Wait, Is Rejection Therapy The Answer To All Of Our Social Anxiety?

""You put yourself into a difficult situation and then you see that survive it and your anxiety goes down every time you do it," says clinical psychologist and private owner at Best Life Behavioral Health Samantha Whiten. It can range in complexity, but Whiten says the whole point is to realize that it's not the end of the world for someone to not like interacting with you, and rejection therapy teaches you that being embarrassed doesn't actually hurt you in the long run."

"Rejection therapy is exactly what it sounds like - you're getting therapy for your fear of rejection by purposely putting yourself in a position to be rejected. "I believe rejection therapy was inspired by the book 100 Days of Rejection," says licensed psychotherapist Lorain Moorehead. "Essentially, rejection therapy is exposure therapy. The goal being that repeated exposures to the stimuli, in this case rejection, reduces the sympathetic nervous system response - fight, flight, or freeze.""

Rejection therapy involves deliberately placing oneself in situations where rejection is likely in order to confront fear of rejection. Repeated exposures to rejection reduce the sympathetic nervous system's fight, flight, or freeze response. Practitioners experience decreased anxiety as they repeatedly survive awkward or embarrassing outcomes. The approach was inspired by the book 100 Days of Rejection and is essentially a form of exposure therapy. Exercises can be graded in complexity and performed alone at home or in public settings. The method teaches that embarrassment and social disapproval are survivable and often do not cause lasting harm.

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