According to good therapy.org, Rejection can be defined as the act of pushing someone or something away. Someone can experience rejection from a family member, a friend or a romantic partner. It will result that emotions can often be painful. Rejection might be experienced on a large scale or in small ways in everyday life.
According to Dr. Phillip McGraw (or Dr. Phil as he is commonly called), rejection is the number one fear among human beings. One of the deepest needs of humans is the need to belong and to be accepted.
Once we realized that we are being rejected, we may be unable to speak and will feel physically unfit. We will get symptoms such as being unable to sleep, work and unable concentrate for several weeks. However, with the time, we will realize that we need to fade all the negative emotions and to create healthy boundaries for ourselves. Little by little, we will learn to enjoy our life again and will start noticing all other available options that we can use.
Recently, I discovered that when people reject me, there are times when there’s something I can learn from it. Therefore, I came up with an outline of values that can help me to understand that who I would allow in my life and who I would need to reject with care.
“When we can no longer change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~Viktor Frankl
Here are the people I decided to cut ties with:
1. The people I can no longer trust.
A secure relationship is a relationship where the people involved trust one another, Therefore, people will have the freedom to truly express their deepest thoughts, feelings, and experiences. According to my opinion, trust is knowing that we will be accepted for who we are and what we express will remain confidential. We also believe that our partner will be there for us, and we will be there for them.
We use our friends to make decisions in our lives. Therefore, we trust them with our secrets. Sometimes our best friends reveal our most confidential secrets which could damage our reputation completely. If we can’t trust a friend to maintain our confidence, then we need to refrain from communicating confidential information or personal secrets with that person.
Recently someone revealed some information about me to my employer. Therefore, I decided to remove that person from my life because that person violates my trust. Finally, I realized that I need to respect my self while to feel safe in my relationships.
2. The people who do not respect me as a human being.
We deserve to be surrounded by people who treat us with respect without impacting our emotions in a negative way.
I decided to remove anyone out of my life who did not respect me as a human being. If you cannot respect my own desires and needs, you will probably do not have a place in my life. If you cannot respect my capabilities and my own choices, you are free to go away from my life.
Sometimes, we feel that these boundaries are extremely hard to set.
3. The people who guilt trip us.
We have all met at least one person over the course of our lives who someway always manages to make us feel guilty for things that we really don’t have to feel guilty about. However, this can drain our energy and hurt our self-esteem.
As Dr. Turndof explains in Psychology Today, however, guilt is a natural emotion — and it’s OK to be comfortable with it and embrace it. Saying “no” to someone and actually feeling guilty is a part of life, and it doesn’t make us a bad person. Turndof explains that the more we get used to saying “no” and embracing guilt as natural, the easier it will be to cope with, thus allowing us to move on faster. Basically, practice makes perfect.
When someone starts to lead us on guilt trips, it’s easy to feel that we are trapped in the situation. However, we should always worry about our own life rather than thinking about how others are assuming about us. If their behavior bothers us, we need to distance ourselves from them as best we can.
4. The people who never change.
“If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” ~Mary Engelbreit
Sometimes, we hold on to people purely based on how long we have known them. Time can bond people together. However, if we feel that nothing substantial keeping us connected with those people, time is not a strong enough reason to hold on to them.
As an example, we love to try to fix the people in our life. We give advice to a friend. We tell a family member how they could do something better. We try to fix and change a partner for the better. Sadly, even though we try, changing people generally doesn’t work. Sometimes, they will get angry at us for trying to make changes in their lives.
All human beings have access to the same fountain of wisdom or human consciousness. This means that we need to trust that those around us will learn their life lessons at their own pace, whenever they are ready. Therefore, when people in our life don’t want to change, we change ourselves. It’s also a sign that we need to get distant from such people.
5. The people who only show up when they need something from us.
My friends are sharing all their heartbreaks and other problems. We talk together and we spend a lot of time to share our life events.
Relationships like this matter because they allow us both to see ourselves more clearly. However, there are certain people who seem to be at our doorstep only when they need something. There’s a point in life when we get exhausted after chasing everyone and trying to fix everything. We don’t need certain people in our lives. Therefore, we have to distance ourselves from people that only call when they need something.
6. The mean people.
I remember that there were girls at my school who used to ignore me, bully me and gossip behind my back. But, I still tried.
However, the Same thing happened to me later in my life. I noticed that some of my friends were making mean comments and trying to ruin my reputation.
I have learned many lessons after going through all these problems. I have realized that I have to remove such mean people from my life. Mostly, who shows me this level of disrespect.
According to elephant journal, every relationship is unique, but we have the final say in whether it is healthy enough to hang onto.
In the end, always remember to have compassion for ourselves first. We deserve respect. We are allowed to enforce our own boundaries.

I am a Business Management graduate from the University Of Staffordshire (UK) and a qualified personnel officer who completed the National Diploma of Training and Human Resource development at Institute of Personnel Management (Sri-Lanka).
Apart from my professional career in the field of HRM, I am also a freelance writer of web and business contents.