Fear Of Rejection And Some Truths About My Life
February 18, 2008 | In About |
Dear readers, I have a confession to make: I am afraid. Is this news? Everyone is afraid, right? True, at one time or another, I suppose. But I often feel that I live my life based on my fear.
Photo by losiek
I realize on some level it’s an existential fear that there isn’t a point to my life; that I’m highly irrelevant personally and therefore my life serves no purpose. This is also a fear that there is no god and I’m utterly alone no matter what I do. This is a big fear, but thankfully, not the one that rules my life most often. No, the fear that drives me most of the time is a more “mundane” fear: that everyone is judging me and finding me lacking.
As far back as I can remember, I was teased, for one reason or another. Unfortunately, this teasing lasted for a number of years. This shaped my view of myself, as well as my expectations for how others will treat me. I automatically believe someone is going to not like me, rather than thinking it’s more likely that they will. This causes me to be shy until I get to know someone better, and makes me a wallflower in large groups. This negative expectation has also probably accounted for several negative initial judgments of others. It was as if I decided up front that I didn’t like them, so then I wouldn’t approach them and they wouldn’t have a chance to reject me.
Fear Holds Me Back
This fear has held me back from getting ahead in my career, from having more close friends, and from being truthful with others. It’s part of the reason that I hide who I really am from others. It also accounts for why I get hurt so easily by people I think are my friends; once someone initially accepts me, I let down my guard. When it comes right down to it, I never learned good boundaries. Mine are usually too thick or too thin, but rarely just right to protect myself, while still allowing emotional intimacy with others and true friendship.
Once, almost a year ago now, I was doing some early morning self reflection on my way to work. I was stuck in traffic and began thinking about how I relate to other people and about my weight. I realized that my weight was a shield that I used to keep myself at a distance from others. I remember saying, “I feel sad that my protection has become my prison.” This specific wording came from somewhere deep inside of me, somewhere beyond conscious thought. However, I knew it was 100% accurate. I’ve remained overweight as a way to protect myself. Unfortunately, there is still part of me that fears others’ judgment so much, it won’t let me shed this prison and live healthy.
Why do I share this with you now? Because I’ve realized that my fear of being judged is holding me back from writing to this blog. I have so much going on in my life right now that it has been very difficult to write. I’m afraid of sharing too much, of being too personal. There are some lines people cross when they blog that I would never cross in such a public forum. For instance, I would never share details of my sex life, or graphic descriptions of medical problems. I’ve shared my innermost thoughts and feelings about different topics, but then I worry that I shared too much. Objectively, I’m sure I didn’t, but subjectively (where the inner critic lives), I’ve laid myself bare.
Well, you know what? I haven’t shared enough. I’ve shared my struggles to write, and I’ve hinted at various things, but I’ve never laid it all out as an explanation for why I’ve been so flaky over the past few months. I’ve been so worried that I’ll be judged, or the wrong person will read this blog, that I’ve held back.
What’s Going On In My Life
So, now that I’ve shared my fear of judgment and rejection, I can explain what is going on in my life. On September 10, 2007, I went to my job as an Account Manager for a small insurance agency. I was five minutes late getting into the office because I had been caught in traffic. When I got there, the owner of the company and the office manager called me into the conference room. Since I was late, I thought I was in trouble, but that wasn’t even an issue. Instead, they informed me that I wasn’t working out and my employment was terminated immediately. I had been working there for 82 days.
They had already packed up my personal belongings and handed me the box. I asked for an explanation and wasn’t given one. In the time since I can only speculate that my former employer was on a power trip and she didn’t like the fact that I wanted to excel in the industry. And, since I had gotten the position through a recruiter, I highly suspect that she was underhanded in her timing (just before the end of 90 days) to avoid paying him all or some of his placement fee. She was looking for a family member while I was looking for an employer, and she didn’t like that I acted accordingly. She wanted to be consulted on every little decision, and I said something jokingly that pointed out that she didn’t have complete control over us. This happened the Friday before and I suspect it was too much for her to deal with - I upset the apple cart too much.
I don’t fear her reading this. My parents believe she is badmouthing me around the industry. I can’t say I know her well enough to know if she is or not. She may very well be doing so; however, since I’ve had 7 sets of interviews in the industry since that day and no job offers.
