by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Rejection Can Only Shake You From Yourself When You’re Being Unreal
“Rejection” is one of those ugly words that can make the stomach tighten before anything has even actually happened:
A message goes unanswered because you’ve been ‘ghosted‘; a job application comes back with a polite “no” (or they just ignore you completely); someone you opened your heart to says they’re not interested -in all of these cases, nothing has physically gone wrong but your body still reacts as if something fundamental is under threat:
Your heart rate goes up, your chest tightens, your mind races into a worst-case-scenario version of the future and you begin catastrophising about what this ‘means‘ about who you fundamentally are as a person and where your life is heading overall.
For many people, rejection is feared more than failure, embarrassment, or even loss and in some ways this makes ‘sense’:
First of all, rejection hits deep because it can be felt at the core of our being – especially if we have unresolved shame buzzing away beneath the surface of our lives.
Secondly, rejection threatens our imagined self and our imagined future because it triggers fear about whether we’ll get the things we want from life like love, security, meaning, or belonging etc.
There is also an evolutionary argument to be made because for most of human history, being rejected by the tribe wasn’t just uncomfortable – it could literally be a death sentence as being ‘exiled’ from the group meant loss of protection, resources, and survival and so our nervous systems still remember this (even if the modern context is very different).
Here’s the part most people miss, though:
Much of the pain around rejection today isn’t about the ‘rejecting’ event itself but is about unmastered emotional ‘stuff’ and a fragile self-image that isn’t grounded in the truth.
This article will help you understand what’s really going on when rejection shows up so it doesn’t knock you away from yourself, collapse your confidence, or derail your growth into realness.
More importantly, it will show you why – if you stay real and commit to continuous growth towards wholeness day-after-day – then rejection loses its power entirely.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Rejection: What We Cover in This Article
- Rejection Can Only Shake You From Yourself When You’re Being Unreal
- Why Rejection Hurts So Much: Shame and the Split Self
- The Two Types of Rejection (And Why Both Are Actually Good)
- Why Rejection Becomes Toxic: Rigidity, Ego, and Fear of the Shadow Self
- Rejection as Course Correction – Not ‘Death’
- Real Purpose is The Antidote to Rejection
- The Final Word: When You Grow Real, Rejection Loses Its Meaning
Why Rejection Hurts So Much: Shame and the Split Self
Rejection only really becomes destabilising when it collides with unresolved shame:
Shame isn’t the same as guilt because where guilt says, “I DID something wrong“, shame says, “I AM something wrong” – in other words, it gets to the very core of our being and makes us resist and deny ourselves at the level of acceptance.
At a deepest level, then, shame is a disconnection from the truth:
This state of disconnection fragments us internally as we split off parts of ourselves, exile aspects of our experience by sending them into the Shadow Territory, and end up living in what I call the Void – a psychological space that is disconnected from reality and wholeness.
From this void, the ego is created as a reaction to the (mis)perceived fragmentation:
What’s important to know in relation to rejection (and life in general, tbh) is that the ego is not who you are in truth – it’s just a survival structure and an identity built to manage the emotional pain of separation.
The ego is conditional, dependent, and constantly scanning for validation or threat which is why rejection feels so dangerous (it’s experienced as literal danger to the nervous system in the service of the ego).
It’s important to realise that rejection can never be a threat to your realness because what is real is always real; it can appear to be a threat to the ego, though, because the ego depends on being chosen, approved of, or confirmed by external sources in order to ‘survive’ (even though it’s not real – it’s just a filter between you and life based on past ‘stuff’).
When rejection lands on an ego that is propped up by a high degree of shame then it can feel annihilating – not because anything essential has been lost, but because something unreal is being exposed before the person who’s ego is under attack is ready for it.
This brings us to a crucial distinction that can help you:
The Two Types of Rejection (And Why Both Are Actually Good)
When viewed through the lens of realness, there are two fundamental forms of rejection that we’ll find ourselves contending with:
1. Being Rejected While Showing Up in a Real Way
This is the cleanest and most misunderstood type of rejection:
It’s when you show up honestly, express genuine interest, or simply express the truth without manipulation, performance, or hidden agendas.
…and still the other person says “NO”!
For example:
Maybe you’re romantically interested in someone, and so you you let them see who you actually are, only for them to tell you they’re “not interested”.
From the ego’s perspective, this can feel brutal but from the perspective of your realness, it’s a gift.
How on earth could that possibly be?!
It’s because this kind of rejection is simply information that has the power to release you from a potentially unreal life, relationship, or future built on misalignment.
As long as the other person is being honest and you’re being REAL then there’s nothing to ‘fix’, prove, or beat yourself up over – just a lesson to be learned and something else to move onto so you can find something that actually matches your REALNESS.
If anything, this kind of rejection is protective because it clears the path for you to continue being real and to find people, opportunities, and environments that are actually aligned with who you are.
