7 simple steps to calm your fears and let the real you shine!
Fear of rejection comes in many forms. Whether you feel it going on a first date, turning in reports to your boss, speaking in public, facing up to peer pressure, or going to social events, fear of rejection can be paralyzing.
Your hands sweat or tremble. Waves of stomach-churning nausea hit. Your throat goes dry and it’s hard to swallow. A headache starts to drum at your temples or behind your eyes. You start searching for a way out. You just want to run and do anything – ANYTHING – except the task before you.
Fear of rejection can make you avoid situations, and that can cause even more problems in your life. You know that if you could just get passed that overwhelming reaction, that dread, then your life would be different.
Maybe you’ve already tried a few things. Perhaps you’ve dressed for success, followed someone else’s routine for getting through fearful episodes, read ‘how to’ blogs, or even considered therapy. But that same fear keeps dogging you. You avoid your triggers every chance you get.
It feels like your fear of rejection is holding you back from the life you really want.
But fear not.
You don’t need to suffer in silence or white-knuckle your way through anymore. And you don’t have to avoid your trigger situation for the rest of your life or spend years in therapy to find relief, either.
There is a science-based method of reducing, and even eliminating, your fear of rejection that you can learn to apply whenever you need it.
I will walk you through the science and the method, and leave you with the skills to develop your own sense of mastery over your fear of rejection. You can free yourself and let the real you shine!
Let 2020 be the start of a new decade and a new you! I’ll show you how, and give you examples to get your started.
Here is a Table of Contents for the post so you can see what’s ahead:
What Causes the Fear of Rejection? Your Brain on Fear The Roots of Rejection You Could See A Therapist What’s the alternative to therapy for fear of rejection? What is EFT or “Tapping”? How Does EFT Work? The 7 Steps of EFT An Example EFT “Script” for Fear of Rejection Tapping to Release Your Fears
Harry Chapin’s life began in NYC, was lived making other peoples’ lives better, and came to an end on the Long Island Expressway 40 years ago today when the Volkswagen Rabbit he was driving was hit from behind by a tractor-trailer. He was 38.
I’m remembering him today as I so often do.
Sometime before that July 16th afternoon in 1981, I had the occasion to sit in his car while I watched him comb through its assorted contents: music equipment, clothes, coffee cups, and spare change. Lots of spare change. He was searching for a pair of jeans, other than the ones he was wearing. He would later auction them off from the stage. On the worn denim pant leg he would write the opening lyrics of “Taxi.”
The jeans ultimately ended up in the lucky hands of the highest bidder, a drummer named Susie, for $75. By today’s standards, it doesn’t sound like much. But It was the 1970s, after all, and that was a sizable amount of money for a student.
He had come to the small, all women’s college I attended to perform for free. All the money earned from the show – $3,500 it turned out, plus Susie’s $75 – would be donated to World Hunger Year, an organization he started to fight poverty and food insufficiency. It felt like a million dollars to us and he accepted it as graciously as if it were.
Like a lot of people, I loved Harry Chapin’s music. I would get lost in his stories. And, like a lot of people, I wanted to meet him. When the yearbook committee that I headed up wanted to include never-before color photographs in that year’s edition and funds were nil, I saw my chance. “I know,” I thought. “I’ll call Harry. I’ll see if we could get him to perform at our small college. If we sold out, I figured we could pay him about one thousand dollars and still have enough of a profit to upgrade the yearbook. I was certain he’d be as excited about my idea as I was. I’ll simply get in touch with him.
But how? How do you call a Grammy-nominated artist? Well, you start by calling his agent who won’t take your call. Then you look in the phone book (yes, I said phone book) and you phone everyone named Chapin in the NY Metro area. Then you get lucky and get his sister on the phone. Shocked, you tell her about your obsession: the yearbook. She gives you the number to Harry’s house. Your stomach drops. You call.
“Hello. May I speak with Mr. Chapin, please?” “Which one?,” asked the older man on the other end. “Harry, please.” “Hold on.” (Hand over receiver), “Harrry …telephone!”
“Hello!”
