Accept, Not Reject | LQ055

Crystal Clark: 00:00:00

Welcome to our love space today. In the past few weeks, there's been a theme that keeps popping up with a lot of my clients, and so I wanted to explore that with you today, and the theme is rejection. Now you may be thinking crystal What this doesn't seem to fit with all of the things we talk about, but actually a fear of rejection, or the more neuro, spicy one that we're going to be jumping into today, which is rejection sensitive dysphoria, can really have a big impact and a big effect on our relationships and on our love space. So these could also, we can also bring this picture out, whatever I say today, as we know, can apply to any of your social relationships, so even your friendships. So if you think that this rejection, sensitive, dyphoria, dysphoria is describing something that you go through, then know that it can affect this might be a Debbie Downer, but know that it can actually affect all of your relationships, and not just your love space and the love of your life. So neuro, spicy people can experience something we call it RSD, rejection, sensitive dysphoria, which is kind of like a fear of rejection, but totally intensified, and it permeates many aspects, rather than just aspects, like, you know, asking someone on a date and I'm worried they're going to turn me down. No, it's actually seeing rejection across all areas of your life. And what happens when you feel rejected, or you have this perceived rejection, is that you actually get a very intense physical and emotional response to it. So for example, if I were to have RSD and I were to make dinner for my love of life, and he were to tell me that it's not his favorite meal. He didn't really enjoy it. He didn't really like it that much. I might then that might then feel like a punch in the stomach to me, like a visceral, physical feeling in my body, so not just a thought and emotion, but I'm actually having a physical reaction to it in the pit of my stomach. And then I might also start to get a preoccupation, a worry about future rejections or future dislikes of my cooking in the future. And so whether that's going to so rather than most people would just think like, oh, they just didn't like the food. But if you have RSD, you're thinking like he did like the meal, slash me. And so the like, I'm being rejected. And so that's going to make me worry about cooking future meals. And then, to avoid this, I'm going to really start to people, please. I'm also going to start to have a view of myself that maybe I'm a bad cook or that I'm a bad love of life to to my significant other, right? And that's going to lead me down not only road of lowering my self esteem and my self worth, but that's also going to put me down a road where I want to avoid being vulnerable with my love of life and being vulnerable in my love space, because I don't want to feel rejected anymore. I don't want to put myself out there in any way, right, say something that I want for a boundary, or say something that how I'm feeling and and there's perceived criticism, or there's a perceived response that actually is rejecting me as a person. So if I can't be vulnerable, and I think that I'm already not being a good enough partner, I'm not going to communicate my needs, my wants, my boundaries. I'm also going to try to avoid conflict, but so is my love of life. So is my partner, because they don't want to also accidentally evoke a big reaction from me. And you can see that this means that our partner is also not going to get to share their feelings. It's also not going to get to set their own boundaries, and it's also not going to be feeling that our love space is a safe space to be in. And that really makes you know. You can see how both people were now in a spiral of disconnection, over these big emotional reactions or over these perceived rejections. And that really makes sense, because if you think about rejection, it's really all about safety. It's like the opposite of safety, because from an evolutionary point of view, if you get rejected, then you are no longer a part of the group. So if we think back to cavemen days, right? If you are outed from the group, then that means that you no longer get the safety of the group. You no longer get that protection from the wooly mammoth. You no longer get access to a group food supply where everyone's been hunting and gathering and adding things together. You no longer get access to warmth, like body heat. I. Uh, right? If you think about it, when we're all we, you know, we all used to snuggle together, uh, like little pile of kittens or a little pile of puppies, right? And so you no longer get access to that, and you no longer get and that's also no longer access to physical touch, right? No longer access to social connection, no longer access to that, you know, cooperation on living tasks like the hunting or the gathering, or also, you know, no longer access to the group problem solving. And so you can really see that, you know, from an evolutionary standpoint, we were all hanging out together, and we were all doing really a lot of collaborative teamwork all day, every day, so that we would be able to survive, we need collaborative teamwork in our life. So if there's a feeling of rejection, whether it is true rejection or perceived rejection, it feels horrible because you are no longer participating in the teamwork collaboration, right? Being having this