Quotes & Sayings About Fear Of Rejection

For the warrior there is no such thing as an impossible love. He is not intimidated by silence, indifference or rejection. He knows that, behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire. This is why the warrior takes more risks than other people. He is constantly seeking the love of someone, even if that means often having to hear the word 'No', returning home defeated and feeling rejected in body and soul. A warrior never gives in to fear when he is searching for what he needs. Without love, he is nothing. — Paulo Coelho

I wonder if the greatest temptation is self-rejection. Could it be that beneath all the lures to greed, lust, and success rests a great fear of never being enough or not being lovable? — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Much more prevalent than physical fear is the fear of criticism, rejection, and verbal opposition. — Derek A. Cuthbert

Since the caveman days, fear has been a powerful motivator that can influence our decision-making. Nowadays, however, we aren't running from wild animals, but instead are afraid of emotional trauma, change, disappointment and rejection. — Elaina Marie

Community as belonging ...
Each person with his or her history of being accepted or rejected, with his or her past history of inner pain and difficulties in relationships with parents, is different. But in each one there is a yearning for communion and belonging, but at the same time a fear of it. Love is what we want, yet it is what we fear the most. Love makes us vulnerable and open, but then we can be hurt through rejection and separation. We may crave for love, but then be frightened of losing our liberty and creativity. We want to belong to a group, but we fear a certain death in the group because we may not be seen as unique. We want love, but fear the dependence and commitment it implies; we fear being used, manipulated, smothered and spoiled. We are all so ambivalent toward love, communion and belonging. — Jean Vanier

The better you are at communicating, negotiating, and handling your fear of rejection, the easier life is. — Robert Kiyosaki

We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. — Trevor Noah

Fear keeps us rooted in the past. Fear of the unknown, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of not having enough, fear of not being enough, fear of the future-all these fears and more keep us trapped, repeating the same old patterns and making the same choices over and over again. Fear prevents us from moving outside the comfort-or even the familiar discomfort-of what we know. It's nearly impossible to achieve our highest vision for our lives as long as we are being guided by our fears. — Debbie Ford

Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you'd rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And after you've done that, to do it again the next day — Seth

When you give yourself permission to communicate what matters to you in every situation you will have peace despite rejection or disapproval. Putting a voice to your soul helps you to let go of the negative energy of fear and regret. — Shannon L. Alder

I cannot wait to see the BOLD you. Your uniqueness, passion, and purpose is shadowed by fear of rejection. Let YOU face the world boldly... — Assegid Habtewold

Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world. — Robert McKee

The fear of rejection really kind of stunts your growth as a person. I mean, it's like a friend of mine says, who cares if you fail? Who cares if you fail? It's like babies try to get up and walk all the time and they keep falling down. If we just gave up, we'd all be crawling around. — John Rzeznik

possible topics around which the currents of speech may flow: Death and the danger of death: violence, fighting, sickness, fear, dreams, premonitions and communication with the dead. Sex and relations between the sexes: dating, courtship, proposals, marriage, breaking off relationships, affairs, intermarriage. Moral indignation: assignment and rejection of blame, unfairness, injustice, gossip, violations of social norms. — William Labov

For while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one's fellow. men. This competitive spirit prevails even in school and, destroying all feelings of human fraternity and cooperation, conceives of achievement not as derived from the love for productive and thoughtful work, but as springing from personal ambition and fear of rejection. — Albert Einstein

Your belief in love wasn't strong enough to overcome your fear of rejection. — Mulan

As a general rule, whenever guys have problems approaching girls, it's because they're afraid of rejection or they're afraid of something specific. The way that you get over a fear like that is you figure out what the worst is that can happen. — Tucker Max

Neither of us wanted to say it first. But our two souls had become one in a realm no one else could venture into. The immortal coil of passion had wrapped around us forever. It had begun with lust and attraction and blossomed into so much more. Fear of rejection kept us from declaring it. — Sherry Soule

My art school rejection letter arrived as a cold manila fist that closed around my fragile hopes [ ... ] The fear was practically edible. Nothing would happen unless I get out and make it happen.
Then, as if handing me the keys to the jet pack, my dad bought me a typewriter and a taped message to the inside of its case: 'Son- the world is waiting to hear from you'. — Grant Morrison

