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"Preventing Anticipated Rejection" Psychic Advice Column addresses inquiries related to: Life theme rejection, Signs you're being rejected, How to handle emotional rejection, Signs you are being rejected, and more...

PREVENTING ANTICIPATED REJECTION

Question #1: "My lessons of rejection keep repeating over and over. Seems like I am always the butt of everyone's jokes, always being laughed at [and] talked about. What lessons am I not getting? Or am I just in the wrong town, state?"

"Psychic Advice":
When you feel that your life theme is rejection, then you are likely to spend a lot of time and energy focusing on preventing anticipated rejection. The problem is that the more you focus on preventing anticipated rejection, the more you attract rejection, because you are expecting it.

We are instinctually hardwired to do whatever is possible to avoid rejection, because as an infant, rejection would mean certain death. Babies are completely dependent on their parents because they cannot survive on their own - this is also true for the young of many animals. Baby animals who are rejected by their parents will die unless someone or something else takes on the task of nurturing them. It is intrinsic to our animal instincts to feel that love and acceptance give life, while rejection means death.

As we grow older and more independent, rejection can still kill a person's self-esteem - every rejection can wound people's sense of their own identity. Each rejection that people experience can threaten their sense of their own worth and value. This can trigger negative self-talk that essentially becomes self-rejection, or self-loathing, which in turn invites more rejection. This can become a vicious and destructive cycle, as we often invite others to treat us the way that we treat ourselves.

Some people are able to take rejection or criticism and use it as fuel to motivate themselves to work harder, be better, and prove themselves. The problem is that if you try to prove yourself to other people, you leave yourself open to their judgment and criticism; seeking to prove yourself is seeking approval, which also invites disapproval. When you seek the approval of others, you give them the power to judge you, because approval is just as much of a judgment as disapproval is.

If you really want to prove yourself, you must choose to prove yourself only to yourself and not to others. Ultimately, you prove yourself by honoring who you truly are, not just by the things you do. You must believe that you are truly a good and worthy person, rather than constantly doing things to try to prove that you are good and worthy.

We are socially programmed to care about what other people think of us, and to do whatever is necessary to fit in and be approved of by others. This is because a society is essentially an association of people who have shared laws, customs, values and ideals - a society maintains order by requiring everyone to want and value the same things. In Japan, for example, there is a saying that "the nail that sticks out gets pounded", and people strive to be the same as everyone else or they "lose face" and bring shame onto themselves and their family.

Societal programming pervades most cultures and begins at an early age. In some cultures, the standard of beauty is to have an extremely long neck, protruding lips, or tiny feet, so children's bodies are intentionally deformed from a young age to conform with these ideals. In many societies today, it is fashionably desirable to be unnaturally thin, so many young people, especially women, starve themselves in order to be accepted, and some would rather die than risk being rejected for being "fat".

The pain of rejection runs deep because we are programmed to believe that if we are rejected, there must be something wrong with us. If rejection is repeated, we start to believe that we are not good enough, that we will never fit in or succeed, and we may be ostracized or shunned from the group. Again, this is primitive programming for survival, because to be ostracized from the protection of the tribe could mean danger and death as it is difficult to survive in the wild alone.

The problem is that seeking other people's approval and acceptance is disempowering - you give your power to others every time you give them the power to judge you by caring about what they think of you. If you continue to be the butt of everyone's jokes, it is because they are getting something from that behavior - every time you react to their put downs, you give them your power. This makes you weaker and more vulnerable to future attack, so you become their prey, and they feed on your reactions.

Life can be very painful when you don't know how to handle emotional rejection. Do not give them the satisfaction of your humiliation any longer. The law of nature dictates that the strong survive, often by preying on the weak. Strong people rarely endure ridicule or rejection, and if they do, they don't let it affect them or get under their skin. Preventing anticipated rejection requires you to reclaim your strength and power, hold your head up high, and rise above their pettiness.

Sometimes a group of weak people can gang together and attack someone who is powerful, seeking to pick at and disempower that person through repeated assaults. They may be jealous and envious of you for some reason, which prompts them to talk about you. They want to take you down, put you down, and bring you down to their level where you are no longer a threat to them. If you have a history of being picked on and a life theme of rejection, it can leave you vulnerable to these attacks.

Preventing anticipated rejection may involve starting anew with a clean slate in a new place with new people. If the people around you are rejecting you because you are different from them, you may need to find a group of like-hearted, like-minded people with whom you can feel truly at home and be comfortable being yourself.

Whether you choose to stay put or to start anew someplace else, the key thing in preventing anticipated rejection is not to anticipate rejection. What you focus on most of the time is what you attract to you and create as your reality. You must stop believing that your life theme is rejection, and you must stop rejecting yourself and start giving yourself positive self-talk. Michael Phelps, the only person to win 8 gold medals in a single Olympic games, said that he is fueled and motivated by criticism, and that people telling him that he can't do something only fuels him to accomplish it. People who win in life are people who believe in themselves, even if no one else believes in them.

Question #2: "I have been totally rejected by everyone who knows me. Will I ever be vindicated and be able to work again?"

"Psychic Advice":
Vindication is seeking to prove that you are right, reasonable or justified, but the problem is that this gives your power away to forces outside of yourself that you have no control over. The only thing that you have power over is yourself, but you have given your power away and allowed it to affect whether you work or not.

You have the power to overcome adversity, to overcome rejection, and to overcome any obstacle on your path. You simply have to believe in yourself, believe in your ability, believe in your truth, believe in your path, believe in your power, and then have the will to carry on and succeed. Other people's rejection will not cause you to fail, unless you allow it to. You are the only person who determines whether this becomes your downfall, or your triumph. Take your power back, and allow it to empower you to succeed in any way you choose to.

Remember that many of the great prophets and visionaries in history were repeatedly rejected, denounced, humiliated, persecuted, ridiculed and forsaken by everyone around them, only for them to overcome this adversity and prove their greatness in time. Sometimes these situations are spiritual tests to prove yourself to yourself, and to prove the strength of your power, conviction, love, passion and determination.

Do not ever allow anyone to take your power from you, because they can only do so if you give it to them. The best way of preventing anticipated rejection is to love and honor yourself so much that it does not matter what others think of you. That is the true power of self-love. Raise your head, rise up, and rise above it all - from there you will have a more empowering perspective on your life.

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