Rejection Affirmations

I had a friend named Karen, and one day I asked her to meet me for lunch to discuss my latest crisis. She said she was busy. At first, I accepted this. Then I ran into her in a shopping mall, and I got upset. My internal dialogue went like this: “How can she have time to shop and not help me? I guess she doesn’t care. She’s just selfish.” Then I immediately felt abandoned. This was quickly followed by anger, sadness, and self-pity.

I went home after this and sent Karen an email telling her how I felt. That seemed like an honest, straightforward way to communicate my feelings. I refused to acknowledge to myself that my words had a tone of accusation because I was angry. She had her own view of things which she promptly shared with me. “You are so needy,” she said. I then got defensive, and we traded emails for the next few days, each of us expressing our point of view. I’ll spare you the details, but things fell apart after this, and Karen didn’t want to see me anymore.

I was distraught after the relationship ended and began to rethink the whole episode after talking to my therapist. Finally, I decided that all of this happened because of my hypersensitivity and tendency to perceive abandonment where it didn’t exist. When I brought this up with a friend, who knows my history, she suggested several reasons for my neurosis. Right in the middle of her well-intentioned remarks, I said, “This is all very interesting, but I already <I>know<I> most of what we were discussing. I want to move to the next level. I want to do something about it. I want to change.” My friend smiled and said, “Let’s make a list of affirmations.” “Do those really work?” I asked. “Well, let’s give it a try,” she said.

No one is purposely trying to abandon or reject me, and I can choose to remember this.

I don’t need to be a hostage taker. I can honor somebody’s saying “I am not available.”

How other people spend their time is none of my business, and I will not judge their choices.

“No” is a complete sentence. I do not have to change people’s minds.

I have enough people in my life that even if someone isn’t available to me I’m ok. I have God, other people, and meetings.

My serenity is not dependent on any one person’s availability. I can be serene even if no one is there to help me.

These affirmations worked for me. I read them every day and internalized them. Then, the next time someone was too busy to help me, I felt less abandoned than before. As a result, I didn’t react so quickly and act out. Instead, I waited and talked to some friends. Then, what little abandonment I did feel dissipated, and I was able to look at things more clearly. For me, this was a great victory. I had changed.