It is the lies he's telling her - as he has been, Nassun understands suddenly, her whole life - that really break her heart. He's said that he loves her, after all, but that obviously isn't true. He cannot love an orogene, and that is what she is. He cannot be an orogene's father, and that is why he constantly demands she be something other than what she is. — N.K. Jemisin

Men who as boys felt neglected by their dads often remain distant from their children. The sins of fathers are passed on to children, often through the dynamic of self-protection. It hurts to be neglected, and it creates questions about our value to others. So to avoid feeling the sting of further rejection, we refuse to give that part of ourselves we fear might once again be received with indifference. — Larry Crabb

And if the child feels loved, the body is relaxed, the eyes are bright, there is a smile on the face; in some way the flesh becomes "transparent." A child that is loved is beautiful. But what happens when children feel they are not loved? There is tension, fear, loneliness and terrible anguish, which we can call "inner pain," the opposite of "inner peace." Children are too small and weak to be able to fend for themselves; they have no defense mechanisms. If a child feels unloved and unwanted, he or she will develop a broken self-image. I have never heard any of the men or women whom we have welcomed into our community criticize their parents, even though many of them have suffered a great deal from rejection or abandonment in their families. Rather than blaming their parents, they blame themselves. "If I am not loved, it is because I am not lovable, I am no good. I am evil. — Jean Vanier

Evolution has programmed us to feel rejection in our guts. This is how the tribe inforced obedience, by wielding the threat of expulsion. Fear of rejection isn't just psychological; it's biological. It's in our cells. — Steven Pressfield

Rejection-and the fear of rejection-is the biggest impediment we face to choosing ourselves. — James Altucher

Never let fear of rejection from others, dictate the respect you show yourself. — Jill Thrussell

People call love sickness heartache, but that's not where you feel rejection. Your heart only responds to excitement and fear - racing, pounding, skipping beats. You feel rejection in the pit of your stomach. It's like the moment you realise you've eaten bad food, and you know that all you've got to look forward to is a night of twisted torment and twisted sheets. — Paul Cornell

Many people do not develop their creativity or lose their creative confidence because they dare not produce anything for fear of rejection. Truly creative people break past that restraint and share their talent to others. They redefine rules because they know that creativity gives a feeling of fulfillment. — Christopher Michaels

Some of these walls had been of my own making; my rebellion, my resistance; my arrogance, my need for control. Some had been built around me by the misfortunes of life; my loneliness; my orphaned heart; my fear of rejection. I had kept God at bay, and cheated myself of the warmth of His mercy. — Tessa Afshar

The law demands good works and uses its terror
rejection, shame, fear of punishment, unanswered prayer, personal tragedy, etc.
as motivation. Here performance is a necessity to secure the blessings and avoid the curses. Grace, on the other hand, allows us to serve on a different basis
not from fear but on the basis of love and gratitude, from appreciation and gladness for blessings freely given and freely received. — Richard Jordan

Doubt has become the veritable wellspring of my creative process and my philosophic explorations. It has equipped me with the temerity and wherewithal to question certain truths deemed 'fundamental' by my betters. Defiance has made me stubborn - possibly even arrogant - enough to shrug off rejection and all fears thereof, no matter how lacerating to the self-esteem these could be. It has given me the will to seek only to satisfy myself. — Ashim Shanker

The depressed and the suicidal are often lonely and inhibited. Discussions of inhibition in this context usually emphasize fear of rejection. — David L. Conroy

All upset is a fear of rejection. — Bryant McGill

This in essence is my goal. To set an example by doing what is good. If I live openly and honestly, I set an example of virtue, humanness, restoration, and healing. I give others permission to join me on my journey despite the fear of failure or the rejection it might elicit when they know they are not alone in their experience. The more of us who amass the courage to embark openly on this path, the more normal this experience becomes, effectively eliminating the tactic of shame and isolation that the enemy so often uses to cause us to falter. — Riisa Renee

The hallmarks of the noir style are fear, guilt and loneliness, breakdown and despair, sexual obsession and social corruption, a sense that the world is controlled by, malignant forces preying on us, a rejection of happy endings and a preference for resolutions heavy with doom, but always redeemed by a breathtakingly vivid poetry of word (if the work was a novel or story) or image (if it was a movie). ("Introduction") — Francis M. Nevins Jr.

