One lovely day…

Yesterday was exceptional.

Change is. Impermanence is. Human beings are human. We are each having our own experience. Fantastic days sometimes end with unpleasant emotional moments. I still slept. I woke to the alarm having slept through the night, once I fell asleep. My morning shower featured plentiful hot water. My coffee tastes good. I’ve got some uninterrupted quiet time for myself; morning yoga and meditation mellow me out before my brain attacks me with reminders of the unpleasantness the night before. I roll with it; more meditation.

The title isn’t literal; I don’t know people who would treat me that way in a literal fashion. I think the experience of being welcomed, then rejected later is probably relatively common. It feels crap-tacular, because rejection feels bad, and nothing more.  Rejection just doesn’t feel good.  Rejection feels even worse at the hands of loved ones, or people from whom we have any expectation of being supported emotionally. Delivering rejection to another person, though, is a useful tool for maintaining personal boundaries… Rejection from the receiving end, however necessary it may seem to the person delivering the blow, packs a huge emotional punch; we reliably take a step back from being rejected. Whether the moment of rejection seems unimportant to one person or another  isn’t relevant to someone else’s experience of the same moment.  Handled well, rejection is something small and we move on secure in the long-standing affection of the person asking for some space, or declining an invitation, or withdrawing from an affectionate moment, because that rejection wasn’t threatening in any larger sense; it probably still stung a little, and we let it go.

Delivering rejection with gentle courtesy and receiving it with gracious perspective are not the same skills. (For what it’s worth, I’ll observe that I lack skills in both areas, and this is not a blog post written from a place of hurt; it is a morning to consider where further growth may take me.)

It’s the ‘handled badly’ moments of rejection that devastate me, more often than not: the terse or angry words, the unexpected rejection, or the abrupt withdrawal of affection. I don’t doubt at all that I am perceived as stronger than I truly am; I know how I feel on the inside when I feel rejected, and I seriously doubt anyone who loves me would want me to have that feeling.  I am also much stronger than I understand, myself, because as dreadful as rejection feels – it is totally survivable. It hurts most to be rejected when I am attached to being accepted as a measure of affection or support; but we are each having our own experience. It is unquestionably going to be true that not every moment will be shared with me, and that not every moment shared with me will be lovely, loving, pleasant, joyful, or satisfying. Some moments are not for me. Some moments are not pleasant for me. Some moments will be more pleasant to contemplate than to live out. Some moments will hurt far more than seems reasonable, and linger too long in my consciousness. They are still only moments. Like so many things about thinking and feeling, although the feelings associated with rejection suck completely, they are still merely emotions; there is chemistry involved…our thoughts are chosen, crafted, built and nurtured from within – and they have only whatever reality or truth that we give them, ourselves.

Being rejected does suck…what sucks most about it, for me, is that I followed the moment of rejection almost immediately by also rejecting myself.  I followed implicit blame from someone else with explicit self-directed blame. I built on that self-directed blame by tearing myself down, and followed that by refusing comfort from the person who rejected me… it was a terrible way to treat myself, and I don’t recommend it at all.

There’s more to consider; the underlying concern still troubles me, but I am not strong enough this morning to pursue it with clear thinking. It is what it is; sometimes ‘taking care of me’ means allowing myself time to get past something that hurts before considering it further. It is a choice that prevents me from becoming mired in a negative emotional experience; a serious risk for me, and one of my challenges with my TBI. (The PTSD and TBI do not play nicely together.)

Strangely relevant; I had a very powerful, positive, growth-directing, encouraging therapy session this week…I am already having to rest on those skills, and feel sad that timing has been such that there was no opportunity to celebrate them. Even the slightest attention on those hurt feelings rouses the lingering feeling of rejection lurking in the background waiting to attack me again (I admit that I feel unimportant that this thing that matters so much to me, personally, was of no interest or consequence whatsoever to anyone else in the household that day; there were other things going on, and we were each having our own experience).  So, yeah, today dealing with feelings of rejection seems important… It’s time to take another step on the path of emotional self-sufficiency, and to learn more about counting on being accepted and encouraged by me, myself, with such strength and reliability that no external rejection can really touch me. (Hey, that’s a goal – maybe a little over-reaching, but it’s a start.)

Perspective promises so much… there are still verbs involved.

Today is a good day to understand that rejection does hurt; but it’s only a moment, and an emotion. We choose to react or respond, we choose how important we allow the moment to be, and we choose whether to inflict additional suffering on ourselves as a result of rejection. Today is a good day to allow rejection to direct our attention to someone else’s needs or boundaries, and understand rejection as ‘poorly handled boundary setting’ with compassion, and acceptance. Today is a good day not to take rejection personally. Today is a good day to change the perspective on rejection. Today is a good day to change my inner world.