The Neuroscience of Rejection: Why it hurts and what to do about it

Rejection hurts. No matter how old you are, you’ve probably experienced the pain of rejection on more than a few occasions. Perhaps you’ve tried to raise money for your startup only to be turned down by multiple potential investors. Maybe you interviewed for your dream job only to be passed up for someone less qualified. Or, perhaps you just tried to hug a cute dog and it ran away…

The truth is that we all have an inner asian toddler who wants just wants to be accepted — both by dogs and other human beings. When we don’t receive this acceptance, it can feel pretty terrible. As a consequence, we often avoid taking actions that might result in us being rejected — but this avoidance can come at a serious cost.

So why does rejection hurt so much? A large amount of research has revealed that the answer to this question lies in how our brain processes rejection. Many people describe the experience of being rejected as “painful”. As it turns out, this description is more than just a metaphor. This is because rejection and physical pain are the same to your brain.

Scientists have discovered that even though experiences of physical and social pain seem very different from one another on the surface, the two experiences are actually very similar. As evidence, physical pain and pain from rejection rely on shared neural substrates in the brain (e.g. the dACC and anterior insula), people who are more sensitive to physical pain are also more sensitive to the pain of rejection (and visa versa), and one kind of pain experience can alter the other in a congruent manner.

Interestingly, painkillers (both natural and synthetic) can have a profound effect on our ability to cope with rejection. When you experience physical pain, the brain’s natural painkilling response kicks in by releasing mu opioids. This response also occurs for social pain — and the more opioid released, the greater reduction in pain. This explains why the most resilient people have brains that release significantly more opioids during social rejection than others — they are able to reduce the amount of pain they feel.

Taking synthetic painkillers can also alleviate the pain of rejection. There is evidence that individuals that are given Tylenol for a 3 week period experience a significant reduction in hurt feelings after being rejected than those in a placebo condition. Note that this does not mean you should raid your local chemist and load up on painkillers before your next sales pitch. The drug Ecstasy makes people much more empathetic but you wouldn’t recommend it as a performance enhancement for your customer service team. As we’ll see, there are drug free approaches to dealing with rejection that are likely to be more appropriate.

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that our brains would have such an adverse reaction to rejection. Rejection would have served a vital function in our evolutionary past. For our distant ancestors, being ostracized from our tribes would have equated to certain death, since it was difficult to survive alone. Thus, the brain likely developed an early warning system to alert us when we were at risk of being rejected. Those who experienced rejection as more painful gained an evolutionary advantage since they were more likely to adjust their behavior and remain in the tribe as a consequence.

So the pain of rejection likely evolved for a reason. But these days, we live in a very different world than the one our brains evolved for. Today, rejection is an inextricable part of life and the only way to avoid rejection is to avoid doing anything remotely novel or interesting.

If you want to create something new, you are bound to face rejection. It doesn’t matter if what you are creating is a new product/service, business process, career path, blog post, or relationship — you run the risk of being rejected by some people. In my younger years, I spent many nights in bars avoiding eye contact with every pretty girl, hoping one of them would appreciate my mysterious indifference and come over to sweep me off my feet. Needless to say, this approach ensured I was never rejected but also ensured my continued singleness.

So if rejection is an inevitable in our modern world, how do we learn to deal with the pain that accompanies it?

1. Accept that rejection will hurt

There is no getting around it. Rejection hurts. If you stick a knife into your leg, you’re not going to feel warm and fuzzy inside. Likewise, being rejected is always going to be associated with at least some pain. If you naively try and convince yourself that rejection will be pain free, you are likely to be unpleasantly surprised and experience a decrease in motivation.

Be realistic and accept that doing anything hard and worthwhile will have some pain associated with it — it is all part of the process. But also know that the feelings will eventually subside. Our brain copes with emotional rejection over time, just as it does with physical pain.

2. Increase your pain threshold through repeated exposure

The brain adapts to whatever it experiences repeatedly. Last week, I kicked my shin into a coffee table and swore for a minute straight. Meanwhile, many martial artists kick each other in the shins all day long without so much as a wince. Similarly, people who experience chronic pain often develop a much higher pain tolerance. This is because repeated exposure to pain leads to a significantly higher pain threshold.

We all know that one guy who hits on every girl at the bar or club. Nothing deters him — not cold indifference, insults, or even drinks being thrown in his face. Every rejection bounces off him because he’s experienced so many before. Rejection just doesn’t hurt him as much because his brain has adapted to it (much to the dismay of the other people in the bar).

Thus, one of the best ways to learn to overcome rejection is to experience a lot of it. Once you get over the initial pain, you will start to become more and more numb to the effects of rejection.

Practice doing things that will guarantee some rejection but have relatively low stakes, such as asking for discounts on your meals, asking strangers for favours, trying to raise money for a charity, etc. Whatever you do, do it regularly, and do it enough that the pain of rejection slowly loses its sting.

3. Reframe rejection

Much like physical pain, our social pain is dependent on our interpretation of the events we experience. This means that the meaning we attribute to rejection is critical to the amount of pain we experience as a result.

Most people are familiar with the placebo effect. It is a fact that our experience of physical pain can be dramatically attenuated by our beliefs. Many people have reported being “cured” of crippling chronic pain from sham surgeries which rely completely on the placebo effect. Belief has a powerful effect when it comes to physical pain and the effect is perhaps even more pronounced when it comes to psychological pain.

The form of psychological therapy that has the most scientific support for its efficacy is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). The underlying principle of CBT is that we do not see the world as it really it. Our feelings are determined by our expectations, previous experience, and beliefs — and by reframing the way we perceive the events in our lives, we can change the way we feel.

Many people personalise rejection, assuming that the reason that they are being rejected is that they are personally flawed is some way. In truth, most of the time rejection has more to do with the person doing the rejecting. Think about the times you have rejected others. For example, each time you dodge the “charity muggers” outside the train station — are you dodging them because you think there is something wrong with them as human beings? — or for reasons that have nothing to do with them as people?

Sometimes rejection is actually personal. However, in these cases we often mistakenly buy-in to the personal criticism that accompanies the rejection. We believe the rejection is warranted instead of questioning the validity of the person doing the rejecting.

Take this simple thought experiment… If you walked into a mental asylum and met a patient who immediately exclaimed that you were the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ and worthy of all praise and honour, would it make you feel good about yourself? Conversely, if you met another patient who thought you were Satan’s cousin Barry who was visiting from hell and demanded you leave, would you feel rejected and humiliated? Hopefully not. This is because you don’t actually believe what the patients are saying about you. Similarly, many of the people that reject us have their own problems and irrationalities that lead them to reject us. We should be careful not to give too much weight to such personal rejections.

Just like the placebo effect influences our experience of physical pain, our beliefs about rejection affect the level of psychological pain we experience. Thus, if we can change our beliefs, we can change the way we feel.

Anybody who is working towards an audacious goal is bound to encounter a lot of rejection. Our ability to cope with this rejection is directly related to how well we can accept, practice, and reframe rejection. If we can learn to cope with rejection more effectively, we are much more likely to develop the perseverance necessary to achieve our goals.