Saul took their fear of the Philistines personally. Rejection always takes things personally, becoming defensive, and thus never allows us to see or hear things properly. Remember, the most commons signs of rejection are being defensive and taking things personally. — Anthony Hulsebus

Asking someone out on a date is a simple task that frequently becomes a terrifying conundrum of fear, self-doubt, and anxiety. It's full of tough decisions: How do I ask? In person? Phone call? Text? What do I say? Could this person be the person I end up spending the rest of my life with? What if this is the only person for me? What if I fuck it all up with the wrong message? Though technology has added a few new, modern quirks to this dilemma, asking a new person to go on a romantic outing has never been easy. It means declaring your attraction to someone and putting yourself out there in a huge way, while risking the brutal possibility of rejection - or, — Aziz Ansari

Death cures psychoneurosis. In a sense all these neurotic concerns
fear of rejection, interpersonal concerns
seem to melt away, and people get another perspective on their lives. The important things are really important, and the trivia of life is trivialized. — Irvin D. Yalom

The largest fear in the world is to speak in public. We fear of stumbling, or public humiliation, and so we're fearing a face-to-face rejection. So, we'll say things in a text or e-mail that we would never say face-to-face. So, relationships are coming together faster and breaking apart faster, and they're a little bit more disposable. — Ashton Kutcher

This life is so complex that we rarely get to be the people we are truly meant to be. Instead, we wear masks and put up walls to keep from dealing with the fear of rejection, the feeling of regret, the very idea that someone may not love us for who we are deep in our core, that they might not understand the things that drive us. — Catherine Doyle

In the heart of appeasement there's the fear of rejection, and in acts of fear there are mirrors of oppression. — Criss Jami

The constant struggle to feel accepted and worthy is unrelenting. We put so much of our time and energy into making sure that we meet everyone's expectations and into caring about what other people think of us, that we are often left feeling angry, resentful and fearful. Sometimes we turn these emotions inward and convince ourselves that we are bad and that maybe we deserve the rejection that we so desperately fear. Other times we lash out - we scream at our partners and children for no apparent reason, or we make a cutting comment to a friend or colleague. Either way, in the end, we are left feeling exhausted, overwhelmed and alone. — Anonymous

Refuse to let the fear of rejection hold you back. Remember, rejection is never personal. — Brian Tracy

If you stop being afraid of the word no and take more chances, you will get more yes. — Jeanette Coron

Stripped of all their masquerades, the fears of men are quite identical: the fear of loneliness, rejection, inferiority, unmanageable anger, illness and death. — Joshua L. Liebman

Finding her meant that I could move forward unabashedly, without fear of rejection, without the endless need for acceptance from my husband or from anyone else. My worth was decided by me, now. — Ariana Carruth

What would happen if people practiced openness and honesty? If people talked about their real challenges without shame or fear of rejection? My guess is that people would feel less alone and isolated. People would be willing to share more, and as a result, society would feel more connected to each other and their experiences. — Deborah Reber

From what I've seen, it isn't so much the act of asking that paralyzes us
it's what lies beneath: the fear of being vulnerable, the fear of rejection, the fear of looking needy or weak. The fear of being seen as a burdensome member of the community instead of a productive one.
It points, fundamentally, to our separation from one another. — Amanda Palmer

It is not rejection itself that people fear, it is the possible consequences of rejection. Preparing to accept those consequences and viewing rejection as a learning experience that will bring you closer to success, will not only help you to conquer the fear of rejection, but help you to appreciate rejection itself. — Robert Foster Bennett

Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human difference between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion. — Audre Lorde

The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity. — Thomas Szasz

The reason for this behavior did not appear to be a strong desire to remain free and avoid commitments in that 89 percent of undergraduates say having a good marriage or committed relationship is an essential life goal. Rather it seemed more a fear of rejection from a generation that had avoided skinning their knees. It is a risk to express feelings. There is a chance of getting hurt. Dancing alone together is safer. — Arthur Levine

Many of us live in denial of who we truly are because we fear losing someone or something-and there are times that if we don't rock the boat, too often the one we lose is ourselves...It feels good to be accepted, loved, and approved of by others, but often the membership fee to belong to that club is far too high of a price to pay. — Dennis Merritt Jones

Regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. "What if..." "If only... " "I wonder what would have..."