“Mr. Chapin, my name is Cathy Duca, hello. I’m the editor of the yearbook at my college and we’d really like to have color pictures this year, and …”
“First of all, don’t call me Mr. Chapin. That’s my father. Call me Harry.”
“Okay, Mr. Chapin, thank you. Anyway, the yearbook …” I tell him about paying him the thousand dollars. He laughs.
“I normally get twenty-five thousand dollars for a show.”
I gulp. “Well … well … “
“Thanks, Cathy. Sorry. I wish you good luck. Bye now.”
Before I heard the click of the phone, I said emphatically (urgently), “Mr. Chapin, I mean Harry, it’s not just about the yearbook. We’re an all-women’s college and … and … we believe in the same things you believe in, helping one another, giving to one another . That’s the kind of school we are. Maybe if we split the thousand, and give five hundred to an organization?”
“Okay, tell you what. Come up with something. I’ll be there on October 18th at 8:00. That all right?”
We never spoke again until he and his band walked onto the campus at 8:00, as promised. He pulled up in his blue VW Rabbit. He felt like a big brother. He performed to a standing room only crowd of about one thousand people. Every single ticket was sold by word-of-mouth, no advertising, no budget, just a couple of months of handing out flyers and telling everyone we knew what we were doing. Each person there knew the cause – the larger one – and seemed excited to be a part of it. A personal highlight was when Harry shared with the audience the story of our phone conversation. I think he referred to me as “fast-talking” Cathy Duca and then invited me on stage to sing the prelude to “Cats in the Cradle” with him. I’ll never forget it, ever.
Two days later, another student from the college was on the local bus, returning to campus from her student teaching job. As the bus neared the campus, she overheard a man ask the driver if the upcoming stop was the correct one to get onto campus. He told the driver that he did a show there two nights earlier and his car wouldn’t start. It was apparently towed to a nearby service station. Exactly how he got back to Long Island after the concert I’ll never know. But clearly, he took public transportation to get back to NJ to retrieve his car. There was a trace neither of a limousine nor a huge ego.
Harry Chapin used his celebrity as a platform to bring attention and dollars to social causes. When he performed, he did more than entertain. He inspired. He aroused. He made you feel as though your worth was exactly what the world needed, and he made you feel as if you suddenly had more of it.
He is buried in a cemetery in Huntington, New York, his epitaph taken from his 1978 song “I Wonder What Would Happen to This World”:
Oh if a man tried
To take his time on Earth
And prove before he died
What one man’s life could be worth
I wonder what would happen
to this world
Harry Chapin traveled an arc from storyteller to activist. I suppose his last day on this plane completed his journey as he was headed to do one more benefit concert in East Meadows, NY. He closed his life’s circle having left a legacy of service, of love and compassion in both what he said and what he did. I think of him as a rugged and gentle troubadour. Anyone who knew him or knew of him was familiar with his mantra, “When in doubt, do something.” His philosophy was as simple and as potent as that.
You also knew that storytelling was his love language and touching hearts his currency. He deeply and forever touched mine.
Somewhere inside of me still lives that college student. She’s wrapped in a 60-something body and outlook now, with nary the innocence and idealism. Yet, as I reflect on the passion and goodness of one man, I can feel it scaling some of the jadedness and pessimism that has built up of late, like plaque around my heart. Legacy is a curious thing. It can, when focused upon, reignite a flame once thought gone.
In some way, to me, Harry Chapin will always be 38 and I will always be 18.
While I and others were off to find things like footlights, he was off to find the sky.
We may not realize it, but our day consists of a series of moments. Each moment brings with it a decision that either brings us nearer to or further from our desires.
If our mind is preoccupied, rushing, deflecting, avoiding, foggy, distracted or otherwise not in sync with the present moment, we can be left entirely disconnected from a grounding compass with which to navigate life. The result? Quite possibly a frenetic feeling, an unfocused approach to life, a chaotic or disorganized living environment, a gnawing sense that something is wrong.
One solution? To take the time and make the small effort to participate in a brief guided meditation. If you meditate regularly, you know how it goes. If you’re new to the idea of “sitting and doing nothing,” you are in for a very interesting experience. And probably a surprising one in that meditating is far from doing nothing.
