The fear of rejection during & after narcissistic abuse

I'm Petra, life coach and advocate for survivors of narcissistic and emotional abuse. In my last video about two or three weeks ago, many of you requested the topic of fear of rejection, which I think is a very important topic. Whenever it comes to our emotional health or mental health, every topic is important because we need to be able to raise awareness for mental health issues, for emotional health issues, and take away the taboo that surrounds that. Growing up in a culture, the African culture, where you just get on with it, where you don't discuss your problems, you don't discuss your anxiety, your depression, your fear of rejection, whatever it may be, there is a lot of taboo surrounding that in the African culture. You just don't speak about those things. You get on with it and you make as though nothing is wrong. Now, if there's any way that I have been very rebellious, it has been in the African culture. And also, you know, living in the Netherlands, there is, I don't know what it's like in the rest of the world, but in the Netherlands and Africa, of course, I have experience with that. And people tend to not really want to speak on these issues because it's taboo. Because they wanted to be swept under the rug and people are suffering in silence. And I don't think that this is, this is not the way to go. You know, if we are looking to create a new world, a loving world, a world where everyone matters, then we need to bring up these topics. And a big one is the fear of rejection. Because when you have been raised in a dysfunctional home, the degree to which a person is faced with a fear of rejection has a direct impact on how you show up in other relationships, how you show up in romantic relationships or friendships or in the workplace. And if you can't trust your parent to be consistent in love, then you fear trusting anyone. And this is so true for those of us who have been raised in dysfunctional homes, is that we have been taught not to trust. Because whatever our opinions were on, whatever we felt, whatever we said was shut down and rejected. So you were taught that love is conditional. If you do as your parent says, or if you shut up and listen and don't voice your opinions and don't voice your concerns or your wants and needs as a child, then we are taught that love is conditional and that is where the fear of rejection is based. So it is very normal, it's not natural, but it is normal that when you have been raised in this level of dysfunction, that this is the way you will operate later on in life as well, where you will be fearful of applying for that new job, you will be fearful of speaking your truth, be fearful of asking what you need from someone. And this all plays into this. And when you have been in this state for a very long time, you just tend to shut down and seclude yourself from society, from life. You just go on to autopilot, where you do the everyday things that you have to do. But other than that, you are really in a state of survival. So you are not living life the way it needs to and the way it should be lived, where you create a balance of joy, of happiness, of sadness, of anger, of grief, whatever that is. Life is about balance. Life is not about being the happy clappy clump all of the time or being depressed all the time. There has to be a balance. So when we look at the expectations created in childhood and the insecurities created in childhood, these follow us the rest of our lives. And when it gets to the point where you realise that this is not the way to live, and yet you have seen so many relationships around you, and even including your own, that have fallen apart because of the abuse that went on in childhood. So when you come to that realisation, it is your responsibility to do something about it. Not for anyone else, but for yourself. Because, again, even if we have mental health issues or emotional health issues, we need to navigate around those issues or we need to heal those issues in order to be able to function at a level that is comfortable for us. So it is not to say that certain mental health issues can be dissolved, but you can learn how to navigate them so that it makes life comfortable for you. So when we look at the fear of rejection, it shows up in very many ways, especially when we are in romantic relationships and friendships. And we tend to not speak up. This is also speaking from my experience. I was not raised in dysfunction, but I was taught to always be nice, to always be kind, to always be friendly, and to really give others the benefit of the doubt. Which, you know, something can be said about that. When you give others the benefit of the doubt, you respect someone from the get-go until they give you a reason to not respect them anymore. So something can be said about that. There is value in that. But on the other hand, the way I was raised is that I was raised to do too much good. And this is what really paralyzed me later on in life, where I would always be kind, always be loving, always be friendly, respectful, always giving others the benefit of the doubt. And this paralyzed me because this is what made that others would walk all over me, would use me as a doormat, would disrespect me, would dishonor me as a woman, as a friend, as a partner. And this is something that I refuse to tolerate any longer. But in these relationships, you'll find that there is a certain pattern that you follow because this is how you have been raised. And when, especially at a young age, you are not aware of destructive patterns that are created, you only become aware of them later on in life. So one of them, for myself especially, was that we do not speak up, especially when we are involved in a toxic relationship with a narcissist. We do not speak up because, again, we are fearful of being rejected. And this plays up in very many different ways. And usually, when we are in the midst of these relationships, we are not aware of the fact that we are not setting our boundaries, that we are not speaking up. We become aware at a later stage. And by then, most of the damage has been done already, but it can be rectified at a later date. So one of them would be not speaking up. You walk on eggshells all the time. I'm just going to get my notes. Sorry. And another thing that I am aware of that I do is that I behave passive-aggressively. And I'm getting better at not doing that, being aware of myself doing that, and then correcting that behavior. But what