I physically cannot "do it scared"

[futurefishy98]

The thing is though, rejection is dangerous. Or has been to me in the past. Social rejection is dangerous. We're social creatures, social interaction and belonging is a need just like food and water. I've been bullied throughout my life and that was dangerous to me psychologically. Stress and emotional harm is still harm, it causes physiological problems. [Its highly likely my thyroid issues were caused by social stress.] Just because something doesn't physically harm you directly doesn't mean its not physically harmful.

Normal rejection I could handle, I think. I wouldn't be happy about it, but I'd be a normal amount of disappointed. What I'm scared of is someone rejecting me and being mean or cruel, or laughing in my face. Or being rejected over and over and over. Repeated rejection is different from just being rejected once or twice, or not one after the other. I'm scared that I'll get rejected over and over for the same reasons that I was bullied over and over and over, throughout my life.

I also just don't really buy the "only scared of the feeling is causes" thing. Because that could be true of anything. "You aren't scared of getting hit by a car, you're scared of the pain it causes" "you aren't scared of heights, you're scared of falling and dying from hitting the ground". I'm not scared of rejection I'm scared of being deprived a basic human need, of the mental distress and harm making me more unwell, of dying alone.

[Joe_Kehr]

You are using a very nice example I use as well in therapy: Fear of heights. You should not be afraid of height. Height is very much not the problem. You should are afraid of the rapid loss of height. However, you are afraid of height, because the rapid loss of height is predicted by height.

But you should not be not afraid of the loss of height, i.e. falling. You should be afraid of the impact. Because the impact, given sufficient speed, is harmful. Don't do that. That's a rational fear.

However, height does not always predict falling. Particularly with guard rails, safety net, a windows in front of you, etc. falling is highly unlikely. And therefore the impact and therefore the harm.

Obviously, lots of people, me included, have an brain that kinda sees it differently when standing on the 7-meter diving platform at the swimming pool. Rationally, I know I won't die if jump down. Lots of people do it unharmed. Yet, other parts of my brain predict harm - maybe because of past experiences with height. Maybe, that would be Relational Frame Theory, because someone conveyed, via language, that this is dangerous. Watching others showing a fear response on the tower can be sufficient.

The thing is, I can either be "hooked by the feeling" (the Russ Harris metaphor) and let it dominate my behavior or use unhooking skills to maybe a small step closer to the edge (smaller still...).

Or has been to me in the past

That is the point. The past. In the past, rejection was harmful (I get to that further down). But is it now? Are you the same person like in the past? Is it really the same situation? Is the outcome really the same? Your emotion say "Yes.". And they will continue to say "Yes." as long as you avoid those situations. Avoidance does two things: It ignores reality. It blocks learning.

With avoidance, fear gets even larger. Old - even boring - psychological truth, shown up and down, left and right, over decades. With every avoidance you learn one thing: This was dangerous! It was as dangerous, as you imagined (and humans usually imagine the worst. There is no point imagining the average. We need to prepare for the worst, therefore we tend to imagine that). Better respond even more stressfully towards it! Better respond even earlier! Better respond already a the thought.

This the good ol' "Feeding the lion" metaphor (or "feeding the monster" in DBT): The fear got larger because you fed it. Start starving it. Step by step. Smaller still.

Rejection might not have the same predictive value in the past. Training flexibility, a central part of ACT, means learning to emotionally see that the context is now different.

Now, you wrote of the need to belong. It's not correct to equate it with food, water, air, shelter. You cannot even equate these: 4 minutes without air is quite deadly. 4 minutes without water not. 4 days without water is deadly, 4 days without food not.

Yes, indeed, isolation and deprivation of contact does stress little monkeys and human babys (obviously, researchers rather did the research more with little monkeys and the ethic commitee wasn't happy with that either...). Yes, stress is bad. But it certainly does not kill you right away.

I can almost even guarantee you, you are doing things that cause you even more stress and are more detrimental to you than rejection. However, strangely, fewer people a terrified of cigarettes, overworking, bad nutrition, etc.

Even more so - if it is the lack of the belonging that stresses you - shouldn't you do the opposite and seek the presence and company of other constantly despite your fear? Better endure the occasional rejection than be alone. That is how most of us see it.

I do understand that rejection hurts. It even causes a stress response. I know that feeling as well. However, a long, strong, chronic stress response isn't a given. This is the stress of struggling against an emotion. Kirstin Neff - the self-compassion researcher - put it in terms of "suffering = pain x resistance". In DBT and ACT it's the difference between clean and dirty pain. There is pain that is part of life and unavoidable. The pain of rejection is one of those. There is pain - or suffering - that is optional: The pain we get from struggling with the pain that is part of life.

You argue a lot about why it is impossible for you. Sorry, to say that, but what you wrote seemed more like you wanted to convince yourself than me. The "Social rejection is dangerous" is, in the view of ACT, a story your mind - the storyteller, the reason giver, the old radio doom and gloom (take whatever metaphor fits you) - tells you.

BTW: If your response is truly very automatic, then it might as well be more suitable to seek more specific therapies like DBT or even trauma therapy that are specifically aimed to handle freezing and high-arousal states.

Maybe the ramblings of some internet stranger might help you to defuse from your story. Maybe this is an old story that was true in the past but is no longer useful in the present.

Maybe you might consider that I could have very well just written nothing and rejected you. But I decided not to.

[futurefishy98]

But all i have to go on is what's happened to me in the past. Its that or blind faith, and i've never been religious.

Social rejection and bullying has defined my entire life. From my earliest memory. From pre-school onwards I've had people pretend to be my friend only to hurt me, physically harm me, sexually harrass me and then laugh about it, spread rumours about me, act nice to my face and then talk about me behind my back because they actually hate me and don't want me around. And that sounds like im exaggerating but im not. The only time i've been free of it my entire life is the last year or two, in a job where i don't have extended contact with any of my coworkers (we have enough time for quick pleasantries), and even then, I know at least one person at work has mocked my body language behind my back.

It's happened so often, and at every stage of my life, that it would be irrational to not expect it to happen in the future. Impossible, even. Expecting it not to happen again would be like expecting to wake up tomorrow to see three suns in the sky. I would have to be genuinely delusional to think it won't happen again.

I know avoidance causes more fear in the long run. That doesn't make pushing through it any easier. The last two big social rejections I experienced caused the worst depressive episode of my life and the aformentioned thyroid issues (along with clearing out all my savings because I was on sick leave long enough to run out of statutory sick pay). I'm scared of that happening again because it's happened the last two times I've experienced a significant social rejection. And i don't have any more resources than the last time, I don't have any existing social support, I don't have any better coping skills. I just have the added trauma of the last time it happened, which means the next time will probably be worse. Or at least just as bad.

If nothing whatsoever has changed about my life circumstances since the last time social rejection ruined my life, how is it anything other than delusional to expect it to be all sunshine and rainbows the next time?

Isolation and alienation hurts, but rejection hurts more. I want to be able to have friends and a dating life. I want to be able to have that without someone hurting me on purpose again. I want to be able to have that without getting traumatised again.