by Jia Jiang
Tracy stepped up to the stand’s window and said, “Hello! Do you know where we can find…”
The women behind the window looked at us and said “No” before Tracy could even finish asking her question. Then she stood up, pulled down the glass window, turned around, and started gathering her belongings. She closed the stand ten minutes early just so she would not have to bother talking to us.
I was furious. How could this woman treat Tracy this way? Couldn’t she tell that my wife was in pain and we needed help? Was it because we were tourists who didn’t speak Italian? Did we somehow break a local custom by asking? Did we have to be customers to even talk to her?
The entire day of frustration came to a boiling point of rage.
“Hey!” I yelled at the closed window, fist in the air, struggling to hold back my urge to pound on the glass. In that moment, all I wanted was to teach this woman a lesson in courtesy and respect, forgetting that I was about to throw both of those out the window myself. Suddenly, I felt Tracy’s hand on my arm, pulling me away. When I turned around and looked at her, I saw tears running down her cheeks.
Tracy rarely cries, so I knew that her stomach must have been killing her. My anger was instantly replaced with concern. We had eight minutes left before everything closed. There was no time for me to give the magazine stand woman a profanity-laden lecture in humanity. So we moved on and left. Luckily, there was a convenience store not too far away, and we quickly found the medicine that Tracy needed.
Later that night, Tracy told me that she had cried not because of the stomach pain, but because of the way the woman had treated her. She felt indignant and hurt after being rudely shut down and rejected for no obvious reason. Hearing that somehow set off a sense of relief inside me. It was good that I hadn’t known the true cause of her tears at the time, or I might have said or done something that I would later regret.
Our vacation got better in the days that followed. We met many friendly people, took romantic walks in Florence and Venice, and enjoyed the incredible food Italy had to offer. But we found ourselves talking to fewer people than we normally would, and we never asked anyone else for directions again.
How could one rude rejection by a person my wife and I had never met, and would never meet again, have such an impact on our emotions? The woman at the magazine stand hadn’t caused any physical harm to Tracy, yet the rejection had felt worse than her excruciating stomach pain. As it happens, the reason for that turns out to be biological.
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When humans feel physical pain, our brains release natural painkilling chemicals called opioids into our systems to lessen the pain and help us cope. Recently, researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School wondered if our brains would release opioids after social rejections as well, and they launched a study to find out.
In the study, they showed research participants’ photos and fictitious profiles of hundreds of potential mates and then had them list which ones they’d be interested in dating. Then they used a brain scanner to monitor participants’ brain activity while they were being told that the people they said they were interested in dating were not interested in them. The participants’ brains, having experienced a social rejection, immediately started releasing opioids—just as they would if a physical trauma had occurred. Even more interesting: participants had actually been told before the study that the profiles—and the “rejections”—were fake. Incredibly, that didn’t matter to their brains, which pumped out opioids regardless.
This is even more reason why simply saying “don’t take it personally” is useless advice for anyone feeling rejected. The proverbial “slap in the face” we feel after being rejected isn’t so proverbial after all. No wonder Tracy and I felt so hurt by the stranger in Italy that night. If she’d hurled a brick at us through the magazine stand window, the effect would have been more or less the same, at least to our brains.
THE FEAR OF REJECTION
If the pain of rejection is actually a chemical experience in your brain, it’s no surprise that we develop a visceral fear of rejection. It’s the dread that stops you from even asking a question in the first place—and sometimes covers you in sweat as you get up the courage to make a request. Just remembering one experience of this kind of fear can make people determined never to make themselves vulnerable to it again.
Since rejection pain equals physical pain, at least to our brains, it makes even more sense that people rank rejection so high on their fear lists. After all, who isn’t unnerved by the idea of being slapped? But it turns out that many of our fears—including our fear of rejection—actually have evolutionary roots as well.
Of all the research studies I read about the fear and pain associated with rejection, some of the most interesting were the ones designed to show that phobias often have pragmatic, not to mention lifesaving, underpinnings. Numerous studies have shown that when it comes to avoiding objects or experiences that we instinctively judge to be harmful, our reaction times are much faster than they are when we’re confronted by harmless objects or experiences. In other words, if you come across a deadly looking spider, you’re going to clock a much faster sprint time running away from it than you could ever achieve if you were trying to outrun, say, a squirrel.
Researchers have concluded that mammals evolved an innate fear and alertness toward these harms in order to avoid and escape them faster. Fear, then, is required for our survival—or at least it was when we were out living on the savanna. Without the fear of snakes, there would be many more fatal snake bites; without the fear of enclosed spaces, more of us would be found, years later, stuck in drainpipes and crawl spaces.
The fear of rejection is no different. Back when we were hunting giant mastodons and living in caves, our survival depended on us sticking together and collaborating in groups. Being rejected or ostracized by our peers for whatever reason would leave us to face the wolves and the lions all by ourselves. In that situation, social rejection could equal death. It makes sense, then, that some of that instinct is still riding around in our DNA, even today—and that getting rejected can sometimes feel like a fate worse than death.