do I mean by passive-aggressiveness or aggression? Instead of asking for what I wanted, I would sort of suggest what I wanted, or I would take on the role of victim. So, for example, if I needed to, I don't know, if my car needed to go into the garage, I would say, everyone is so busy, no one has time to take me to the garage. And that is a very manipulative way of communicating what your needs are. Instead of just saying, look, I need to take my car in on Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock. Would it be possible that you would drop me off at a quarter to 10? Or whatever it may be. That is asking for what you need, which is oftentimes what we do not do. And this is because we are fearful of being rejected by very many who want to keep the peace. So we ask for what we need in a very roundabout way. We tend to avoid all types of rejection. And I know, especially for myself, this was also true. Not it isn't true now, but it has been true for most of my life, where I would avoid all kinds of rejection. If it was in a romantic sense, I would do everything that I thought the other person needed in order to keep them, in order to pacify them. And that is not love. That is being very aggressive towards oneself. When we do not stand up for our needs and ask for what we need, ask for what we want, ask how to be treated, then this is very disrespectful to self and it is self-abusive. So when you try and avoid all types of rejection, you tend to not show up for anything. It can be a social event. It can be that you really want to get back into the dating game, for example, but you are too afraid to put yourself out there, because what if I am not pretty enough, handsome enough, thin enough? What if I don't have enough booty? What if I don't say the right things? What if I don't smell right? What if, what if, what if, what if? This is how we make ourselves crazy. So because we feel that level of crazy, we tend to seclude ourselves and not take part in life because of the fear of rejection. When you eliminate risk, you are also avoiding the richness of new opportunities. So this is also where we seclude ourselves from others and stay away from others, because we feel that we have to deal with our own mental health issues on our own, so we seclude. We don't want to be a burden to others. This is all part of also codependency and the fear of rejection again, because we don't trust others and we don't trust others because ultimately we do not trust ourselves. And if you do not have that trust in self, then of course it is going to be very difficult to trust others. So these are very important things that you need to be worked on in your own life. You need to do the inner work. You need to get absolutely truthful and honest with yourself about how you show up, about what your mental issues are, where your emotional wounds are. That is the way to do the inner work. Again, the difficulty in expressing our own needs and standing our ground, and this is why a narcissist who really has the same issues, the same core wounds that codependents have, that empaths have, that people who do not set boundaries have, we all have the same emotional wounds. The only difference is that when we become aware of our wounds, we can work on that, we can heal that. A narcissist feels that they are entitled to treat others in a very abusive and very destructive fashion. So because they think this, this is their exception of themselves, they will not take steps to heal themselves. But we are at an advantage there where we can do that if we choose to. When we have difficulty expressing our needs, we may try to do so in the beginning of a narcissistic relationship, but very often this is met with rejection from the narcissist. You are given asylum treatment, you are given anger, you are given rage, you are gaslit, you are manipulated and intimidated. So again, this is where that fear of rejection plays up, where we feel that we do not have the power to abort these relationships, to walk away from them, to not tolerate the abusive behaviour because we have been shut down, because we have been rejected. And really what the narcissist is doing, even though they may not realise it, is that they are showing you where that fear of rejection is within yourself and you can get to heal that. But what we tend to do is the narcissist makes me feel so bad, they reject me, so I need to do my best, even more, I need to take my best to another level in order to please the narcissist or the toxic person. But this is not the way it's supposed to work because we give and we give and we give. I've said this so many times at the expense of our own peace of mind, our own happiness, at the expense of our own mental health, our own emotional intelligence, this is what it takes away from. And this is why we stay because we think the narcissist has projected onto us this idea that we are unworthy, that we are of no importance whatsoever, that we are not deserving of healthy and loving relationships. And this is what they do to keep us in relationships. So if anything, it is about not even trying to change the way the narcissist is, not trying to do even more in order to please them, even more so that you're working or walking on eggshells. It is about stepping away and asking for what you need. And whatever that may be, you know, it's asking yourself first, what do I need? Why do I feel the rejection? Where does that, where is that rooted? Where is my fear of rejection rooted? And oftentimes, when you're speaking to a coach, a therapist, oftentimes that fear of rejection is rooted in your childhood or it is rooted in the way you were raised. Because again, many of us were maybe not raised in dysfunction, as I myself was not raised in dysfunction, but it is that generation that we grew up in, where our parents had a different view on life. They were raised differently. There were different values in life at the time. So oftentimes we are taught to do for others and not do for ourselves, because that is very selfish, because that is ego based. But nothing is further from the truth. If anything, it is about giving to self first, giving to ourselves in a loving and compassionate way, the trust that we need to regain in ourselves, the confidence, the lust for life, the inner power. This is what needs to be accessed. And when we access that, it is very loving towards ourselves. And this is how we demonstrate to others how we wish to be treated, how we wish to be loved, how we wish to be respected. So it's not