This had several immediate consequences for my life. First, we lost a little over half our income in one fell swoop. This has led to massive money worries. Unemployment compensation in the State of Maryland helps, but it in no way replaces your previous income. We had decided to pay off our debt and so didn’t have an emergency fund. Unfortunately, our credit card became our emergency fund.
Second Major Life Event
The second major consequence was that my depression returned, much stronger than in the past. It is because of this that I haven’t grown this blog beyond 20 visitors a day. There are others who started in September 2007, and they have thousands of RSS subscribers. I have less than 10. On the one hand, I feel guilty for wasting so much time - after all I’ve had vast stretches of uninterrupted hours I could have been blogging. On the other hand, depression is debilitating. Some days I’m normal, and others I don’t want to do anything but sit and watch TV or bury my head in a book.
I’m under the care of a fantastic psychiatrist who is helping me. I would receive additional benefits if I could continue with my Solution Training, but since it’s not conventional therapy, it’s not covered by my health insurance. Slowly I’m getting better, but it’s difficult.
I’ve worked temp positions, and I’ve been helping to fix up the apartment my husband and I will be moving into. The days where I’ve scraped, sanded, and painted at the apartment were good ones. I think the moving around for 6 hours was good exercise. Also, it’s work that gives me a sense of accomplishment and pride
Unfortunately, the longer I’m without a permanent position, the harder it is becoming to find one. My brother is sure that the cable company will hire me, but there is usually several weeks between submitting an application and getting called for an interview. So, I’m left continuing to wait. Working for the cable company would not be as much income as the insurance industry, but it would be much better for a lot of reasons. The biggest one being that it’s not insurance.
Insurance Isn’t For Me
On September 10th, as I drove home from my previous place of employment, I had a crystal clear thought: insurance is not where I’m supposed to be. However, like the realization that my weight is a prison, this thought didn’t come with an easy solution. So, are potential employers reading this? Who knows. But, I’m no longer going to try and pretty up my thoughts about the industry in case they are. There was a time in my life, only a few years ago, when I thought that insurance was interesting. I decided to make insurance my career and I gave up on biology. This was a bad move on my part, but I pushed down my dream until that ride home when insurance didn’t matter anymore.
I still applied for positions in insurance, and if one was offered to me tomorrow at the right price, I would take it. I still have a significant amount of debt and a high income wouldn’t hurt. However, even if this were to happen, I would go into it knowing it was temporary. I’ll never be happy in the insurance industry and I’m not going to pretend anymore that I would. It’s an old boys club with a strong push toward the bottom line. I worked with dozens of salesman, and while most of them were honest, they were all salesman. And the dishonest ones made my skin crawl. As a woman, a liberal, and a support person, I didn’t amount to much. If I was a man, a conservative, and a salesman pushing to fill my life and the company’s life with more and more money, I would do fine. As I’m sure you can imagine, this doesn’t sit well with me at all.
I am thankful that I’m no longer an insurance professional, and I hope I don’t have to be one momentarily in order to have a job. I’m also thankful that I chose to tell my story here. I thought it would be difficult, but no more difficult than what I’ve already been through. I can’t promise anything for the future of this blog, except that I’ll keep it going. I still believe that I must work toward my dream. However, my health, both mental and physical, comes first. Being healthy and active is part of my dream as well, so I will most likely be talking about it in the future.
Well, I’ve gone on for quite awhile now, so I’ll sign off. I appreciate everyone who is reading this and especially those few who continue to come back. It means more than I could ever express to know that there is someone who wants me to keep writing, despite any troubles I may be having. And, as always, I look forward to hearing from you in the comments below.
Storm Photo by El Garza; Sunset Photo by Burning Image
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Thanks Cathy,
You are certainly dealing with deep stuff.
I’m glad you have a good shrink. A good relationship with someone can make all the difference.
It is great to hear your story. And it is all part of the story of becoming an activist. Activists are real people not just robots for a cause (though there are some activists who look like this in my experience - not a pretty sight!).
Looking forward to hearing more as you go along.
Ah, yes “deep stuff.” If only it wasn’t quite as deep. However, it does give me a clearer perspective on how others may be suffering as well. I don’t have the flippant attitude of some towards the mentally ill. I understand how hard it can be to overcome something that you feel unable to control.
As for becoming an activist, some days I wonder if I will end teaching something in the science field or if I will really end up teaching more in the psychology field. Only time will tell, however.