Dealing with rejection is tough, especially in recovery, but doing so and staying sober will pay off in the long run. Fun fact, dealing with rejection can also inflict some damage to your psychological well-being, and it goes way beyond plain emotional pain. Wether you’re new to recovery or you’ve been in recovery for quite a while, or you’re still in active addiction, rejection sucks and our most comfortable coping mechanism can and will kill us, so we’ve got to find healthier ways to cope when dealing with rejection. Rejection really hurts and dealing with it honestly sucks, but there are ways to cope without the use of drugs and alcohol.

Dealing With Rejection: Fun Facts

The human experience of dealing with rejection ages all the way back to our ancient roots, due to Winch who is the author of “Emotional First Aid: Practival Strategies For Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injures.” In this book, Winch has a whole chapter dedicated to rejection. Research shows that dealing with rejection triggers the same brain pathways that are activated when we go through or experience physical pain. A study also revealed that the brain’s mu-opioid receptor system also real eases “natural” painkillers (or opioids) when we are responding to social pain, or rejection. This just so happens to be the exact same brain system that releases opioids after we experience physical pain. Here are some fun facts about dealing with rejection:

• Tylenol reduces emotion pain
• We can unfortunately relive (re-experience) rejection more vividly than we can with physical pain
• Rejection can create surges of aggression and anger
• Rejection can cause depression
• Rejection can cause us to destroy our own self-esteem
• Dealing with rejection can temporarily lower our IQ
• Rejection or social pain doesn’t respond to reason

Dealing With Rejection: Ways To Cope

Coping with dealing with rejection, or anything in life in general, with drugs and alcohol is no way to live. There are healthier ways to make the situation better without numbing yourself completely; sooner or later you’re going to have to let yourself feel.

• Have an appropriate grieving period- take some time to process, but don’t go overboard and waste your time feeling sorry for yourself
• Talk to a friend that you trust- when we talk about things, or vent, it automatically helps us feel a little more relieved. Even better when the friend tell it to us straight and tells us what we need to hear, instead of sugar coating it.
• Acceptance- acceptance makes life so much easier. When you say to yourself “It is what it is” and know that you can’t do anything to change or control the situation, it makes it easier to accept the situation for what it is.
• Don’t take it personally- know that rejection isn’t your fault, and it’s something that is going on with them. They aren’t rejecting you as a person, they are rejecting a situation that just does not work for them, and you’ve got to respect that (although it may not be easy, which is why you need to accept it).
• Keep yourself busy- get your mind off of the rejection and do something else for a while. Try to maybe stay away from this person who rejected you, and get yourself back.
• Don’t allow it to affect future relationships- you should NEVER let your past affect your future, especially when it comes to relationships. When you understand that if you meet someone new, that they are a completely different person than the one before, so you can’t project onto other people. Just live in the moment and enjoy life.
• Use this rejection to improve- maybe ask the person who rejected you to give you some feedback as to why they were not interested, maybe you have something that you can work on for yourself (not for them).