RSD come between you and your love of life, right? Or make it so that there's no communication in your relationship, because everyone is avoiding activating it, right? Triggering these big emotional responses, which is no fault of the person who has the RSD, it's, you know, it's a very overwhelming physical and emotional response that happens, and it feels horrible, and it feels like you are being rejected in your own personal love space, and from the love of your life. And a lot of the work I do with clients around this is first. We need to really recognize the presence of the RSD, of the rejection sensitive dysphoria. We need to label it. We need to acknowledge that it's there, or even if it's more a simple fear of rejection, like, you know, maybe we're not quite at RSD, but we can tell there's some people pleasing going on, we can tell there is, you know, some avoiding true, honest, open communication with our feelings and with what we feel comfortable with because we are worried about our partner's response. So even that will even if you're not on the end of the spectrum where you're Ha, where you are getting emotionally and physically overwhelmed by these perceived rejections. If you're still, if you're on the other, if you're maybe a bit more moderate, but you're still avoiding these, what you think are tough conversations, or avoiding sharing your feelings, or avoiding setting boundaries in your love space because you're worried your love of life is going to reject you, then you are in the same space. Okay, so slightly different, but really in the same space that we have to acknowledge this elephant in the room of rejection.

Crystal Clark: 00:07:51

And it's really important that both people in the love space do this, that it's a real thing, and that for the person worth RSD, it's so a part of how they are taking in social information that is going to affect many, many facets of their social relationships. And I think once both people are on the same page with that and can understand that, we can start moving forward into some first steps. So our first step is really like I said, acknowledging it and then being willing to have open and honest conversations around it. So you know, in my relationship and in my love space, humor is a big piece. So not just being able to watch comedy shows together and laugh together, but also us using humor to diffuse situations or to cheer each other up, or really, to process some of the things we're going through, right? Like, sometimes when we have a hard conversation, we will throw in a joke or two to kind of like, lighten the mood. But we, you know, we need to be able to find, I guess, the funny silver lining we both have kind of a very, you know, British sort of sense of humor, and I think that's where the Brits get it from, is kind of like, Oh, we're not going to let all of this everyday stuff, you know, trod upon us get us down, you know, we're going to be able to see the funny joke about it, or see the ridiculousness of it, or the absurdity of it, or the, you Know, even the extreme downness and severity of it, we can turn that into something, you know, to kind of have a laugh about. So in our relationship, that's important. So when there are big emotional pieces like this, like you might get from RSD, we would we part of our open and honest conversations, would be being able to joke about it, right and being able to talk about it in a very open, blunt way. Now, that's not always how it works for everyone, but that's one of the pieces of being able to have open and honest conversation, is really being able to communicate it in the way that feels comfortable in your love space, and if you're not sure which way that. It is yet. Well, then that is something that we can totally explore, or that you should explore together, because you should find out what your communication style is with each other, right? That's going to be very important for, you know, tweaking and putting your energy into the right places, and part of the communication is also to put some perspective on it, right? So sometimes, or many times, when we're putting energy into our relationships, we need an objective third party, like me. That's where I come in, right? That's where our relationship coaches and our marriage counselors and all our support system come in is they can try to be an objective third party, to really paint each the each other's perspective for each other, right? Sometimes we're trying to communicate our own perspective to the other person, to our love of life. They may not be fully getting the picture. And by having an objective third party there, right? By having me there, I'm able to kind of go through the pieces and sort of to figure out what part your love of life, is not understanding about your perspective or about your personal experiences in it. And then I'm able to kind of fill in those gaps for them and really paint a fuller picture. And then vice versa, and then we all get to be on the same page in understanding what everyone is going through and what everyone's experiential situation is. The next step is to have a plan. You know me, I always want you to have a plan, because having an agreed upon plan, or knowing what we're going to do in the moment is so important, because then it takes the guesswork out of what we're going to do in the moment. Right. Besides taking the guesswork out, it allows us to try something out to see if it