I'm Rejected, I Think

Yesterday I was sitting at home, listening to my wife, Sheila, who is a clinical psychologist working on her doctoral dissertation. She was talking about various things and mentioned 'Rejection Sensitivity'. I immediately started to pay a little more attention and thought that it had a lot of relevance for corporate interactions as well.

How do we act when we sense we are rejected – rejected by a group of people, rejected at the office? It may or may not be true. It could be that we are just hypersensitive to the people around us. And that's what rejection sensitivity is – to be overly sensitive to rejection. The whole idea is that it's something that is not really happening, but it's a perception that we have because of various ways in which we have been exposed to things during our childhood, our upbringing and so on. It has to do with nurture more than anything else. Rejection sensitivity could play a part in the way we interact with people in our office spaces as well.

Better, Not Bitter

Reminiscing this morning, I was reminded of a friend I had met about 5 or 6 years ago who had wanted me to meet another friend of his who, he said, would really leave an impression on me. I was curious as we sat down to lunch and waited for his friend to come. When he did, it left me shocked. Sitting across from me was one of the most disfigured faces that I had ever seen in my life. After I got over the initial shock, he smiled at me and said that he used to be a baseball commentator. He said, "One day, after a win, we were letting off fireworks and one of them malfunctioned and blew up in my face. I went from hospital to hospital doing multiple reconstructive surgeries on my face. It wasn't helping, and my attitude too was very bad. One day, I was in this particular hospital and a nurse walked in and said to me: 'We get people like you all the time. There are always two things that happen to the people who come in here. They either get better or they get bitter. The choice is always up to the patient.'"

I still think about that, remembering him and seeing what a wonderful attitude he had. Passers by kept turning and looking at him, yet he was quite oblivious to their stares. He just sat there having a normal conversation with his friend and me. It made me think about bitterness. I wonder if, as you read the word bitterness, whether it brings up some emotion in you. Maybe you've trusted somebody who has cheated you out of a large sum of money. Or maybe another person got the promotion or the raise that you deserved. Or you've been unfairly criticized while trying to do your best. Or you have children who continually disappoint you? Or maybe you have suffered a very ego-deflating setback in your office. Or maybe you've discovered that your spouse is having an affair. These days it seems that the harder you try, the more things seem to be going wrong.

Bitterness 101

I was thinking about the month that we are in; we have crossed over into March and 2 months are already history for 2015. But March, by itself, is a very interesting month especially in your workplace. It's a month that has to do with year-endings, assessments, appraisals, increments, and also questions about whether this is the place to stay, anticipating whether it is time to make a move, how is your boss going to take the work that you have done over the year. All of that can create a lot of tension. Also, to look ahead when things don't quite go the way we expect. Then, oftentimes, we get into places where we are resentful, angry – those kinds of emotions come in. I have seen a few people who have gone into this month and have found that they are bitter because things didn't pan out the way that they expected. People, especially colleagues, let them down; people have reported on them and it leaves them with a very bitter taste.

I felt the need to talk about this bitterness that can come upon us when things go well, almost preempt it and prepare us for the month ahead and have a positive attitude.

Bitterness

I want to throw out a couple of scenarios this morning and help that to lead into our talk that I believe we need to be concentrating on this morning. Take for example, that someone you trusted has cheated you out of a large sum of money. Or another person got the promotion or raise that you deserved. Or you’ve been unfairly criticized while trying to do your best. Or you have children who continually disappoint you. Or you suffered an ego-deflating setback in your office. Or maybe you’ve discovered that your spouse is having an affair. Or these days it seems that the harder you try, the more things seem to be going wrong. All of these scenarios have one potential. They have the potential to lead you into bitterness. And maybe as you listened to these scenarios or maybe as the word bitterness came out, you thought to yourself – that struck a chord! If it did, I want to ask you to engage with what I’m speaking, because bitterness is a frozen form of latent anger and resentment.