Finding all this out certainly made me feel better about my own intense fear of rejection—my instincts were just trying to keep me alive! But last time I checked, there were no mastodons roaming around downtown Austin. A social rejection wouldn’t literally leave me out in the wild or force me to confront a beast all by myself. The fear of rejection may have saved many of our ancestors from getting tossed out of their social groups, but by and large it no longer makes sense in our modern lives. In fact, it’s more baggage than a safety measure. If rejection fear were an organ, it would be an appendix instead of a heart. Yet its effect is much more damaging than the occasional appendicitis, because the consequence of not trying for new things due to the fear of rejection can’t be fixed by a simple visit to the emergency room.
In my case, my fear of rejection had silently held me back, for more than a decade, from taking a step toward entrepreneurship. I can’t help but wonder what this fear has done to millions of other lives. The list of regrets must be massive and heartbreaking. What exciting, interesting, and potentially life-changing ideas have people not pursued for fear of getting kicked out of the pack?
100 DAYS OF REJECTION: GIVE THE SAFETY ANNOUNCEMENT ON A PLANE
“There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why…. I dream things that never were, and ask why not.”
—ROBERT KENNEDY
As my 100 Days of Rejection went on, this quote had become my mantra. I used it to help override my instinct to back away from challenges. I was asking myself “Why not?” all the time, and I realized that there were often no logical reasons not to do—or at least try—most of the ideas that I had. One day I asked restaurant employees to sing me the “Happy Birthday” song although it wasn’t actually my birthday. They did it! Another time I asked the local Humane Society if I could borrow or rent a dog for a day, prom
ising I would do everything to provide the dog a fun day. They said no. Still another time I asked a Salvation Army bell ringer if I could ring the bell on his behalf. Not only did he say yes, we had a heck of a time doing it together.
But one of my “why not” requests really stood out. I was at the Austin airport, rushing from the parking lot to the terminal to catch my flight, when an idea popped into my head. I usually tune out when flight attendants make their preflight safety announcement, sending last-minute messages on my phone or getting settled in my seat. What if I took the matter into my own hands and asked the attendants on my flight to let me read the safety announcement on their behalf? I was flying Southwest, my favorite airline and one known for its quirky and customer-focused culture. If they let me do it, surely the passengers would pay closer attention. What was the harm in asking?
Still, I was a little nervous. While waiting to board the flight, I gathered myself, did some deep breathing, then approached a flight attendant. His name was Jeff.
“Do you think I can do the safety announcement for you guys?” I asked him, mentioning that I was a frequent flier.
For some reason, Jeff didn’t seem too surprised by my request. He explained to me that by law, all passengers need to be seated with their seat belts on while the safety announcements are made. So unfortunately, since I was a passenger, I couldn’t make the announcement.
Then Jeff took me by surprise.
“But you can do the welcome thing if you can figure that out,” he said.
I stood there for a second, a bit shocked by the offer. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll do the welcome thing. Awesome.”
Jeff’s offer was actually better than what I’d asked for, because it gave me the freedom to say whatever I wanted without having to read or memorize a scripted message. But now I had a different problem. I would have to give a random, spontaneous speech in front of 130 passengers. I could feel the sweat forming on my palms as I went from feeling triumphant to terrified.
After Jeff gave the usual message about seat belts, emergency exits, and lavatories, he signaled to me to come to the front. I went into the aisle and trudged toward him, row by row. The walk seemed endless. I did everything I could to block out thoughts of being booed or laughed at by other passengers, but those thoughts flooded me anyway. By the time I made it to the front, I was an emotional mess with a pounding heart, churning stomach, and weak knees.
But then Jeff handed me the microphone and told me to say whatever I wanted, as if he were 100 percent confident that nothing could go wrong. I was a lot less confident; in that moment, my fear did, in fact, seem deeply biological. I could almost hear my DNA whispering to me, Stop! You are out of line. No one wants to hear you. You are making a fool of yourself. People will reject you! Someone will think you are a terrorist and tackle you! You are in danger! I took the microphone from Jeff anyway, pushed the on button, and started talking.
“Hello, everyone, welcome on board!” I said, in my best flight attendant voice. Most people were looking at their phones, reading magazines, or chatting with one another. No one was paying attention.
“I am not a crew member,” I said. Immediately, everyone raised their heads and looked at me. I felt hundreds of eyes on me. My nervousness moved closer to panic.
“I am just a fan of the company,” I continued, speeding up my speech and trying not to let my voice shake. “I’m a customer like you. I just want to say they are always on time, they are always friendly, and they are always awesome! So if you are like me, give a round of applause to Southwest!”
Incredibly, everyone started clapping, just like I’d asked. As I walked back to my seat, another flight attendant pointed at me and said, “You get a free drink, man!” Another passenger blurted, “Wow…brave!”
You have no idea, I thought to myself as I sat back down in my seat, shaking and drenched in sweat. I’m sure fighting off lions with a stick ten thousand years ago was more difficult, but in the moment, this felt just as scary.
