Is Anxiety Over Being Rejected Harming Your Relationships?

Anxiety is a natural human emotion that plays a vital role in survival, alerting us to potential threats and motivating caution in uncertain situations. However, when anxiety revolves around the fear of rejection, it can lead to behaviors and emotional responses that hinder our ability to establish and nurture relationships. The roots of rejection anxiety can often be traced to early developmental experiences, where unmet needs, insecure attachments, or internalized representations of others set the stage for future relational patterns.

Anxiety and Fear of Rejection

Anxiety can be understood as a response to internal conflicts and fears rooted in early childhood. Initial experiences of neglect, rejection, abandonment, invalidation, unmet needs, or unfulfilled desires may linger as unconscious sources of fear in adult relationships. Sigmund Freud used the term “signal anxiety” to refer to a kind of warning that a painful or traumatic situation is imminent, so that we can defend ourselves against that possibility. Social rejection can feel that threatening. Moreover, neuroscience has in recent years shown that similar areas of our brain are involved in the affective response to rejection and to physical pain. 

Anxiety over rejection can be understood as a defense against deeper fears of loss and abandonment. We might protect ourselves from the perceived threat of rejection by distorting or avoiding painful realities. For instance, a person who fears rejection might preemptively withdraw from relationships, unconsciously protecting themselves from the anticipated pain of abandonment by sabotaging closeness before rejection occurs. This defensive strategy, while protecting us from threat in the short term, invariably harms relationships and the possibility to develop emotional intimacy and connection.

During our childhood, we internalize mental representations of our caregivers, which serve as templates for future relationships and impact the quality of our attachments. When someone experiences unreliable or rejecting caregiving in childhood, they may internalize a rejecting “other,” leading to a core belief that they are unworthy of love and that rejection is inevitable. This belief in inevitable rejection can become a self-fulfilling prophecy in adult relationships, where individuals with a history of insecure attachment may project their internalized rejecting object onto their partners. For example, they may misinterpret neutral or even positive behaviors as signs of impending rejection.

Fear of Rejection and Relational Patterns

The anxiety associated with rejection often leads to a range of relational patterns that undermine the possibilities for healthy and fulfilling relationships. Some of these patterns include:

Overdependence

The anxiety of rejection leads individuals to cling tightly to their partner, seeking constant reassurance and validation. While this may seem like an attempt to foster closeness, it often has the opposite effect. The partner may feel overwhelmed by this seemingly perpetual need for affirmation, leading them to begin distancing themselves in response, behaving in the ways that the anxious partner was fearful of.

Emotional withdrawal

To avoid the potential pain of rejection, people may distance themselves emotionally, consciously or not, creating a barrier between themselves and others. While this might be a way to protect themselves from vulnerability and rejection, it undermines the foundation of intimacy in the relationship, leading to long-term dissatisfaction for both partners, as emotional needs go unmet.

Hypervigilance

Individuals who fear rejection may become excessively attentive to signs of their partner’s disinterest or even infidelity. This hypervigilance often causes the anxious individual to perceive threats where none exist, leading to accusations, conflicts, and misunderstandings that erode trust in the relationship. In turn, this can lead to increased tension and potential rejection—the very outcome the anxious individual was trying to prevent.

Projection and Rejection Anxiety

The relational patterns described above often create or exacerbate the very fears individuals are trying to avoid. One of the ways in which this happens is through the use of projection, a defense mechanism aimed at protecting us from the anxiety and fear of rejection by projecting these fears and ambivalence onto their partners, assuming, for example, that they are dissatisfied, doubtful, uncommitted, or on the verge of leaving.

For instance, an individual who feels ambivalent, insecure, and anxious in a relationship, may unconsciously project this onto their partner, believing that they are likely to reject them. As a result, in an attempt to keep this rejection from happening, the anxious individual may become excessively critical or controlling, pushing the partner away emotionally or even physically. The partner, feeling unfairly treated, may eventually withdraw or end the relationship, confirming the anxious individual’s fears.

How can anxiety therapy in Chicago help?

The damaging effects of rejection anxiety highlight the importance of addressing the underlying psychological issues that drive this fear. Psychodynamic therapy can help people understand and work through their early experiences and wounds that led to the development of these fears and the different ways we protect ourselves from them. By bringing these unconscious fears into awareness, we can begin to understand how they shaped our current relational patterns.

In addition, therapy for anxiety can help people develop more secure ways of relating to others. This might involve developing more integrated and expansive internal representations of others and how we position ourselves in relation to them. Psychodynamic therapists may also consider and recognize how these relational patterns are present in therapy itself. Over time, this therapeutic work reduces the intensity of rejection anxiety, and fosters emotional resilience and the ability to cultivate more secure and fulfilling connections. If you would like to embark on this journey with one of our Chicago therapists or have questions about anxiety therapy, please contact us today.

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Photo credit: bruce mars