worked and if it doesn't work, then we're going to move on, and we're going to tweak it, we're going to change it, we're going to do something a little bit different with it. So we need to have a plan first. We need to have a plan for the person with the RSD, for the person with the rejection sensitive dysphoria, they need to have a plan about when they are having a sudden feeling or sudden feeling or big reaction or perceived rejection. They need to have a plan of what they're going to do or what they're going to say in that moment to share that. That is what they're going through. That's what's occurring for them. It could even be like, Whoa, punch in the stomach. I need a moment if that is going to be taken kindfully by the love of your life, and it should be taken kindly by the love of your life, if we have had these open and honest conversations about it, now imagine if we've just sort of labeled it, and we go, Great, now we know what's going on, and we walk away. Okay, so imagine we just walk away, great. We know what's going on. And then in the moment, the the person with the RSD goes, Uh, punch in the stomach. I need a moment, excuse me, and then walks away. Now, I did also do bit of a tone of voice there, but you can see that it would be shocking you as the love of life will be like what I like. I just said that, you know, I would like this better with more butter on it. Okay, so we really need to have a plan, because if we know that's the language we're going to use when it comes out, your love of life will be like, Oh, no, worries. Go for it, right? They won't be like, ah, you know, they won't get on the defensive. And that's what helps us with plans. It stops us from getting on the defensive. The other piece that we may need for the person with the R SD is we may need an individual plan for that person. And what that means is we may need some strategies around emotional regulation. We may need some strategies around avoiding negative self talk, or we may need strategies about implementing some more positive self talk, right? We may need some strategies on how to process criticism, right, or how to process feedback, right? Cuz it's not necessary. We're perceiving it as criticism, but it's more like feedback or comments or suggestions from the love of our life is how they probably feel they are sharing with us, right? So we so with the person with RSD may need to do some individual work. Sometimes this individual work can be done in a couple session, and that's great. And then again, everyone's on the same page, and everyone knows what everyone's working on. And sometimes we need to do a little bit of work, you know, just individually together, one on one, and that works best. And then that person can keep practicing it. We also need a plan for what the love of life is going to do or say in these difficult moments, or in these big reaction moments, these big feeling moments, right? And sometimes we might also need some feedback, or a plan about how we're going to share feedback. We need a plan about how we're going to share feedback, because that's one of the main, you know, triggers for RSD, is a sense that feedback equals rejection or feedback equals criticism. Criticism equals rejection and Rejection equals I'm the most horrible person in the world, and I just need to go hide away. So we don't want to get into that spiral. We want to have a way. Everyone in the relationship needs to have a way to give feedback or give ideas back to the love of their life, right? That's a two way street. Everyone needs that. Everyone in the relationship and in the love space also needs a way to be able to share their feelings, not just their positive feelings. Sometimes we're having hard feelings that we also need to share in our love space. We also need to have ways that we're going to talk about problem solving, because sometimes maybe when we're talking about a problem or a hiccup or an issue that's come up, there could be some moments of perceived rejection in there that we are blaming someone, or that someone is more at fault than the other person or someone's problem solving ideas are not as good. You can start to see how this can really permeate through a whole love space, through a whole relationship, right through a whole friendship, and can really start to erode away at things just totally accidentally. So we want to have a plan for this, because this is a part of your love space. This is part of your dynamic together. If rejection is coming up in your love space, this is part of your dynamic, and we need to have a plan so that everyone in the love space feels free and feels open and feels supportive and going through this process together creates, helps create a team work collaboration around it, and that's going to be beneficial, because it's fine to know that you need to take care of you know how people say, like your own side of the road, that you need to take care of your own staff. You need to be adulting. You need to take responsibility and accountability for your own personal things that are going on, but and your own, I guess, also your own individual skill development, for sure, but you are also part of this group. You are part of this love space, and by having this plan together to move forward, to label this, to have some open, honest communication around it, you are creating that loving, supportive, inclusive, love space that is going to keep you sparked. You.