There were moments when I thought about quitting my 100 Days of Rejection, and my Southwest moment was one of them. I’d been preparing for a personal rejection from the flight attendant, but I’d received an acceptance instead, which in turn had opened up a much scarier possibility—a very public rejection by 130 people at the same time. Even though I managed my way through the ordeal, I felt pushed to the limit.
Before I learned about the biological roots of rejection, I thought I was fighting a monster through psychological warfare. But now I knew that I was fighting evolution, my own brain chemistry, and my DNA. The warfare wasn’t just psychological—it was biological!
And that realization made me wonder: Did I really want to take on this fight? Was this a battle I was destined to lose? I began to wonder if this is what people meant when they said “ignorance is bliss.”
But even as I worried that I didn’t have what it took to deal with more rejection, I was able to gain strength by looking back on my earlier experiments. I could clearly see that not every rejection attempt had bathed me in sweat or triggered my internal terror, especially when I allowed myself to appreciate the humor in them. When I’d asked for a burger refill, I had left chuckling. When the grocery clerk refused to give me a tour of the warehouse, instead of running away, I’d started joking around with the guy. I hadn’t walked out of those situations clutching my chest in pain—which made me think that maybe I had learned something else from my dealings with rejection without quite realizing it. Could humor be an effective way for me to neutralize rejection pain? To experiment, I staged another rejection attempt with laughter in mind.
100 DAYS OF REJECTION: A HAIR TRIM AT PETSMART
Driving past PetSmart one day, I remembered it was time to take my dog, Jumbo, in for some grooming. (It always seems like grooming time for golden retrievers; they are cute shedding machines.) As I pulled into the parking lot, an idea popped up in my head. What if I asked the dog groomers to cut my hair instead? The idea made me laugh—making it exactly the kind of rejection attempt that I wanted.
When I walked into the store’s grooming area, four groomers were busily washing and trimming dogs. One of them stopped working and came over to greet me at the counter. After a few casual pleasantries, I asked how much it would cost for a hair trimming.
“What kind of dog?” she asked.
“How much would it cost to trim my hair?” I replied.
After a brief pause, she shook her head and said, “We don’t do that.” Then she burst out laughing.
“Then can you treat me like a German shepherd?” I asked. Then I remembered my Asian roots and appearance. “Actually, I am not German. Can you treat me like a Tibetan mastiff, or a chow chow or something?”
All four groomers started giggling.
“I’ll behave. You can tell me to sit, and I’ll sit and I won’t bark,” I said. I was on a roll.
“I’m sure you’ll be the best client we have,” the groomer joked back, laughing even harder.
I gave one last attempt before the rejection became final: “What about a manicure?” The groomers’ laughter became almost uncontrollable.
Leaving PetSmart, I felt a sense of satisfaction. I didn’t mind the no. In fact, I was feeling pretty good about myself because I figured I’d just made these groomers’ day.
But why didn’t I feel any pain or fear? How come my survival instinct hadn’t kicked in, and the opioids hadn’t started flowing? Why were they conspicuously silent this time?
I felt like I was onto something, and so I did some more research. It turns out that laughter has been linked to killing pain—literally.
There is a ton of anecdotal evidence that humor helps to reduce pain and stress—even among politicians, who are rarely known for their comedy. When heckled during a speech to the British Parliament, Ronald Reagan playfully replied, “Is there an echo in here?” Before going into surgery after his assassination attempt, he jokingly said to the surgeons: “I hope you are all Republicans
.” On the other side of the political spectrum, when a reporter pointedly asked John F. Kennedy how he felt about the Republican National Committee’s adoption of a resolution that essentially called him a failure, he replied, “I assume it passed unanimously.” Mahatma Gandhi even said: “If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”
Researchers have even proved that humor—and laughter specifically—can actually mitigate pain. In 2011, Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at Oxford University, ran an experiment in which he exposed participants to various degrees of pain by having them wear frozen wine-cooling sleeves on their arms or keep their legs bent ninety degrees while leaning against a wall, as if they were sitting on an imaginary chair. To determine their normal pain threshold, Dunbar measured how long participants could resist the pain before admitting that they couldn’t take it anymore.
Then he subjected participants to the same pain again, but this time while showing them a variety of videos, from comedies such as The Simpsons and South Park, to neutral videos featuring pet training and golf, to documentaries meant to evoke good feelings, such as Planet Earth. He found that participants’ pain thresholds significantly increased only when they watched the comedies—and specifically when they laughed. On the other hand, neutral and feeling-good films made no difference. In another words, laughter reduced their pain and stress.
Dunbar believes that the power of laughter even has evolutionary roots. “Dr. Dunbar thinks laughter may have been favored by evolution because it helped bring human groups together, the way other activities like dancing and singing do,” wrote reporter James Gorman in the New York Times. Laughing, dancing, and singing all produce endorphins—a different kind of opioid that not only fights pain but also makes us feel good. Laughing can be like receiving a double shot of natural painkillers from our brain.