From the author: Today I want to start a series of publications on the issue of coping with the difficulties of life, trials that no one can escape from in reality (in fantasy, in principle, it is possible). I will try to highlight unpleasant events from those areas that all of us face with practical inevitability - and I will also describe proven scientifically and personally ways in which it is possible to cope with them. In short, I’ll get started and see how it goes. Rejection is an unpleasant event, but, as one can conclude, almost inevitable in the life of every (socially active) person. People who decide otherwise - that “catastrophically unbearable” situations, in particular rejection, can be completely avoided, often have social anxiety, depressive states due to isolation and avoidance of social contacts; however, about this some other time. What is rejection, what will we talk about? As usual, the term is intuitively quite accessible to us, but for clarity, a working definition will not hurt. So, rejection is an interpersonal event that implies the refusal of one of the participants to contact or get closer to another for whom this contact is significant. Thus, we can conditionally speak of the “subject of rejection” (the one who rejects) and the “object of rejection” (the one who is rejected). For the sake of fairness, the issue must be considered from both sides, taking into account the interests of the “plaintiff” and the “defendant”, so to speak. They can be reduced in this way: On the part of the subject (rejecting) - this is 1) Feeling of guilt; 2) Pity; 3) Anxiety ("fear of retribution") On the part of the object (rejected) - this is 1) Depression 2) Rage 3) Anxiety ("fear of discomfort") Emotional problems of the object of rejection Let's take a look at what most often stands behind each of these negative emotions. Normal , the emotion of sadness - arises as a reaction to the perception of some event as a significant loss, the loss of something important and necessary. It is not difficult to guess that we are not inclined to experience the loss of something unnecessary or of no value as something sad and sorrowful. Let's say, for simplicity of presentation - when we throw out garbage, we seem to be parting with something that is our property ... But in our personal possession these things are not necessary and useless, and thus it does not occur to anyone to be sad about them. Unless - and this changes things - we mistakenly threw away something significant. On the one hand, rejecting someone significant to us is truly a loss, we are losing a relationship that is important to us. On the other hand, it quite happens that there were no relationships, but “in our heads”, in our fantasies, we have already managed to draw them and appropriate the person and his attitude as something expected. In this case, rejection - “an attack of harsh reality” - can also lead to depression and depression. However, it is worth noting that this experience is unhealthy, based on irrational beliefs. Indeed, in essence, in such a case, there is no loss as such; we part only with our own fantasies, but not with something that actually took place in our lives. In approximately the same sense, we can cite as an analogue the situation of defeat: we feel sad from failure in something if and only then when we have already mentally taken credit for success. By the same principle, rage arises in response to rejection. To do this, we necessarily, albeit unconsciously, automatically conclude that the rejecter is aggressively taking away something that belongs to us, violating our boundaries, doing something insulting and humiliating to us. In addition to these two difficult emotions, there is usually fear and anxiety. As it is often formulated - “the fear of being alone forever.” In fact, this may imply two frightening ideas: 1) Ordinary “fear for life” - say, for a small child, the loss of a relationship with a caring adult is often certain death. However, the older you are, the less likely this is, and from a certain age a person is quite capable of autonomously satisfying his or her needs.needs and does not need any caring figures. And yet, unconsciously, the fact of rejection by a significant other can be regarded precisely in this regard - as the loss of a vital “parental” figure. In certain circumstances (say, in the case of a dependent wife) this may be quite close to the truth for an adult personality. 2) Fear of loss of dignity - if the partner performed the function of a “narcissistic support”, i.e. the rejected person associated his self-worth and sense of dignity with him, then the loss of a partner, naturally, leads psychologically and to the devaluation of oneself. Even Sigmund Freud symbolically associated this complex of irrational ideas with the notorious “castration anxiety” - which in Russian culture, in connection with the use of the word “dignity” as a euphemism for something known takes on even broader connotations. This is a slightly more progressive, but still irrational version of the threat described above - here we are talking about the “survival” of a certain identity, an idealized image of oneself. For example, we can take it in general: from the belief “They don’t leave cool men/women”, as a result, the partner’s rejection = “I’m worthless.” Solving the emotional problems of the object of rejection After all that has been said, the question is naturally expected - what to do? Actually, the analysis of all these semantic nuances behind negative emotions allows us to extract the necessary insights for a solution: 1) First of all, it is necessary to figure out whether a loss occurred and what exactly. As one might assume, the conclusion about “loss of dignity” is an irrational devaluation of oneself. As well as, however, the idea about “unbearability of being alone” - at most, rejection entails a period of discomfort due to unfamiliarity, and even then not always (by no means Not all adults develop a significant degree of dependence on loved ones). However, one should not lose sight of the point that the normal experience of sadness after the loss of a significant relationship is required and should not be avoided. But it is important to understand what in this case is healthy sadness and what is unhealthy depression. 2) And it is also necessary to rebuild the attitude that a treacherous and offensive “expropriation” of your property has occurred. A partner is obviously not a thing or an object, but a person, a subject of free will and belongs to himself. And relations with him are a matter of command and voluntary; as a loss, their cessation can still be reasonably assessed - as “robbery” and “taking of property” and even personal insult, it seems, no, this is madness. A separate question is whether the rejection was accompanied by actual insults, we will not touch on it for now. Emotional problems of the subject of rejection (and ways to solve them) Now let's look at the opposite side of the situation - how does the person rejecting the other feel? Here, too, of course, it is worth mentioning that there are variations - and yet in practice such a pattern is observed quite often. The first thing that comes to mind is a feeling of guilt. What causes this experience? Guilt is due to the fact that in a broad sense we perceive some of our actions as a violation of the moral, ethical rules and standards we share, a crime of moral framework. In a narrow sense, more specifically, guilt arises when we understand or believe that we have caused undeserved harm to another, and the more significant this other is (the more positive feelings towards him), the greater the guilt. Still, this is true as long as we are talking about a healthy, adaptive feeling of guilt. Guilt can also be unhealthy, neurotic, as they say. In this case, it is useful to understand that guilt parasitizes responsibility. And responsibility, in turn, is based on the idea of ​​one’s capabilities, sphere of control and influence. Thus, the chain can be presented as follows: Hypercontrol (irrational perception of one’s power and influence) leads to Hyperresponsibility - i.e. the habit of taking responsibility for something for which it is impossible to answer (since there is no power or control over it), on.