What causes fear of rejection? Past rejection. If you were rejected in the past, that trauma sticks with you over the long term. We don’t forget pain easily and we especially do not forget the pain of rejection. Our brain has an innate ability to unconsciously remember that pain.
It doesn’t matter what the rejection is for. It could be asking for an allowance from your parents. If your parents rejected you because you asked for money in the past, there’s a high likelihood that sticks with you. You’re less likely to negotiate for a higher salary down the road as well.
Rejection is a fact of life. We cannot avoid it because the way we get what we want is to put ourselves in positions of rejection so frequently. We apply to 100 job positions to get rejected and one yes makes all the difference in the world.
Therefore, we have to get over the fear of rejection at some point and put ourselves out there. We cannot get over the fear of rejection without first answering what causes fear of rejection in the first place. I personally went through hundreds, if not thousands of rejection throughout my life.
In college, I applied to 100+ jobs per year before landing the one job that gave me more opportunities down the road. This is how we build our lives. Get rejected 100 times, get one yes, and elevate further. Get rejected another 100 times, get one yes, and elevate even further.
Until one day, you’re the one doing the rejection because you’re already at the top.
What Causes Fear of Rejection? 9 Causes
Below are the 9 answers to what causes fear of rejection? I personally attest this is what caused me fear of rejection and these days, I do not care about getting rejected in the slightest. I’m so glad I put in the legwork beforehand to get here.
1) Past Rejection
Whether it’s for a relationship, for more money, or anything in between, past rejection is what causes fear of rejection. Our brain registers pain quite well. It’s an evolutionary advantage and it teaches us to avoid pain because it doesn’t make us feel good.
It lowers our confidence and therefore, we take steps to avoid the pain as much as possible. While it was an evolutionary advantage in the past, these days it’s a disadvantage. It doesn’t matter how many people you make a bad impression to. All it takes is one yes for your life to change forever.
When I apply to a new job, I already expect a rejection so a rejection email doesn’t hurt. Even more so, I am more selective with my job searches. If a recruiter reaches out but doesn’t give me information on my terms, I just reject her. There’s no need to waste my time.
Past rejection hurts but it gets better down the road. Soon, you will be the one sitting on the high throne.
2) What Causes Fear of Rejection? Past Trauma
Even though we are conscious throughout the day, our unconscious brain drives the majority of our decisions. Trauma is one of the worst pains our brain registers. You may not even understand why you’re making a decision in the first place because our unconscious brain controls our decisions.
Trauma can include public humiliation, anger by the opposing party, and the like. When I worked in a call center in college, I called alumni to ask for donations to the school. Some alumni would even cuss at me that I called them. I currently couldn’t even care less now if someone did that to me.
The exposure therapy helped.
However, for a 17-year old me getting cussed at by 50 year old university alumni was traumatizing. Past trauma is what causes fear of rejection. What’s great is that we can wilt under the criticism and hate or we can rise above and use that to our advantage.
To make us stronger for the next call. The next customer who says yes to what we’re selling.
3) Overthinking
Sometimes, we think something bad is going to happen when nothing bad is going to happen at all. All of the times I asked for more money during the job negotiation process, I thought that they would yell at me and the like. Not a single one of those things happened.
What causes fear of rejection? It’s our imaginary brains thinking that something bad is going to happen when it’s not going to happen. In fact, all of the times I asked for more money, the company just said no. In which case, I would end up rejecting them in the end.
They would beg me to join and offered more money but I couldn’t care less. A no is a no. When I walk away from the table, I walk away from the table. We shouldn’t overthink about it. The opposing party wants us just as much as we want them.
Even if you’re the one who came to them. We are worth more than we realize.
4) Physiological Issues
Physiological issues include being hungry, going through digestion problems, and the like. I personally have bad digestion issues that causes my heart to pound and for me to feel bad throughout the day. It’s not the rejection itself that caused me fear of rejection.
It was me not recognizing that I don’t function normally when I eat and drink too much at a particular point in time. What causes fear of rejection? It’s the physiological issues that may cause your heart to pound and for you to overthink that’s causing it.
After figuring this out, I now know what time of the days I’m most confident and comfortable. When I am at my peak performance and mindset to take over the day. Now that I found out this information, I can only imagine just how far I can take my life going forward.
It’s going to be phenomenal when I find out the answer. Once your physiological issues are taken care of, you feel reborn.
5) Peer Pressure
Whether we like it or not, we care about what our friends think of us. At least in the beginning. Why? We need our friends. Not only do we want them in our lives, we need them in our lives. That’s why peer pressure is so effective.
When we have all the money in the world and we don’t depend on our friends for emotional and phychological support, that’s one thing. However, when we depend on them and we need them for our survival to stave off loneliness, that’s when peer pressure is significant.
What causes fear of rejection? The peer pressure to perform in front of our friends. We care what they think about us and we want them to think we’re this amazing person who has life figured out. Someone who can lend a helping hand to others but we certainly don’t need any help on our lives. Right?!
I know all too well of what it feels like to want to look great in front of my friends. It’s gotten me in trouble more times than once.
6) Pride
We have a deep psychological need to look like we have everything figured out. We don’t care whether we actually figured out our lives. However, we do care whether we look like we have life figured out to the outside world. Even when the outside world couldn’t care less what we do with our lives.
