What if I told you that rejection was actually a great thing?
Natalie, are you off your rocker?
Hear me out.
The amount of energy that is spent on pleasing others in order to be liked, is not only draining, but it is inauthentic. We become drained because we are not being our truest selves. That is just a waste of time.
Growing up, I was always a little bit different. Peers from my childhood would describe me as an artistic, quirky hippy. It was not always a compliment. Kids thought I was a little strange and weird. It may have been because it was easy for me to be upbeat and positive about things.
But for whatever reason, I did not feel like I was accepted or fit in with my peers. I felt like an outsider, always looking in, and being left out of things. My positivity was not embraced as a good thing, but rather, labeled as ‘weird’ or ‘annoying.’
I
realized I felt very alone.
When I talked to my therapist about this, she told me something really bizarre. She said, “If people don’t like you, that’s great data.”
She was off her rocker.
But the more she explained, the more it made sense.
There will be people who do not like me. And that is okay. I do not like everybody, either. We are all allowed to like and dislike people.
Additionally, allowing people to dislike and reject you, helps expedite filtering out who is who. Once we know who accepts us and who does not, we can spend less time trying to be someone we are not.
When we lead our lives with confidence and embrace who we are, we sift out the people who reject us. It speeds up the process for us to find the people who truly accept us for who we are.
In the words of Ariana Grande, “thank u, next.”
Natalie Frazier, LMFT
Natalie's work is primarily focused on Couples and Individual Adults. She is experienced in grief and loss counseling, traumas (sexual and life-threatening), marital relations (including communication skills and infidelity), and emotion regulation (such as anger management and depression). She seeks to be an ally to all communities.