So, as a young child I remember experiencing a feeling of not being wanted. I felt like all of my attempts to feel wanted were met with rejection. I did not understand that my mom was struggling severely with her mental health. Looking back now, I’m not even sure she knew she was struggling as deeply as she was. I would reach to her for affection and her body felt hard to me as a child. The inability within her to give affection, left me feeling unwanted. As I have been exploring those moments and processing them now in counseling, I realize those moments created such a deep wound of rejection. Those repeated moments hurt so deeply till inside my heart I made a vow that no one will be given enough access to me to make me feel that way again. Rejection is painful and it aches from within. The wound of rejection causes you to become really cautious with how you do relationships or even if you do them. I feel as if I’m overly sensitive to other people and their actions. Stay with me, in this next paragraph I will go deeper about what that means in my life.

I want to share with you a few things that I am doing to help myself to heal from the pain of rejection. I hope you will find these helpful in some way in your own journey healing from rejection. Check out my list below for 5 things I have used to help me with the wound of rejection:

1). The first thing I had to do was feel the pain. I realized that the pain was there but honestly I had been stuffing it and pretending that it was from something else. I would avoid the pain by running from people and situations that would bring it to the surface. The day I admitted out loud in a counseling session that I felt unwanted as a child bought up all the pain from the wound of rejection that I had been carrying around on the inside.

2). Choose a different way. This may sound a little crazy but yes, I had to choose another way. It was easy to make the choice, but very difficult to walk in that decision. Here is a real example. I had to choose to keep interacting with people I loved and built community with despite the fear of rejection. When I felt like something that happened that was just a human thing, and it wasn’t on purpose was rejection , I didn’t run from it. I let myself explore what I was feeling and why, but choosing a different way meant that I had to choose what was true. My feelings were real, but the truth was that I was not being rejected. A unanswered text message was not rejection. It might feel like it, but it wasn’t. I had to choose to believe what was truth. The truth was that the person I had texted truly does love me and want me in their lives, but they live a very busy life. In my heart, I knew that as soon as they were able, they would respond to me. If they did not, there was a great chance that they simply forgot, and that was okay.

3). Keep showing up. When those feelings of rejection seem to be so big inside of my heart, I make the choice to show up anyway. Honestly, most of the time, when I show up, they don’t seem as big anymore. I want to remind you that a lot of times when we are nursing the wound of rejection, it can make us think that certain things are rejection even when it really isn’t. The moment I began to believe that, I began to respond differently . I made the decision to keep showing up and bringing my authentic self into the spaces I entered.

4). The major thing I have found myself doing on this journey is surrendering my wounded heart of rejection to Jesus and sometimes I have to do it over and over again. It is not a wound that we have to live with forever if we open our hearts and allow Jesus to heal us. Healing is not always immediate but it does come. The more we keep moving towards healing the more the healing will come. Sometimes moving towards healing might feel uncomfortable, but new things always do. We oftentimes just need to lean into those feelings and keep moving through them. I truly believe that all feelings of uncomfortableness is an indicator that it is wrong, sometimes it could be an indicator that something is right. The Lord will show you how to navigate those feelings of rejection in healthy ways while continuing to move you towards complete healing.

5). Releasing it. This is a big one. I am learning each and every day to release it and let it go. Now, does that mean that I will never deal with rejection ever again? Absolutely not, but what it does mean is that it will no longer be able to control my life, my relationships, my decisions, or me any longer. I am in this place of feeling it rising up and reminding myself that I can not live from that place any longer. I surrender it to God and let it go. I ask him to help me navigate these feelings and move into a healthy place so that I might continue moving forward. I hope these can help you move through the pain of rejection to a healthy place.

I am so glad that you are here. I do not take your presence here lightly. I started this blog to have a place to share my journey. I aim for it to be a safe place where you can step into the light. I hope that you will know that you are not alone and that you are seen, known, and loved by Jesus. Rest in the truth in the beauty of the light.