What causes fear of rejection? Our pride, ego, and emotions. We don’t want to be the ones who fall flat on our faces. We want to be victorious over our challenges and conquer them with our might! While that’s a noble goal, no one ever started out on top.
The ones who got to the top are the ones who fell flat on their faces more times than anyone else has ever tried. That’s what the top 1% does. While the 99% are busy making fun of the 1% who tried and failed. The top 1% are the doers and the bottom 99% are the criticizers.
Once we get over our prideful human nature, it is how we move forward. Especially since rejection and failure is a necessary component to success.
7) High Expectations
We expect large things from ourselves. We don’t want to be like the masses, we want to be someone important. So then what causes fear of rejection? High expectations of our efforts. Even the efforts that we start out with. Every time I tweet something on Twitter, I have high expectations.
Then when I see it fall completely flat with no one liking the tweet, I wonder why I even tried in the first place. High expectations is what ruins many small businesses. I see so many bloggers giving up after a year or two when they started a blog in a hyper competitive topic such as personal finance.
We shouldn’t have high expectations with anything we do, especially in the beginning. There’s too much to learn as time passes and success is more complex and time consuming than we think. Taking a long term view means expecting success to come around years 3 – 5.
Not in years 1- 3, as many expect. Many people I follow who reached success took 4 years to get there. After going bust in their first try.
8) What Causes Fear of Rejection? Fantasy
They’d rather be the hero in their head instead of the failure in real life. It’s better to think they achieved success in their fantasy world. Rather than face the rejection and failure in real life. Face the reality that they may not be as good as they think they are.
Instead of asking out that cute girl in real life and getting rejected, many would rather think they asked her out and everything worked out in the end. What causes fear of rejection? Living in a fantasy world where people are successful all the time without challenges and pushback.
Getting rejected and failing in real life is much better than succeeding in the fantasy world. At least with the rejection and failure, you can learn something to improve upon the next time it happens. With the fantasy world, nothing good comes out if it.
Living in a fantasy world is not how we achieve progress. It’s not how we compete against others in the world.
9) Not Knowing the Other Person’s Reaction
We have a deep fear of the other side’s reaction. What if she yells at us? What if she laughs and makes fun of us behind our back? Whatever the case is, we don’t like dealing with the unknown. What causes fear of rejection? It’s a completely uncharted territory we’re stepping foot into.
We don’t like it. We don’t mind asking our parents for something because at least we know how they acted in the past to requests. However, we deeply mind asking strangers for something because we don’t know their level of emotional control yet.
When I used to call university alumni for donations, alumni would yell, cuss, and shout at the students. We had no other choice but to smile and take it because we needed to raise money for the school. Although that built my character into what I could take, it still hurt when it was happening.
Rejection is already hurtful in the first place but the severity of how bad the rejection is could permanently scar our psyche. Some risks are too risky for our mentality to handle.
What Causes Fear of Rejection? The Answers Matter
The first step to getting over the fear of rejection is to know what causes fear of rejection in the first place. In my younger days, I used to have a very high fear of rejection. As the years passed by, I finally found out why. The reason was because of my physiological issues.
For some reason, after I eat, I am not in control over my mind, body, or emotions. My emotions go into hyperdrive and I didn’t know it affected my life by that much. So even when I get a hint or a small thought of getting rejected by someone else, I ran away.
Now that I’m older and know myself, body, and emotions very well, I know what times during the day I’m most likely not to care about rejection. These days, I generally don’t care about rejection because I’ve been rejected so many times but it’s helped even more by knowing my body very well.
If I want to ask out a girl, I ask out a girl without hesitation. If I want to do a career change, I apply to another job. Knowing what causes fear of rejection was crucial for me to get over it. Its not even about, “if I get rejected, it’s their loss, not mine”. It’s about, “if I get rejected, that’s OK”.
It doesn’t mean or say anything about them or me. It is what it is. I feel numb and nothing towards getting rejected, which is what works for me to put myself in uncomfortable situations. There’s so many magical things that can happen to your life if you constantly get rejected.
Life is about getting rejected 10 times and get accepted once that changes your life forever.
What Causes Fear of Rejection? Overcoming it is Possible
I know what it feels like. You know that it’s not the rejection itself that’s giving you fear. It’s something completely unrelated that’s giving you fear. Too many people look for the complicated answer to a problem. That’s not it. The answers are most of the time, simple.
However, you just can’t put your finger behind what causes fear of rejection for you. Therefore, you start thinking that you’ll never get over the fear of rejection. That’s not true. The truth is, you WILL put yourself in situations where you will get rejected.
Exposure therapy is very beneficial to get over the fear of rejection. However, a better way to do exposure therapy is to figure out the inherent and root causes to your feelings. Whether we like it or not, there’s a cause to every single thing that we experience.
Especially when the causes are controllable. What causes fear of rejection? There are diverse answers to the question. I personally figured out the biggest causes to my fears and it helped me eradicate those fears once and for all.
Overcoming the fears is more than possible. Life is much more fun when you can go up to a stranger and strike up a conversation. You have no idea how valuable those relationships and those networks are down the road. They will help in the most unexpected ways imaginable.
The first step starts with overcoming the rejection fears, which is more than possible.
What Causes Fear of Rejection? 9 Causes Shortlist
- Past rejection
- What causes fear of rejection? Past trauma
- Overthinking
- Physiological issues
- Peer pressure
- Pride
- High expectations
- What causes fear of rejection? Fantasy
- Not knowing the other person’s reaction
