I have not seen a heart that has never been broken, but how it is broken and the results are different. Let's listen to some of the things I have heard:

"When I feel rejected, I feel like I am terrible and get very anxious."

"Every time I am not responded to, I feel as if I was pushed off a cliff, free-falling, and broken into pieces."

"He/she did not respond to my text very enthusiastically, so he/she must not be interested in me."

"I am so wonderful, he/she doesn't like me?! Fuck him/her!"

"They'll like me more if I lose 10 pounds/work out more/make more money..."

"I can't say no. Otherwise, others won’t like me."

"I have to take care of other people's feelings so they don't get upset with me."

"I must always perform well so that others will like me and won’t criticize me."

"When I need others, I feel so small, as if I’m begging others."

"I feel that I want/need too much. Will others think I’m trouble/a burden?"

"I have to hide my true feelings because once I reveal myself, I’ll be hurt."

"I don't need anyone; I'm better off by myself."

Do you know that most of our fear, anxiety, depression, and insecurity about not being accepted, understood, and rejected are closely related to our early relationships?

It is widely studied and understood by mental health professionals that how caregivers treat us in our early lives profoundly impacts how we operate in our current lives. Karra-Morse and Wiley (2012) succinctly say, "(Our) first relationship is the prototype for later relationships. In an unconscious effort to resolve the trauma, many people gravitate to people and situations similar to the unresolved early dynamics." Here, I will share a few specific ways our early relationships generate feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, and worthlessness in us and create difficulties for us in processing emotions and relating to others.

Emotionally unavailable caregivers can create a sense of failure in us. As per Karra-Morse and Wiley (2012), when the parent is emotionally unavailable, the child is stuck in an "incomplete emotional development, experiencing a fundamental sense of failure.” Even though we didn't have words or rational thoughts, we still registered the emotional experience: "No matter what I do, all my best efforts to bring her to me and to keep her attention are not enough...I can't. I'm not enough...she is elsewhere...she isn't with me. I can't."

Emotionally unavailable caregivers can compromise how alive and vital we feel. In his paper "The Dead Dead Mother Syndrome and Trauma," Modell (1999) quotes Stern (1994) and describes that a depressed caregiver's face is flat and expressionless in contrast to the infant's expectations and wishes; the caregiver breaks eye contact and does not seek to re-establish it. There are fewer spontaneous responses, less animation, tonicity, etc. from the caregiver, invoking in the infant: "the flight of animation, a deflation of posture, a fall in positive emotions and facial expressivity, a decrease in activations, etc.” In short, “the experience is descriptively one of a 'micro-depression.'" Can you imagine how devastating these experiences must be? If not, here is a video to give you some clues: Still Face Experiment by Dr Edward Tronick. Though this video does not depict a “micro-depression” per se, you can see how painful it is for the infant when her mother stops engaging with her.

Emotionally unavailable caregivers can undermine our ability to regulate emotions and empathize with others. Music (2017) states that a caregiver can help an infant regulate intense emotions by "marking" (Gergely and Watson, 1996) the infant's gestures, such as a startled judder or a sad cry. For example, when a parent says, "Oh, what a huge shock that was, that big door slamming," then not only has the infant's emotional arousal been regulated, but he or she has been pulled into a world of meaning by another person. This helps the infant develop a sense of self as seen through another's eyes, enhancing their ability to regulate their emotional states and develop capacities for executive functioning (Carlson, 2009). Some babies and children have an experience that feels like looking into "a kind of fairground version of a distorted mirror." What they see or hear reflected by their caregiver increases their complex feelings and leaves them feeling overwhelmed, often giving rise to a distorted self-view. "For example, if a child shows fear on hearing a loud noise and the father shouts, 'Don't be such a wimp, pull yourself together,' then the child probably will struggle to make sense of such scared feelings in themselves or to be sympathetic to such feelings in another." 

Parental neglect and abuse can create long-lasting self-blame tendencies in us. Celani (1994) believes that children cannot tolerate the fact that they have unpredictable and abusive parents because that acknowledgment condemns them to a life of anxiety and a lack of control. The solution to the conundrum is that the abused or neglected child finds a plausible reason for the punishment from their parents in themselves. The reason has to be one that, at least in the child's mind, is potentially correctable. For instance, a girl might convince herself that her dad beat her because she did not get a good grade in school, she was slow to get up in the morning, or she talked back at dinner. Paradoxically, by blaming herself, the girl felt relieved because she could keep the good images of her parents and not acknowledge their badness. This unconscious strategy gives the child a sense of control and the comforting fantasy that the world is run by rules. Once this strategy is firmly established in childhood, it will be called upon by the adult who is faced with rejection from others, resulting in self-blame that makes it hard for the person to see the situation as it is.

Change is possible even if you feel hopeless in your insecurity and fear of rejection.

Even though who we are today is influenced by our past, our decisions today will affect how we develop and what life we ​​live in the future. To treat anxiety, insecurity, and fear of rejection, various self-soothing and relaxation activities are beneficial, such as yoga, meditation, walking, journaling, and different kinds of creative expressions (singing, humming, dancing, coloring, cooking… ) In our age of information explosion, you can easily find suggestions and worksheets online, so I will not go into details here.

What I want to emphasize is that the trauma, insecurity, and fear of rejection suffered in bad relationships need to be healed in good relationships. Suppose you do not have a very satisfying one-to-one relationship, or you find it difficult to believe a one-to-one relationship can bring you a sense of security and acceptance. In that case, you can start by building connections with a group or a community. For example, one of my patients recently joined a band and experienced a sense of connection and self-efficacy in rehearsing and preparing for a performance with others. A friend joined a badminton group in Central Park and regained smiles and friendships in weekly non-competitive play. Another friend met like-minded folks and mentors during meditation retreats and found belonging in a meditation community. If you have suffered more profound traumas and feel that you would rather stay alone, nature, pets, and literature can also bring you a sense of connection and comfort without threatening your sense of security. Hiking, having pets, and reading are some of the first steps toward healing.

If you are ready, a rigorously trained psychotherapist can more effectively help you repair the traumas, insecurity, and fear of rejection in relationships. In my ongoing personal psychoanalysis, my psychoanalyst not only helps me reflect on and deal with the psychological processes and patterns that I cannot see, but at a deeper level, I feel an irreplaceable, profound experience of being recognized, understood, and seen. I can confidently say, "No matter how life is, she is there; no matter what emotional reactions I have, she can help me bear, digest, and integrate them." She has helped me understand that psychotherapy is fundamentally about love. I am fortunate to have met her, and I hope to bring you such an experience.

References:

Karr‑Morse, R., & Wiley, M. S. (2012). Scared Sick: The role of childhood trauma in adult disease. Basic Books.

Modell, A. H. (1999). The dead mother syndrome and the reconstruction of trauma. In G. Kohon (Ed.), The dead mother: The work of André Green (pp. 76–86). London, England: Routledge.

Music, G. (2017). Nurturing natures: Attachment and children’s emotional, sociocultural and brain development (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Celani, D. P. (1994). The illusion of love: Why the battered woman returns to her abuser. Columbia University Press.