Sure, there’s the mat or seat cushion that many people use when meditating. Me? I do my most valuable and practical meditation while I’m putting on mascara. Unconventional, yes. But it’s a time to collect my thoughts, tune into my body and let my mind drift until it lands not a problem, but on a peacefulness in my body. It is from this place of peacefulness that I then take myself into sessions with the clients I admire and respect so much. To be a holding container for each person, I must first clear out any emotional debris that I may be carrying. In many instances, I simply tell myself I’ll get to it later.
Even that has taken practice. I often have a lot of “Yeah,but’s …”, you see.
Today, though, I’m so glad that you’ll be joining me in a 5-minute meditation that is mascara-free. It is a “lite” meditation that is meant to set you up for your day. It is what I say to myself before leaving the house in the morning – or for the last number of months – heading to the Zoom screen. It’s how I get myself centered, clear-headed, and in the right vibration for my day. By vibration, I mean in the right mindset. When my physical state is aligned with my mental/emotional state, life is easier, more gratifying, and more productive. More productive, by the way, not because I necessarily do more, but because I bring more of myself effortlessly into each situation.
My only suggestion for the next five minutes is to get comfortable, drop down into your body, meaning feel your body at all the points where it meets up with whatever is supporting it, the chair, floor, wall, etc, and just breathe through your nose as easily as you can. Your eyes can be open or closed, as you prefer. That’s it. The rest will come naturally as you listen to the recording and just notice your own breathing. It’s that simple. See what happens. Notice what you notice. For the next five minutes.
One of my earliest memories is of taking my father’s temperature, giving him an injection and tapping his knee with one of those hammer-like tools. Since we didn’t keep lollipops in the house, I think I handed him a Scooter pie from the refrigerator at the conclusion of my “exam,” and told him he was all better now.
I was 4 and I remember it like it was yesterday.
I recall how great it felt to reach into my doctor’s bag and pull out something which I knew could help my dad feel better. Not that he was sick; he was just pretending. But still, I remember feeling kind of, I don’t know … competent. Useful. My mother was a nurse and used to do that sort of thing all the time. It wasn’t until I was a little older that I realized not everybody’s mom talked about medical things during dinner. She wasn’t much of a domestic type but boy, if you needed someone to clean a cut or bring a fever down, my mom was your person. She wasn’t big on physical affection. Not a very huggy person. Or a verbally expressive one, either, when it came to saying, “I love you.”
Not her thing.
She was born in Arkansas and spoke with a slight Southern drawl. Compared to the way those of us from New Jersey speak, she added an extra syllable to my name. Ca-ath-y, she’d say. I loved the way that sounded. She never met a stranger and was the kindest, least judgmental person I’ve known. At the same time, she was precise, emotionally unavailable and often said things like, “You do what’s best for the patient. You never coddle them.” So, coddled I wasn’t.
I think I wish I was.
I’ll spare you the details, too numerous to elucidate anywhere but in my therapist’s office but suffice it to say I had feelings about growing up as Grace’s daughter. One part proud – she was in the military and did a stint as then General Eisenhower’s private duty nurse when he had a tonsillectomy in the 1940s. His surgery took place over the Thanksgiving holiday. My mom had dinner with the General and Mrs. Eisenhower and was gifted a recipe for pumpkin chiffon pie written in Mrs. Eisenhower’s own hand. Someone in the family made the pie every single Thanksgiving since, including me who has since taken over the tradition.
And another part many other things.
In the second grade, for instance, when the other moms picked their kids up from school, greeting each with a big hug, my mon remained in the car. I told myself every day that those hugs were for the wimpy girls. “My mom is too important for hugs,” I told myself in my head. She had a lot on her mind, after all, and needed to get back to work. Who needs coddling? Not me.
Yes, me.
I needed coddling. Some, anyway. Just a little? And so, to put it succinctly, my yearning for my mom’s tenderness got wrapped in layers of “I don’t need anything.” “I’m fine.” The soft center of my tootsie-roll heart was concealed by a hardened, slick shell that read “Keep your distance.” It was easier that way. I didn’t have to go near the boo-boo.
