yourself crazy trying to figure out how and why it happened, but it’s impossible to be objective while you’re still experiencing the aftermath.

Give yourself time to heal, objectively analyze why and how it happened, and only then, learn from it.

What to do —

I once had a 3-page article rejected with a 3-page excoriation of every sentence in the article. Seriously. I wadded it up in a ball and threw it away after screaming several inappropriate words I won’t share here.

Only after the pain passed did I fish it out of the trash and read it objectively, looking for how I could learn from it.

This taught me some valuable lessons about rejection.

• Time does help heal the pain of rejection.
• Not every criticism is accurate, valid, or worth considering.
• It’s just someone’s opinion.
• Yes, you can learn and improve.
• It still sucks.
• Don’t let it stop you. Ever.

“I know that when a door closes, it can feel like all doors are closing.

A rejection letter can feel like everyone will reject us.

But a closed door leads to clarity.

It’s really an arrow.

Because we cannot go through that door, we will go somewhere else. That somewhere else is your true life.” — Tama J. Kieves, author, speaker

If you’re not careful, social media can become the enemy of your self-esteem.

Social media is pervasive in everyday life and can be good and bad for your self-esteem.

On the positive side, social media is a way of remaining connected to family, friends, colleagues, and others when you can’t be physically present.

It connects you to opportunities, shopping, and services that make the world and information accessible.

It’s impossible to imagine doing business without social media as a tool.

Conversely, it can expose you to criticism, ridicule, and bullying.

Social media can be the dark, nasty home of trolls who delight in tearing others down.

It becomes easy to start comparing yourself to others on social media who appear more successful, attractive, fit, and so on— images of perfect lives that can be impossible for you to achieve.

In addition, the time spent on social media is time not spent with others, aggravating existing feelings of isolation and loneliness.

Psychologists from Ryerson University, Toronto, analyzed two decades of studies on social media use and self-esteem.

While the results were mixed, the prevailing conclusions showed that the negative effects of social media outweigh the positive benefits.

What to do —

Decrease the amount of time spent on social media and increase the time you spend with other people.

Avoid reading sites or posts that make you feel down on yourself, clean up your feeds to purge them of negative messaging, and refuse to get sucked into comparisons with others.

Stop doom-scrolling.

Often, what you see and read on social media isn’t the truth or anywhere near what might be the truth.

Everyone has an agenda and a reason for what they post.

Influencers want you to support their sponsors. Actors want you to see their films, and advertisers want your money, and so on and on.

The best advice is to approach social media with a healthy dose of skepticism and learn to vet what you read for accuracy and truthfulness.

“When it comes to social media, there are just times I turn off the world, you know.

There are just sometimes you have to give yourself space to be quiet, which means you’ve got to set those phones down.” — Michelle Obama

Is your physical environment the culprit in lowering your self-esteem?

Self-esteem isn’t just an inside job; our external environment influences it.

According to Michael J. Formica MS, MA, Ed.M., writing in Psychology Today,

“The environment with which we surround ourselves is very often a direct expression of where we are emotionally and psycho-spiritually — our global state of mind.”

Look around.

What does your physical space look like?

Do you feel safe and secure?

Is it both physically and psychologically comfortable?

Or do you feel like walking out, locking the door, and never returning?

Your physical environment at work and home affects your mood, sense of well-being, and self-esteem.

A neat, clean, orderly environment with well-lit interiors is conducive to positive states of mind and being.

On the other hand, many environmental factors, such as noise, improper lighting, poor air circulation, clutter, and physical obstacles preventing ease of movement, and more negatively affect you and reflect you and your state of mind.

“Untidiness makes us anxious on an instinctive and on a personal level.

Instinctively, we are programmed to have a degree of anxiety about mess due to the health hazard it may present.

Personally, people in messy environments may become anxious about what others may think of their living conditions, the time it will take to clean up, and so on.” — National Counseling Society

 

What to do —

If you have clutter or your space needs a thorough cleaning, start there.

Seeing how much better your environment looks and smells after a sound cleaning is a tremendous sense of satisfaction.

Clear the clutter and create a strategy for keeping it clean and organized.

You don’t have to pare things down to the bare minimum but get rid of what you don’t use or need. There’s a definite self-esteem boost by donating items to charity.

Create open spaces to let the energy flow from room to room and use the right lighting for the activities of that space.

Kitchens need bright lighting for cooking, and living areas need lighting that can be dimmed, and bedroom(s should have soft, warm lighting conducive to slowing down and preparing for bed.

