Teens and Managing Rejection Part 1
In our previous article, we talked about teens and dealing with rejection.
We defined rejection to be the act of having our request to connect with others turned down. The rejection can be a harsh one or a gentle one, either way, it may still generate a negative emotion especially on the one feeling rejected. In the field of mental health care, rejection most frequently refers to the feelings of shame, sadness, or grief people feel when they are not accepted by others.
Rejection Amongst Teens and Young Adults
We described rejection amongst teens and young adults, in a relatable way such as being dropped from the school’s sports team, missing out on a scholarship, not invited for a friend’s birthday party, being kicked out of your BFF (Best friends for life) crew, losing out on the lead role in the school play, parent’s bitter divorce where one parent says you should go with the other and not them, sudden relocation by your parents to a new environment where no one is interested in connecting with you, just to mention a few.
Rejection and Body Pains
Research has found that emotional pain from rejection can be intense and can even manifest as physical pain. ( Eisenberger NI. The neural bases of social pain: evidence for shared representations with physical pain. Psychosomatic Medicine. 2012;74(2):126-135).
No matter how strong we think we are, rejection will generate an emotion or energy-in- motion in us that if we do not have a well-thought-out coping mechanism to handle the energy-in-motion, it can lead to other forms of negative vibes, which will be bad for our health, mentally, physically, and even spiritually.
Other forms of emotions that the feeling of rejection can generate are loneliness, jealousy, guilt, shame, social anxiety, shyness, sadness, and anger.
Rejection Comes with Benefits
Rejections may not be pleasant at first, even though with time it turns out to be an important ingredient on our pathway to success . Rejections can help one stay grounded and resilient in life, as it offers training opportunities for our tolerance level as teens and young adults. We stay focused because there's a constant reminder that we need to work harder at improving ourselves.
But before we can get past the feelings of rejection to where we can now convert the negative energy-in-motion into something positive, where we enjoy the benefits of it, we need to take certain little steps as teens and young adults, that can help us manage each rejection better. Here are a few recommendations.
1. Acknowledging the Rejection
To acknowledge something means to accept or admit the existence or truth of it. When we say acknowledge the rejection, we mean to take it as it is and not shy away from the fact or truth, of what has just happened, trying to give it a different interpretation.
Putting this in context, for example let’s say your school is trying to raise a football team for a tournament and asked that all footballers come in for trials. The school coach wants 15 players. The benchmark is 70% technical skill and 80% physical fitness, which is based on the information they have gathered about other participating schools for the tournament. After the trials, you came out at number 16 and had to be dropped from the team. This can be interpreted as a type of rejection.
Acknowledging the fact that you were dropped from the squad and yes, the other 15 guys selected were better than you for now, will help you convert the negative emotions or energy-in-motion into a positive drive that can propel you into a growth mindset. With a growth mindset you can take time to analyze what the other guys did that made them standout by an inch or two above you. This introspection should reveal to you an area you need to work and improve on yourself ahead of the next trial.
Failing to acknowledge the truth about the rejection might leave you in a fixed mindset where you start saying things like, it is their loss for dropping me not mine, I am the best of the best, the coach chose the other guys because the coach had soft spots for them, the coach does not like me and more. With this kind of mindset, you won’t have the drive to want to improve yourself, rather you would be sulking in self-pity which can further give your negative energy-in-motion the drive to paralyze or misdirect your motivation.
If you were dropped from the team due to bad behavior and not because you were not good enough, it’s also good to acknowledge this truth or fact. This should help you identify what this bad behavior is and action steps you are willing to take to ensure that by the next trial season you would have grown out of such behavior for you to make the team. This will also mean you are maintaining your technical skills and physical fitness too and not eating yourself out of shape(Big smile).
Please take note I only used the football team as an example. Your own experience may not be exactly like the example I gave, but I hope you get the point, and my example was relatable enough for you.
This is where we will stop for today. Please join us next week for more recommendations and if you would like to share your own experience on how you were able to handle rejection, feel free to send me a direct message through any of my social media handles(KrisOAluta).
Bi-Weekly Virtual Mentoring Session Starting in October 2023
Are you a parent of a teenager that has attended our mentoring workshop? This is to inform you that To Be Honest with Uncle Kris is starting bi-weekly follow-up virtual mentoring sessions for teens between the ages of 9-16, where we would be using creative content to give teens practical steps to help them discover, develop, and deploy their potential as a continuation of things taught at the workshops.
This virtual meeting will be held as follows:
Saturday 14th October and Saturday 28th October
Time is 5-6pm (Nigerian Time)
Please click the link below to register your teens.
https://forms.gle/nrKzPX8QgbeCcWvh9
or send an email to tbhwithunclekris@gmail.comfor further enquiries.
Also, kindly subscribe to our newsletter https://tbhwithkris-org.ghost.io/ for more tips on how to better connect and support your teens.
Until next time, please take care of yourself and God bless.
Thank you.
Chris Aluta
Teen Coach and Mentor