Which Do You Fear More — Rejection or Suffering?

It’s not the rejection you fear so much as the suffering that’ll come with it.

Photo by Lukas Rychvalsky on Unsplash

Nobody likes to suffer.

Suffering — mentally, emotionally, physically, or spiritually — is unpleasant. The pain that comes with suffering — tangible or not — is unpleasant, distressing, uncomfortable, and just plain awful.

But do you know what’s worse than suffering? Often — the fear over how and what it’ll be.

Frequently, we don’t recognize suffering as our fear. It gets cloaked in another, more recognizable, seemingly more tangible form — like rejection.

Fear of rejection is distressing in and of itself. But why do we fear rejection? What’s behind it?

The reality is that it’s not being rejected we fear. It’s what else will come alongside it, as well as the fear of suffering due to it.

Let’s break it down for more clarity.

What does rejection look like

What, precisely, does rejection look like?

That depends on the what and how of the rejection. It can be personal, professional, coincidental, and impersonal.