You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. — Trevor Noah

Some Survivors think that getting angry is inappropriate and a sign that a person is out of control. Others are afraid of anger, that of others, as well as their own. They are afraid that if they get angry, they will be rejected or abandoned, afraid they will lose control and hurt someone. But, allowing yourself to get angry and express your anger in constructive ways is one of the most healthy and empowering things you can do. — Beverly Engel

Threesomes call us to confront jealousy, insecurity, fear of rejection, and a host of of other dark seeds inside ourselves. Three-ways can be huge growth experiences that encourage us to drop our insecurities and discover how wholly lovable we really are. — Victoria Vantoch

As a writer, the worst thing you can do is work in an environment of fear of rejection. — Carol Leifer

The triggering event and resulting shame is worse than being rejected because rejection assumes a path by which to return to acceptability. The fear involved in shame is of permanent abandonment, or exile. Those who see our reprehensible core will be so disgusted and sickened that we will be a leper and an outcast forever. — Dan B. Allender

Don't be afraid. There is no more to fear. Do not fear rejection. If you fear rejection by another you do not love the other, though you may profess it. You are only being anxious for his love of you. The free man does not seek the love of others, nor fear that his love will be rejected, for rejection - as is known from the night Christ was betrayed - does not destroy love, and it does not destroy the one who loves. Don't be afraid, you are not alone. — William Stringfellow

Love, intensity, value, passion, rejection, hope, care, failure, joy. What life throws at us never makes sense. Thinks we're at life's dispense. How long we should try to change ourselves. The weight of death, the weight of fear. The burden of stress, the pain is here. Never to know, never to guess, never to know, how much mess. Do not show care, do not have love, do not feel joy, or you may change. — Esther Earl

The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt - and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. — John Steinbeck

The hallucination of separateness prevents one from seeing that to cherish the ego is to cherish misery. We do not realize that our so-called love and concern for the individual is simply the other face of our own fear of death or rejection. In his exaggerated valuation of separate identity, the personal ego is sawing off the branch on which he is sitting, and then getting more and more anxious about the coming crash! — Alan Watts

We may believe that anxiety and fear don't concern us because we avoid experiencing them. We may keep the scope of our lives narrow and familiar, opting for sameness and safety. We may not even know that we are scared of success, failure, rejection, criticism, conflict, competition, intimacy, or adventure, because we rarely test the limits of our competence and creativity. We avoid anxiety by avoiding risk and change. Our challenge: To be willing to become more anxious, via embracing new situations and stepping more fully into our lives. — Harriet Lerner

To feel attached is to feel safe and secure. By contrast, an insecurely attached person may have a mixture of feelings towards their attachment figure: intense love and dependency, fear of rejection, irritability and vigilance. One may theorise that their lack of security has aroused a simultaneous wish to be close and the angry determination to punish their attachment figure for the minutest sign of abandonment. It is though the insecurely attached person is saying to themselves: 'cling as hard as you can to people - they are likely to abandon you; hang on to them and hurt them if they show signs of going away, then they may be less likely to do so'. This particular pattern of insecure attachment is known as 'ambivalent insecurity'. — Jeremy Holmes

If you're living life from a place of fear, you're not free to take risks or pursue your dreams. If your energy is expended in avoiding failure or rejection, then that energy is used to stay safe, instead of being available to create the life you envision. — Lauren Mackler

The more Nos I open myself up to hearing, the closer I am getting to my super successful life. — Malti Bhojwani

A man's primary fantasy is access to a variety of attractive women without the fear of rejection. — Warren Farrell

We are always afraid to ask because we aren't afraid of the answer but the feeling of rejection — Anna R.

Following your heart means allowing the possibility of finding true love to be stronger than the fear of rejection. — Susane Colasanti

Hugging himself, Oscar leaned against the pantry wall. For two days all he had wanted was for Caleb to come back, and now he was back and Oscar had made a mess of things: he had angered half the customers and confused the other half, and the coin boxes did not look as they should, and [rich, noble] people were complaining about him, and he couldn't look at anybody, and [redacted] was dead, and Oscar was odd.
'What if he doesn't keep me? — Anne Ursu

