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Epiphany: I realise my mortal fear of rejection by anyone comes from the years of being around my overly critical mother.

I never felt accepted by the closest people in my life. So I fought back a lot, was desperately seeking acceptance. Was frustrated and hurt at being rejected by my own mother, who never said a nice word about me to me.

And now, I’ve become a people-pleaser (Codependent) who’s very sensitive toward rejection. I always think it’s something I said or did. I always think it was my fault. Because I grew up thinking there was something wrong with me. “When someone shuts the door on me, it must be something I said… right???”

My therapist would say, this is an inner child issue. The hurt I carry from childhood has spread to other areas in my life. It’s my inner child who’s afraid of rejection. She cannot bear anyone rejecting her anymore, so she avoids the possibility of it at all cost.

Regarding work, the people who put up barriers are not rejecting ME, they’re just being defensive. They’ve got nothing against me personally. In fact, they don’t even KNOW me.

I’m a commission-based salesperson. So some people have this notion that I’m always selling to them, that I’m “out to get them”… But I can’t help their thinking this way. I can’t control how they think! They would think this way regardless of who it was – not simply because it’s me – they’re just wired this way because they don’t know how to say “no” to others directly so they do everything else they know – avoiding contact being the most common.

These people have not hurt me… yet. So I shouldn’t be so afraid of them, and expect them to hurt me (I guess I’m all too familiar with that). I should stop being afraid of people who don’t know me, have not hurt me, MAY NOT hurt me and are not plotting on how to hurt my feelings.

So I need to remember this: people aren’t rejecting ME. There’s nothing I can prepare to say or do to make them change. I can try other approaches, but if they form a fortified wall between them and me, it’s not my doing. It’s theirs.

And some people are idiots or ludicrous. I just have to accept that and move on. IT’S NOT ME, IT’S THEM. End of story.