Rejection Dejection: Not Ready to Rebound?

You  don’t need me to tell you that as a writer, you’re not supposed to take rejections personally. You’re supposed to get past them and get back to writing. You’re supposed to…

You get the idea. And you know the idea.

Lots of fabulous writers’ sites provide encouragement to learn from rejections and move on – move forward.

But what if you can’t do what you know you should do?

You can learn how. That’s what The Irrepressible Writer is all about – the process of learning how to become resilient or strengthening your occasionally-faltering optimism.

But…what if you’re not even ready to learn? This particular Irrepressible Writer post is for you if:

1. you can’t stop taking rejections personally, no matter how many excellent articles or posts you read;

2. you get down on yourself because you can’t stop taking rejections personally; or

3. you don’t feel ready or capable of learning to dispute or challenge your negative thoughts in response to rejections.

Why am I taking so many steps backward from the excellent advice, “Learn from rejections and don’t take them personally”?

Because if you’re not emotionally ready to use advice, the advice is useless to you right now. The Irrepressible Writer will take you backwards until you find a place to start being gentle with yourself as a hurting writer and begin to build positive emotions so that you then can move forward and use all the great advice that’s available!

When you feel ready, you’ll learn to dispute your negative thoughts, and you’ll be able to make use of the fabulous rejection support available.

So let’s start at the very beginning, as Julie Andrews sang to us in The Sound of Music so long ago:  let’s assume that you feel personally hurt by the rejection you’ve received and there’s nothing you can do to change that hurt.

What are your options for not sinking into a non-writing funk, that downward negativity spiral that will sap time, creativity and productivity?

Begin with these three tips:

1. Create a statement of acceptance of exactly what you’re feeling right now, for example, “I’m feeling really, really bad about this rejection.” Do NOT make this statement an interpretation of the event, such as, “I accept that this means I’m I horrid writer and will never get published.”

Why do this? Because accepting where you are, even if it is not where you want to be, is freeing. It disconnects you from yelling at yourself just because you’re in pain.

2. Acknowledge that even if you cannot make yourself feel better about this rejection, you may be able to make yourself feel better in general by doing something that you may not feel like doing.

Can’t do this? Maybe you can. We all do lots of things every day that we don’t “feel like” doing…and teach our children the same.

3. Turn to a reliable activity (or create one, preferably before you need it) that will stir or build some kind of positive emotion in you. That can be anything, from a myriad of familiar activities, to reaching out to a friend, to doing something for someone else. The latter is a superb way of utilizing your underlying strengths and values to pull you out of your personal misery, even for awhile.

This “reliable activity” might be different for each of us; no one but you knows for sure what will truly distract you from your pain and create some positive emotion. Once you create even a little positive emotion, though, your brain opens up – and only then can you be ready for using that brain to learn to talk to yourself differently about rejection.

If you’re a writer who spends too much time in sadness after a rejection, there’s no shame in it. You’re simply not as resilient as you can learn to be.

I’ve been there, just as so many of us have. Maybe you’re there now.

What might be your own particular bridge back to writing? Can you imagine that bridge helping you back to writing before a great deal of time is lost in “rejection dejection”?