Rejection in Highly Sensitive People
Written by Carla M. Sodi
In my own experience, and in several cases that I have seen with clients suffering with an autoimmune disorder, there is a relationship between the feeling of rejection we experience when we were kids and how we inflict this upon ourselves today, attacking our bodies.
When we were children and we began to grow, most of us wanted to be loved, respected and cared for. However, many times, we were criticized or judged or circumvented by our parents, teachers, siblings, grandparents, relatives, friends or neighbors.
We would hear comments like these:
What is the matter with you? You’re too sensitive.
Or…you’re acting like a baby; stop crying.
Or …You can’t stand anything, everything affects you.
In general, as highly sensitive people, our reactions are different because we feel the emotions with more intensity than others and so we can experience more feelings of pain, or despair and disappointments than people who are not highly sensitive.
As a result, we learn to hide, observe and listen carefully, looking for clues from people around us, trying to read their minds, their facial expressions, their tone and inflection of voice in the phrases and words we hear, and we become experts in detecting even the slightest sign of disapproval and rejection; although many of us misunderstood these signs and signals. We felt that we were judged or compared and these misunderstandings became constant thoughts within. This resulted in creating a false image of ourselves.
We started asking ourself:
What’s wrong with me?
Why am I not good enough?
What have I done wrong this time?
We felt that any negative reaction we received from the other person was a test that confirmed how defective and deficient we were.
We sought out to please and gratify at all costs to get some approval from people and feel accepted.
Over time, all these childhood wounds accumulated and became self-defeating beliefs that triggered both internal and external defensive responses that shaped our relationship with ourselves and with the world.
The rejections suffered during childhood created a distorted image within us and the negative beliefs and recurring patterns of behavior, made us react out of proportion towards people, sometimes very aggressively, and also attack our body with harsh criticism or harmful habits that eventually lead to an antibody’s mobilization in a strong massive attack against ourselves and the appearance of symptoms and unexplained pain that portrayed the old wounds that occurred in our childhood and have never been healed.
The continued practice of EFT allows us to begin recognizing the different parts of ourselves that we do not like or accept.
Tapping daily helps us to stop all this rejection we feel inside and form new beliefs for us, from self-denial to self-acceptance and change our relationship with our own body and pour them to our external environment in our relationships with others and the world.
Here’s a tapping protocol to begin to heal those old wounds:
KC: Even though I have been rejected since I can remember and that makes me feel really bad, I accept what I am feeling.
Even though all my life I had felt rejected by my parents (grandparents, siblings, friends, partner) … I accept myself as I am.
Even though, I do not like feeling rejected and feel this pain inside my body as an intense pain in____________, I accept what I feel now.
EB: Ever since I can remember, I have felt rejected by my parents or siblings and friends
SE: It was very painful and difficult to handle
UE: It scares me to be rejected again
UN: I cannot stand another rejection
CN: What if they reject me again?
CB: I reject what I feel and how I feel
UA: I do not want to be hurt again.
TH: I have been rejected in the past
EB: It was very painful
SE: I reject myself
UE: I cannot stand another rejection
UN: I feel so insecure and I’m afraid to reject myself again
CH: What if I allow myself to accept myself as I am?
CB: What if I stop rejecting myself?
UA: I fear myself now
TH: What if I miss rejecting myself?
EB: Maybe they can stop hurting me
SE: It’s okay to feel bad
UE: I cannot stand another rejection
UN: I open myself to leave all this pain inside of me
CH: What if I dare to accept myself as I am?
CB: What if I stop hurting myself?
UA: Perhaps there is another way to see myself
TH: I accept myself as I am