2. Being Rejected While Showing Up in an Unreal Way
This form of rejection is more uncomfortable but in a far more valuable way:
In this case, you’re pursuing something through the filter of the ego created by shame which means that what you’re really chasing is something like validation, approval, or self-worth rather than truth and alignment.
You may be people-pleasing, over-performing, pretending, forcing outcomes, or trying to be someone you think you need to be in order to get what you want…and then you get rejected.
Again – even though it might not feel like it initially – this is a good thing.
This is because this kind of rejection is always feedback that comes from reality pushing back against the distortions you carry and identify with – it shows you precisely where you’re out of alignment and where there’s room to become more real.
Life isn’t punishing you here; it’s educating you and course correcting you back to your own realness.
When you listen, grow, and integrate whatever lesson the feedback is offering you then you end up closer to what you actually want instead of just the ego’s substitute version of it.
Why Rejection Becomes Toxic: Rigidity, Ego, and Fear of the Shadow Self
Rejection only becomes destructive when it collides with rigid attempts to cling to the false self-image and belief system of the ego:
Essentially, the more shame somebody carries, the more rigid and fixed into place their ego becomes (which is why so many control freaks are ego-driven) – it has to be this way because the ego offers a feeling of protection against emotional annihilation.
The problem with this is that clinging and rigidity prevents learning:
So instead of asking:
“What is this teaching me about how to be more real?”
The rigid ego asks:
“How do I defend myself from this?”
This is where friction, frustration, and misery begin because people resist the feedback life is offering, argue with reality (an argument you can never win), blame others, and double down on patterns that no longer work as they attempt to cling to identities that have expired.
This resistance almost always only exists because the ego is guarding the door to the shadow self – the parts of us we once upon a time learned were unacceptable, painful, or dangerous to feel for some reason.
This is ‘bad’ news because avoiding the shadow doesn’t protect you – it just keeps you stuck.
Rejection as Course Correction – Not ‘Death’
Here is the bottom line:
If you have a growth mindset rooted in realness and growing even more real then rejection can always serve you.
This is because – when you learn the lesson and treat it as feedback – then rejection will either:
- Free you from misalignment and unreality.
Or: - Reveal the areas of your life where you have the opportunity to lean into the truth even more.
In neither case is it the end of the line or the final chapter of your story about yourself – it’s just that what feels like ‘death’ to the ego is often the exact adjustment required to move closer to wholeness.
This is where having a real purpose becomes essential:
If you know it’s time to start showing up in your own life then check out Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace.
Real Purpose is The Antidote to Rejection
Without real purpose, rejection feels final but with it rejection becomes something that helps you find a real direction to move in.
This is because purpose gives you context no matter what situation you find yourself in and it reminds you that you’re moving towards something larger than temporary little bursts of approval or success.
Developing real purpose involves integrating yourself at a few key levels:
Values, Vision, Mind, and Body.
1. Clarify Your Values & Vision
Your values aren’t just what you say or think you care about – they’re the qualities you organise your life around so make sure they’re real for you (and not just values you picked up somewhere else like on TV)
Start to get radically honest with yourself about your own values:
- What actually matters to you when you feel most alive?
- What feels important and true even when it’s ‘inconvenient‘?
From values, create a vision for who you’re BECOMING; from this vision, define goals that will be landmarks along the way; from these goals, build habits that will support your daily growth into realness.
This creates a trajectory that rejection cannot derail but that it can refine if you take whatever lesson it brings.
2. Train the Mind
An untrained mind will interpret rejection through the ego and so learning to spot unreal thoughts is an essential skill that you can develop.
If you just take your thoughts at face value then you’ll end up:
- Catastrophising: Thinking your absolutely doomed whenever anything threatens the ego.
- Mind-reading: Projecting your own thoughts onto others.
- Identity Collapse: Not knowing who you are when something goes ‘wrong’ (i.e. against the ego’s plan).
- Conditional Self-worth: Putting your self-worth on certain outcomes rather than the process of actually living your real life.
- Etc. etc. etc.
Thoughts are not the truth – they’re just mental experiences that you can CHOOSE to follow up on or ignore and the more you can observe them without identification, the less power rejection has to hijack your sense of momentum and direction.
3. Condition the Body
Many people understand rejection intellectually but still feel overwhelmed at the level of the body because emotional discomfort is being experienced as physical danger.
This is why nervous system regulation need to be non-negotiable:
Breathwork, movement, stillness, and lifestyle choices all matter here because the bottom line is that when the body feels safe, old emotions can be processed rather than resisted.
We dissolve shame not through force, but through integration.
The Final Word: When You Grow Real, Rejection Loses Its Meaning
When you commit to growing real through purpose, then rejection stops defining you and causing all kinds of ugly problems in yourself and your life:
It simply becomes information, guidance that course corrects, and part of the dialogue between you and life which means that you no longer need to avoid it, fear it, or armour yourself against it in an unreal way.
That old evolutionary “death” that your nervous system is bracing for never arrives because nothing real is being threatened and only what was never truly ‘You’ or real falls away.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to shift gear and start growing real then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you start taking real action that moves you forward.
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