about being selfish. It's about being compassionate with self. Because when you fill up your own cup, this is an analogy that many people use. When you fill up your own cup with all that richness and goodness and love and compassion and respect and trust, that is when you neutralise that feeling of rejection. And then you can give to others from your overflow as opposed to your emptiness. This is why it is so important. Again, I cannot stress enough, it is not selfish. It is very loving to have a solid and respectful relationship with yourself. So how do you face the fear of rejection? How do we deal with fear of rejection? You know, when building confidence or when rebuilding trust in oneself, oftentimes we make the mistake of thinking, if I can just build that trust in myself, if I can just demonstrate confidence, then I can go on to do whatever I want to do in life. Then I will be happy. Then I will get that job or pursue that career or start that business. But it's not about first gaining the confidence and then doing. It is about doing and along the way you gain confidence, you gain trust. This is the way it works. This is how you deal with the fear of rejection, is by doing. So you know, the thing that you fear the most is the place that you need to look into. Because what we often do is when we fear something, we tend to shy away from it. We don't want to go near it. We don't want to open up that wound. We don't want to look at it. We are very fearful of fear and also fearful of rejection, of course. But the only way to get through that, to get to the other side of that, is to go through it. So if, for example, I think I can just use myself as an example here. I was always very timid, didn't set boundaries, was always nice, was always friendly to all the abusers in my life. Until this last person in my life, a narcissistic ex-friend, I got to the point where I was just totally done with the abuse. I was just done with all the ugliness that went on in that friendship. I was very fearful during the friendship. When I saw stuff going on that just did not sit well with me, when I realised that the way she was treating me was not right, I would often, or not often, I sometimes brought this up and tried to discuss this with her, saying that I was hurt or I was disappointed and I was shut down, I was rejected, told that I'm living in la-la land, told that I'm perceiving things in a very wrong way, told that I was making up stories, that what I was seeing was not true. And so I felt rejected. And especially in the first two, maybe three years of that friendship, I wanted to hold onto it, I wanted to cling onto that because I thought I will never meet another friend like this, someone who really gets me, someone who understands me. Well, nothing was further from the truth. We all know that's an illusion. The narcissist understands your painful points within yourself and this is what they go about abusing even more. So it's not that they understand you or that they get you, it's just that they understand human psychology and this is what they use to manipulate, intimidate and further abuse you. So this was my fear. I thought, how am I ever going to get through life without this person? I'll never meet anyone like her, I won't be able to share my thoughts about life, my thoughts as a woman, my life as a woman, I will not be able to share with another woman. So this is the state they put you in where you are so fearful of that rejection and also being rejected by others that you stay put. And this carried on for many years until in the last year of our friendship I started speaking up because I thought, what do I have to lose? What do I really have to lose? Is it true? You know, this is when you study your thoughts and you challenge your thoughts. Where my thought pattern was, I will never be able to find another friend like her, I will never be able to share my life with someone in this fashion. I started challenging those thoughts and I thought, is that really true? What I am telling myself, is that really true? And the more you ask yourself this question, the more you can get into depth. And I thought, okay, so really I have nothing to lose because the majority of the friendship is based on manipulation and intimidation. So what am I really losing? I flipped that question around and I thought, what will I be gaining by standing up for myself? What will I gain if I challenge her on her abusive behaviour? And the answer was, you will regain your integrity. You will regain your authenticity. You will have more respect. You are going to have more dignity if you challenge her. And also the feeling of being liberated. I think that was a number one for me. I wanted to be liberated. I felt that I was being suffocated in all aspects of my life. In my work life, as a mother, with the guys I was dating at that time. I just felt that I was being suffocated because she would scrutinise my life. It's like looking under a microscope. She would scrutinise every little thing I said or did. And I thought, I do not want this. I want to feel liberated. So that again is stepping through the fear of rejection. Because when you do that, you realise that along the way, it's like giving yourself a high five when you take that first step. And the more you do that, the more you set your boundaries, the more you can be done with fear. Because fear is really something that we have made up in our minds. And it is also something that has been programmed in childhood. But when you really take the time to challenge that fear, you will see that it really has more power. So by stepping through it, that is how you are going to build your confidence. That is how you are going to give yourself respect. That is how you're going to feel more powerful. So what you're really doing is regaining your power. Yes, you gave it away in the beginning of narcissistic relationships because of the fear of rejection. But now the time has come for you to take that power back and soar instead of being paralysed in these very toxic relationships. So there again, there is so much more I could say on that, but I see that my video is almost full, so I'm going to have to stop. But if you would like to, if you are considering one-to-one coaching and then on this topic, for example, fear of rejection, please don't hesitate to get in touch. I'll leave my website and email address underneath the video. Take care of yourselves and take back your power because you are so, so worth it. Have a great week, have a great weekend.