The Happiness Lab: Treating the Pain of a Broken Heart
As creatives many of us have the desire to share our creations with other people, which carries with it the very real possibility of rejection. There is no guarantee that even your closest friend or family member is going to like or appreciate what you created.
As a wife and mother I have experienced that many times – I think my kids turned up their noses at a meal at least once a week – and as a writer I have faced rejection in many forms over the years. Agents and editors, workshops, friends and family; at one time or another I have heard “No” from all of them.
Well, the kids might not have turned their noses up at pecan tarts, but even these wouldn't get universal approval.
Sometimes that rejection is cold and impersonal (The standard editorial “Not right for us at this time”), others it is scathing and extremely personal (Workshop members who seem to take an unholy delight in destroying others, which is another topic entirely).
I won't say I have a lot of rejected manuscripts, but sometimes the filing does get a little out of hand!
But why does rejection hurt so much? Why does it leave us withdrawing and licking our wounds, or lashing out at those around us?
And what can we do about it?
This podcast explores the pain of rejection and how we can deal with it. It offers some interesting insights into the actual biology of “social pain” and some practical tactics for dealing with it.
There isn’t much we can do to avoid rejection short of never sharing our work with another person – and even then we will still suffer rejections of other sorts – but we can find ways to cope with the inevitable.
And who knows? Your friends and family may just recognize your brilliance!