© Can Stock Photo / 72soul
A workplace consultation client, let’s call him Mel, and I were taking a deep dive into how often he feels unappreciated for his creativity and contributions at work.
We were exploring how disappointed he was by not being validated for his major contributions to four projects that won 5 impressive awards in his field. “I was the sole Instructional Designer on 3 of those projects.”
Since I had just been interviewed on professional rejection by the Washington Post’s The Lily outlet, I offered to send him the just published piece.
His response was to say he was struck by how many folks in the sample told stories about how rejection spurred them on to bigger and better successes.
Mel realized a High School rejection experience had the opposite effect for him when he wasn’t selected for a National Merit Award. “I decided I would never receive any outside validation because I wasn’t good enough at anything else except doing well on standardized tests.”
“I craved validation, I needed to feel legitimized! And I hoped getting that Merit Award would give me a sense of accomplishment.”
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“Guess I’m still wanting that respect! When my company won those 5 awards no one from upper management reached out to me to say, “Thank you for your good work. That’s a real benefit to our company.”
Instead, silence.
And sometimes don’t most of us need to feel recognized, legitimized, appreciated, respected?
Mel’s reflections got me thinking about my own High School days when I felt Invisible. Unrecognized. Insignificant. Inconsequential. Unappreciated.
And I recalled how frequently these early rejecting experiences seemed to follow me into the workplace. There have been so many times when I was hoping someone would pat me on the head and say, “Atta girl!”
Most of us have a need to feel worthy and appreciated for who we are and what we do.
I encourage workplace and psychotherapy clients to ‘walk alongside themselves’ and observe (without judgment) how their early messages and experiences of disappointment and rejection might be reflected in their present day professional (and personal) experiences.
By discovering what those early messages have been and how they might be influencing present-day interactions, we can step back and choose to try out new approaches.
There are many facets of rejection and self-rejection. For many of us feeling disrespected usually leads the list. There are all kinds of flavors of feeling ‘dissed’ so I created a ‘Diss List’ of ways we might tend to feel dissed, feel rejected, get our feelings hurt and take something personally:
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How many of these feelings do you recognize?
Can you think of other “diss” feelings we can add to the list?
Do you have a story to tell about your own experience with feeling accepted or disappointed and rejected?
© Elayne Savage, PhD
Until next month,
Elayne
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