Rejection Sensitivity: How Abandonment Wounds Distort Your Social Life And The Way You See Yourself

Imagine a moment when you walked into a room and it suddenly got quiet.

Or that time in the elevator when you overheard whispering.

When your friend didn’t text back right away.

Is your first thought: “What is wrong with me? What did I do?”

When you grow up with attachment trauma, your abandonment wound is front and centre. It only takes a small fracture — a change in someone’s tone of voice, a look that appears to have a harshness to it — for us to be transported back to the fearful place where we are trying to survive, trying to belong, trying to be kept safe and loved.

These micro-fractures may be imperceptible to others. Indeed, many of them are well and truly not about us, not unkind or malicious, and not indications of imminent abandonment:

The room got quiet because the door opened and people were curious to see who it was.

The people in the elevator were whispering because they didn’t want to disturb you with their conversation.

The friend was in the shower or in a meeting and didn’t hear their phone.

But we don’t know that. And in those moments, panic takes root.

Insecurity, questioning and uncertainty have been planted. A small seed of doubt creeps in telling you you better be careful. You’ve had to earn love and acceptance your whole life. Better not stop all your hard work now. In fact, work harder, just in case. Your negative self-talk tries to convince you that you are inherently unlikeable and unloveable. You need to hang on with all your might.

Those who grew up in scapegoating and abusive narcissistic households will not have developed a relational blueprint that teaches them they are acceptable just as they are. Instead, this type of attachment wounding teaches them that acceptance and love are conditional. That when they stop working to be exactly who others need and want them to be, they will be dropped. Discarded. That they are not loved and wanted, they are merely useful. And when they stop being useful, they will be useless. That becomes the core self-belief: That I, as a human, am useless.

How We Gaslight Ourselves

I want to be clear that these are not examples of you “making stuff up”. No one “makes up” fears out of thin air. There is a real trigger or a real cue. For the trauma survivor, those cues are based on keenly developed skills of reading people, reading between the lines, and filling in the blanks as necessary to protect themselves as soon as possible. This is an important disclaimer to make as it can be easy to gaslight yourself by saying “It wasn’t real, they weren’t out to get me”. But when your body goes into survival mode like this, it is because it genuinely does not feel safe, even if the environment is “objectively” safe. When your protective mechanisms are in over-drive, this is not an indication that you are “crazy”, “unstable” or “dramatic”. These are natural and normal responses to growing up in unstable, chaotic, unsupportive and unsafe environments.

And when you learn the environment is safe after all, your protective barriers can relax a bit. For example, all is made right in the world again when the friend texts you back. When the strangers in the elevator smile at you, or when the crowd in the room appears genuinely enthusiastic to see it is you that walked through the door.

But these moments of reassurance provide mere moments of relief. The fracture remains.

When Insecurity Takes Over

A further fracture for scapegoats and survivors of narcissistic abuse is that the conditions for our “acceptance” are unclear and ever-changing; we can’t figure out ‘the formula’ to be wanted, which means we can never fully relax because we never fully feel safe and supported. Like a social media algorithm, the formula changes as soon as you’ve gotten the hang of it. This leaves you in a state of perpetual emotional activation aka survival.

In this sense, abandonment fears are well-founded and logical survival responses. At our core as a species is a survival instinct that prompts us to ensure we belong; to ensure we don’t get kicked out of our tribe or community. Those that did, perished. Social insecurity and fear of displeasing others are wired into us as protective mechanisms.

The problem is that those who were abandoned (emotionally, psychologically, or physically) have had to develop stronger, more “in tune” barometers for exclusion. This means that they are highly sensitive to any real, or perceived, shift in the social weather. A small breeze, a cooling in social temperature, or a heat-up that threatens imminent disaster are all perpetually on the survivor’s radar. And while this sounds adaptive, what it does is push out inner peace, diminish social sanctuary, and even increase “misreads” of human behaviour.

What starts out as an all-too-human (and understandable) experience of insecurity morphs and grows into something uncontainable and deeply distressing.

Scapegoated survivors learn to personalize and internalize these shifts in social weather as a way to contain them and control the discomfort they bring.

So not only might survivors “pick up” on something that wasn’t “fully” there, they may also conclude that whatever ‘it” was, it is about them; There is something they did/didn’t do. Something about them that wasn’t good enough. They are unwanted. Unliked. Annoying. That friends merely put up with them. That they are inherently “less than” every single other human in the world. That they are, indeed, subhuman and not as deserving of love, safety, acceptance and support as anyone else.

Useless.

Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

It is understandable and common to experience rejection sensitivity if you have any attachment wounding. Given your emotional and mental development was formed under conditions that were unpredictable at best, and outright cruel at worst, it is reasonable that you would worry about the safety and stability of your relationships with others. Experiencing abandonment in any form is to dismantle trust in self and others.

Rejection sensitivity dysphoria is a clinical term that describes the painful and relentless experience of being perpetually hyper-vigilant about any hint of future abandonment. The “dysphoria” part describes this hypervigilance as not being “concordant” (or matching up with) the “reality” of any given situation.

To put this in plain terms, it means you emotionally and physically experience rejection, even if/when rejection didn’t happen. It is both real in its impacts, but not accurate in its intent. A person who suffers genuine internal injuries from being hit by a car, but the car did not physically hit them. It’s a conundrum, but we still need to attend to the internal trauma of the “impact”. Saying “But the car did not hit you” does not repair the internal damage.

