Rejection Sensitivity Syndrome

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate
Assalaamu alaykum

Dear Friends

I pray that you are well.

In ways, big and small, we all face rejection everyday of our lives. It's the way the social universe operates. People let us down and we, too, let people down. And yet, when it happens to us, we tend to take it very personally and often enough, very hard.

As Muslims, we are to present the highest example of good morality and manners. As long as we maintain firm faith and discipline, we will have self respect.

There is a crucial difference between self-respect and self-esteem.

Self-esteem is how we value ourselves; it is how we perceive our value to the world and how valuable we think we are to others. High self-esteem is a good opinion of yourself and low self-esteem is a bad opinion of yourself. Possessing little self-regard can lead people to become depressed, feel rejected, to fall short of their potential, or to tolerate abusive situations and relationships. Too much self-love, on the other hand, results in an off-putting sense of entitlement and an inability to learn from failures, i.e. one can become arrogant.

Self-respect, on the other hand, may hold the key to achieving the peace of mind we seek. This self-respect is not contingent on success because there are always failures to contend with. Neither is it a result of comparing ourselves with others because there is always someone better. Self-respect is a quality through which a person learns to respect himself so that he does not stoop to anything low.

To esteem anything is to evaluate it positively and hold it in high regard, but evaluation gets us into trouble because while we sometimes win, we also sometimes lose. To respect something, on the other hand, is to accept it.

"A very high percentage of negative events are related to the feeling that someone else doesn't value a relationship as much as you do," says Duke University psychologist Mark Leary.

In marriage, those are the sore feelings that accompany such thoughts as, "My husband is watching TV (or on Facebook) when he should be paying attention to me!" or "I have been working all day but my wife didn't even come to the door to greet me!"

As bad as it is to complain about your marriage to outsiders, it is just as destructive to suffer in silence. Nothing gets accomplished when people play the martyr, and by withholding your true feelings, you also risk building up a wall of resentment that is tough to break down.

The fix is simple — say what you feel. If you think nothing can ever be different, it is a problem in itself. So set aside a time to talk when both of you are relaxed and open (in other words, not when one of you is nodding off or hurrying to get dinner ready), and present the situation as a puzzle for the two of you to solve together, such as, "We seem very busy lately. How about we go out to our favorite zabiha restaurant for dinner tonight?"

For some things you can go with a subtler approach. For example, start praising your spouse every time he/she made a small change you wanted, like when he puts his dirty socks into the hamper instead of on the floor, or when she greets you at the door when you come home from work.

May Allah grant us tawfiq and bless our families. Ameen.

Please don't forget us in your night prayers. Jazakallahu khairan.

And Allah knows best.
Wassalaam