Check out this lighting article from Better Homes & Gardens. (You will leave Medium.com and go to a third-party website.)

The strength of your self-esteem isn’t set in stone

Your self-esteem goes up and down for many reasons and is affected by many factors — some of which are under your control.

When your self-esteem has taken a hit, give yourself time and space to deal with the hurt you experienced, and when you are ready, explore the triggering situation and take steps to mitigate the effects of the trigger on your self-esteem in the future.

Most people assume that they need to understand the origins of their low self-esteem to improve it.

And while it’s true that unpacking the original cause of your low self-esteem can be helpful to an extent, the more important insight is this:

Whatever caused your low self-esteem in the past, it’s your present habits that are maintaining it.

 

In my work as a therapist, the biggest reason I see people struggle with low self-esteem is that they are caught in subtle mental habits that keep them feeling bad about themselves.

If you can learn to identify and overcome these four mental habits, your self-esteem is much higher than you realize.

1. Dwelling on past mistakes

Of course, we all make mistakes. And when we do, it’s normal to feel bad about it:

• We fail to catch simple errors in our work and feel disappointed with ourselves.
• We say something insensitive at a dinner party and feel embarrassed afterward.
• Sometimes we even fail outright: not passing an exam or even getting fired from a job for poor performance and feeling like a failure.

Now, some amount of thinking about and reflecting on our mistakes is healthy and good for our self-esteem because it helps us avoid similar mistakes in the future:

• If you failed a test, it’s probably worth asking yourself why so that you can prepare better next time and learn from that failure.
• If your marriage “fails” because you were consumed with work and never spent quality time with your spouse, it’s probably worth reflecting on that if you want future relationships to improve.

But like many of our best efforts in life, thinking about and reflecting on past mistakes is subject to the law of diminishing returns:

• Spending a couple of hours reflecting on what went poorly during that interview you bombed will probably be very helpful for your performance in future interviews.
• Spending a few hours per week for a few weeks might lead to new insights. Although that’s a lot of time for just a few new insights…
• Spending hours per week for years thinking about how you screwed up that interview… Yeah, probably not worth it!

I use the idea of the law of diminishing returns here because it’s important to frame your thinking about past mistakes in terms of helpfulness.

Just because it’s true that you made a mistake in the past doesn’t mean thinking more about it more is helpful.

 

Helpfulness is what distinguishes healthy reflection from unhealthy dwelling.

And one of the biggest reasons people suffer from low self-esteem is that they get into the habit of unhelpfully dwelling on their past mistakes.

When you reflect on your mistakes and try to use them as learning opportunities, you do feel bad about yourself but that bad feeling gets offset by the new learning and insight you gain — and presumably, the confidence and healthy self-esteem that comes from doing better in the future.

But when you dwell on past mistakes beyond the point of helpfulness, it’s all side-effect and no benefit.

Remember:

1. Just because a mistake is true doesn’t mean thinking more about it is helpful.
2. We are helpless to change past mistakes. Living in denial about that fact by continuing to dwell on our mistakes only hurts us in the long run.

“The past can’t hurt you anymore, not unless you let it.”

― Alan Moore

2. Worrying about the future

Worrying about the future is another mental habit that feels productive but harms your emotional well-being and self-esteem.

Here’s the key distinction to keep in mind:

Planning for realistic dangers is very different than worrying about unrealistic ones.

Our imagination is a powerful tool. But like most powerful tools, it can be used well or poorly…

• Imagining how you might enjoy working in a new career can help you grow and explore new professional options.
• But imagining all the ways you’re likely to fail in any new endeavor will make you anxious and depress your self-esteem.
• You were imagining what would happen if you lost power while on a trip to the cabin for a weekend getaway might help you plan ahead and bring extra flashlights, water, and other supplies that might be helpful.
• But imagining you and your family getting into a car accident driving to the cabin will likely make you anxious and insecure.

Both realistic planning and unrealistic worrying are forms of thinking about dangers in the future.

And while it’s helpful to plan and prepare, worrying is rarely helpful and always comes with two big downsides:

1. Worry makes you anxious. When we get caught in the mental habit of imagining unrealistic fears and worst-case scenarios in the future, we train our brains to be afraid unnecessarily. As a result, we end up feeling unnecessarily anxious. Worry is the engine of anxiety.
2. Worrying lowers your self-esteem. In addition to making you feel anxious in the moment, chronic worry about unrealistic things eventually makes you feel incompetent about your ability to navigate life successfully. And when you feel like that persistently, your self-esteem takes a hit.

