Fear of Rejection/Failure !!

This is the topic I can relate to. I recently discovered that I am a kind of person who cannot handle rejection or finds it difficult to handle failure. I think I have this what we call a “Phobia” of rejection (this is my personal thinking and I might be wrong). I am so afraid of failing or getting rejected that most of the times I don’t even try. I feel that the word “Rejection” is something which completely destroys your self-respect. When a person gets rejected, he/she goes into a self-analysis that what could have gone wrong that it resulted in a failure. Are you not good enough for whatever you tried to do? Why are you like this? How can you improve it? Or maybe you just cannot do it because you don’t have what it takes! This ultimately results is demotivation and decreased number of tries in future.

I feel I have this phobia of failure in everything. Be it in going and asking out a girl you like or asking someone for help or simply just getting rejected from a job you applied for. There are unending number of situations where one can fail. I would like to mention that recently, I got a rejection for the RA position I applied for in Miami University. I was working out in the gym and suddenly I received this email that said something like this “You have not been selected as an RA, thanks for your interest in this position and we wish you good luck for future endeavors.” I left my workout mid-way and spent some time alone thinking as to why did this happen to me. I was quite depressed in the beginning to be honest but as the time progressed I got over it. I don’t why, I thought I lost some respect for myself. This is one of the weirdest habits I have. At the end, it’s just a job I got rejected for. I went into a deeper analysis and asked myself questions like What’s wrong with that? And then explained it to myself that everyone has to deal with failure at some point of their lives. Then why was I making it such a big deal? Was I overthinking or overreacting? I spent some time researching for psychological theories about dealing with failure. Guess what, it benefited me a lot. Also in my ESP 103 class I got to learn about how to deal with failures. I especially got motivated with the Ted Talk that we watched in class where that man goes in the public tries weird things to experience failure. I mean I asked myself what could be the worst-case scenario if I get rejected? Obviously, it depends upon the situation but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try anymore. Failure in life is essential for further growth of an individual. One of the clichéd line I would like to mention is that “People learn from Failures”.

Another failure which I faced was when I was in my 9th grade. I really liked this girl in my high school but I was too afraid to go and express my feelings for her. I waited and waited for a good time to come when I can have the guts to go and confess that I liked her. But my ego screwed up everything for me. I feared rejection so much that even after getting several opportunities, I didn’t tell her. I thought my ego would be hurt and my moral will get down if she said no. Thus, I never confessed my feeling for her. This made me realize that one should never let his/her ego and self-respect come in way while encountering an opportunity and failing.

Currently I am trying to overcome this issue and trying to deal with failure in a positive way and learning what it offers with a cape of good hope.