I return to my disclaimer here so to be very clear that experiencing rejection, even when you weren’t rejected is not something to be critical or judgemental of. This is not about blaming yourself or gaslighting yourself. Because what you experience is real to you. And any genuinely safe, trustworthy, consistent, and loving person will happily reassure you — even if you have to ask for that reassurance a few times in order to trust it.

Emotionally healthy people who adore you will be very clear with you that your fears and insecurities are understandable and not in any way a flaw on your part or a burden on theirs. They will be happy to remind you how much they love you. And any indication that they are ‘tired’ of reminding you or ‘frustrated’ is more than likely a sadness on their part because they wish you could see yourself through their eyes.

And while we don’t want to live waiting for external reassurance, we are entitled to — and often will need — repeated reassurance until we can truly trust that the world and those in our world are safe for us.

Toxic People Need Not Apply

Therefore, when discussing RSD, we are not referring to experiences where people were indeed cold/cruel/calculating or unpredictable with you, and your alarm bells were tripped. When you sense someone is mistreating you, but then you are told you are “making it up” or “perceiving something that isn’t there” then you are being gaslit. Rejection sensitivity has come to your aid by enabling you to see the subtle ways some people may not be safe for you.

That doesn’t mean they automatically disqualify as a friend, but rather that they may not have as much emotional maturity or safety within themselves to not deflect back onto you their own fears and discomforts. This information helps you make decisions on the types of connections you share with them.

A Matter Of Trust: Developing Your Inner Compass and Refusing To Be Taken Off Course

Many victims of narcissistic or scapegoating abuse were taught to love and trust indiscriminately, regardless of how they were treated. Phrases like “respect your elders”, “be seen and not heard”, “don’t talk back”, “how dare you”, “because I said so” and “Do as I say/do as you’re told” teach young kids that it is not OK to show up as their authentic self, to not take up space, and to not question the behaviour of those in their charge, regardless of what that behaviour feels like.

These phrases are common even in non-toxic households. So when combined with the trap doors of gaslighting, guilt trips, triangulations, manipulation, DARVO, blame-shifting, smear campaigns, character assassinations and the perpetual experiences of being poked, prodded and provoked during episodes of reactive abuse, it is next to impossible to develop any sense of secure footing from which to ground oneself on.

You become like the classic movie scene where you need to dance while your legs are being shot at. But since you can’t predict where the next bullet will come from, and there are just so many bullets, the dance is just a stopgap until you collapse from exhaustion, or because the wounds take you down.

You do not develop a sense of safety in the world after an experience like this. How many of you, if it was you in the movie scene, would “dance” through the rest of your life expecting another bullet to fly at you at any moment? How many of you would jump for cover at any loud bang?

That is how we scapegoated survivors learn to exist. We dance and jump and cover.

Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria is the emotional equivalent of this terror. You are emotionally dancing and jumping for cover. RSD goes beyond insecurity — not because it is “delusional — but because it is precisely the most understandable response to the most atrocious and abnormal events. The dysphoria isn’t because there is something wrong with you and you are “making it up” or “too sensitive”, but because other people will not be able to convince you that the shooting has stopped, even though it has. Your brain, as a survival strategy, will believe there is no such thing as reaching safety after an experience like that. Your brain has your back. Who would risk standing still when an emotional bullet could be flying your way?

Using Abandonment As A Recovery Tool

Recovery requires completely immersing yourself in safe communities. Which may also mean leaving behind unsafe ones. Many worry that asserting themselves, having needs, or enforcing boundaries will result in abandonment.

And here’s the thing, at first, it will. Because right now you are likely surrounded by people who are taking advantage of the fact that you are willing to carry other people’s burdens as a condition of their “friendship” or “community”.

Getting comfortable with abandonment is not about “being Ok with not being wanted”. It is about trusting that you are wanted and that, therefore, you need to make sure you gravitate toward the people who actually want you. And you cannot do that when you are dancing for others who find your and your efforts convenient for them.

When we let the toxic person or family determine our worth and value, we extend their limited opinions of us to other people. We project these false beliefs about ourselves onto others and (incorrectly) assume everyone else feels about us the way the toxic person or family does. But the reality is scapegoating families who use smear campaigns and character assassinations work hard to ensure that others feel about you the way they want them to. That does not mean others do feel that way about you.

The key takeaway is to recognize how hard toxic families have to work to change people’s minds about you. They have had to campaign against you.

In a weird twist, that is reassuring. Because it means they have to put effort into altering, twisting, and shaping what people know to be true about you, your worth, and value. The mere fact that it takes effort implies that their view and opinions of you are not in any way reflective or representative of your actual worth or value.

In fact, it confirms that other people do see you as your wonderful self; that people do choose you and see how your light shines bright and that your core self is not just visible but is what drew people to you in the first place. This is what the toxic family had to work hard to conceal.

Keep that thought in your back pocket the next time your brain tries to tell you that someone doesn’t want you. How could they not want you? Is it you, or is it your family trying to prevent you from seeing yourself the way the world actually sees you?

Something I always want to tell my clients is this: I’m sorry you were never given the opportunity to like yourself. I wish you could see yourself the way I see you because you would like yourself so, so much.