Just like thinking about past mistakes quickly hits the point of diminishing returns, so too does thinking about future dangers.

If you’re caught in the habit of worrying about unrealistic fears in the future, you’re getting all side-effect (chronic anxiety and low self-esteem) with no real benefit.

Your ability to think about the future is a tool. And like any tool, it’s useful in some situations and counterproductive in others.

“Worry is a misuse of the imagination.”

― Dan Zadra

3. Ruminating on old injuries

In #1, we discussed how dwelling on our past mistakes hurts self-esteem. Similarly, dwelling or ruminating on injuries or slights against us can be similarly unhealthy.

Of course, when someone hurts us it’s perfectly natural to think about — this is especially true if it’s someone close to us like a parent, friend, long-time co-worker, etc.

Reflecting on how others have hurt us in the past is also helpful to a degree…

Keeping track of who hurts us regularly is an important way to know which relationships are healthy and to be cultivated and which ones are unhealthy and to be avoided!

But like dwelling on past mistakes and worrying about future dangers, thinking about how we’ve been wronged in the past can easily slide into an unproductive and self-esteem-killing habit.

There are a few major downsides to a habit of ruminating on old injuries:

1. Chronic anger and resentment. Rumination leads to anger. And while anger isn’t bad in and of itself, chronically feeling angry can lead to resentment, excessive stress, and relationship conflicts.
2. Avoidance of productive action. Moving on from an unhealthy relationship or old injury is hard. Often it requires setting (and enforcing) healthy boundaries, removing people from your life entirely, or working to forgive someone. Because each of these is quite difficult, our natural inclination is to avoid them (like anything else in life!). And if we’re not careful, it’s easy to procrastinate on doing what you really need to do to move on from an old injury by letting yourself ruminate about it.
3. Lower self-esteem. Finally, allowing yourself to stay stuck in the habit of unhelpful rumination slowly chips away at our self-esteem because, deep down, we know it’s not helpful — and in many cases, actually makes things worse. How many relationships get ruined because of the inability to forgive? How many people stay stuck in their lives because they can’t let go of the past, and as a result, end up ignoring their present and future life?

At the end of the day, the decision to continue ruminating on an old injury or let it go comes down to this:

Do you want to live your life chained to the past or work for the freedom to live your life moving forward?

Because it is morally justifiable, rumination is an especially dangerous trap to fall into. But just because you’ve been hurt doesn’t mean replaying that hurt is in your best interest.

“Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.”

― Corrie Ten Boom

4. Judging yourself for how you feel

You’ve probably heard the term gaslighting before: It means when one person manipulates another person into thinking they’re crazy.

It’s common in many abusive and unhealthy relationships where, for example, one person — in order to maintain control and power in the relationship — convinces the other person that they’re not confident enough to make important decisions by secretly undermining their decisions over time.

And while this is certainly a terrible situation for some people, what’s even more tragic is this:

Many people unconsciously gaslight themselves by getting into the habit of judging themselves for how they feel.

For example:

• When you criticize yourself for being “weak,” whenever you get sad about something that happened a long time ago, you’re making yourself feel crazy over something that’s actually entirely normal and healthy.
• When you judge yourself for feeling anxious and indecisive during a meeting at work, you’re making yourself feel crazy over something that’s entirely normal and happens to everyone (even if they don’t always admit it to themselves).
• When you get angry at yourself for feeling angry, you’re making yourself feel crazy for experiencing a perfectly normal human emotion.

And guess what happens when you’re in the habit of consistently making yourself feel crazy?

Yup, your self-esteem crashes.

How could you have healthy self-esteem if you think you’re crazy or a bad person for feeling emotions — something you don’t have direct control over?

 

That’s like judging yourself as bad because you got rained on or have brown hair!

When you’re in the habit of judging yourself for things you can’t control — like how you feel emotionally — it’s a setup for chronically low self-esteem.

Practice accepting your emotions for what they really are: Sometimes painful and inconvenient but never bad or dangerous.

If you can build the habit of self-compassion, you’ll find your self-esteem rising dramatically.

“Feelings are something you have; not something you are.”

― Shannon L. Alder

All You Need to Know

Healthy self-esteem isn’t necessarily about what you do more of so much as what you avoid.

Specifically, if you can avoid these 4 mental habits, you’ll find your self-esteem rising:

1. Dwelling on past mistakes
2. Worrying about the future
3. Ruminating on ancient history
4. Judging yourself for how you feel