Thinking, even when thinking is difficult, versus nonthinking Awareness, even when awareness is challenging, versus unawareness Clarity, whether or not it comes easily, versus obscurity or vagueness Respect for reality, whether pleasant or painful, versus avoidance of reality Respect for truth versus rejection of truth Independence versus dependence Active orientation versus passive orientation Willingness to take appropriate risks, even in the face of fear, versus unwillingness Honesty with self versus dishonesty Living in and being responsible to the present versus retreating into fantasy Self-confrontation versus self-avoidance Willingness to see and correct mistakes versus perseverance in error Reason versus irrationalism — Nathaniel Branden

Attitude, humor and action (persistence) will whip fears and rejection. Fear of failure doesn't exist, if you believe it doesn't. — Jeffrey Gitomer

My choices are rejections, since there is no other way,
but what I reject is more numerous,
denser, more demanding than before.
A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable loss. — Wislawa Szymborska

It's obsequious little nicety-nice girls like me who allow assholes to run the world: Miss Harlot O'Harlots, billionaire phony tree huggers, hypocrite drug-snorting, weed-puffing peace activists who fund the mass-murdering drug cartels and perpetuate crushing poverty in dirt-poor banana republics. It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. — Chuck Palahniuk

I'm terrified of getting involved with someone who disappoints me or leaves me empty and alone. I'm terrified of rejection, so I set my expectations so high that they can never be met, and I dig around with a magnifying glass looking for flaws in very person I date. There's always a flaw to exploit, and I'll find it so I never have to get too close. — Rachel Machacek

I realized that I could have been in galleries much sooner. I just needed to get past the fear of rejection. I still feel nervous when I approach a new gallery, although it has become more like a job now. The first step on this long road was getting past that initial fear. — Mark Edward

...the greatest barrier to intimacy is fear -- fear of being known, fear of being rejected, fear of facing the truth about ourselves...

...We are afraid to be known because at some deep level we fear that the truth about us, when out in the open and reflected back to us through someone else's eyes, will be shocking to ourselves. — Sheila Walsh

We fear rejection, want attention, crave affection and dream of perfection. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

A lack of fear of embarrassment is what allows one to be proactive. It's what makes a person take on challenges that others write off as too risky. It's what makes you take the first step before you know what the second step is. I'm not a fan of physical risks, but if you can't handle the risk of embarrassment, rejection, and failure, you need to learn how, and studies suggest that is indeed a learnable skill.1 As — Scott Adams

Remember: The fear of something is always scarier than the thing itself. Yes, there is pain and rejection. But the greatest failure is to never risk at all. — Jeff Goins

Many of us find it hard to set boundaries and defend them because we fear doing so will cause rejection or abandonment. We may avoid confrontations to make things easier. We may feel guilt if we say no or if we think we might hurt someone's feelings. We fear boundaries will keep us from being loved. — Adelyn Birch

I started doing impressions of Steve Urkel and Ed Grimley as my way of getting through the fear of rejection. — Daniel Breaker

It's a rare opportunity when a person removes all the layers and allows you to see who they are at the core. Sometimes we don't even get that chance with our own family or friends, and maybe it's easier to let someone you don't have any emotional connection with see that side of you. There's no fear of rejection, ridicule, or withholding love. We had nothing to lose. — Dannika Dark

Insecurity refers to a profoud sense of self-doubt-a deep feeling of uncertainty about our basic worth and our place in the world. Insecurity is associated with chronic self-consciousness, along with a chronic lack of confidence in ourselves and anxiety about our relationships. The insecure man or woman lives in constant fear of rejection and a deep uncertainty about whether his or her own feelings and desires are legitimate. — Beth Moore

Our great novelists, though experts on indignity and assault, on loneliness and terror, tend to avoid treating the passionate encounter of a man and a woman, which we expect at the center of a novel. Indeed, they rather shy away from permitting in their fictions the presence of any full-fledged, mature women, giving us instead monsters of virtue or bitchery, symbols of the rejection or fear of sexuality. — Leslie A. Fiedler

I do think it imperative that you recover from fear of rejection. Forgive me, but that is the sin of pride, and you must avoid that particular manifestation of the sin if you are to reach the goal ... you hope for. — John Farrar

The fear of not getting the reward becomes the fear of rejection. The fear of not being good enough ... is what makes us try to change, what makes us create an image. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

I wasn't like, 'I want to be famous.' I just wanted to be an actor. I wasn't chasing anything. I was never stressed or worried. I never had any fear of rejection or not making it, anything like that. — Sean Harris

Oscar leaned in, eyes wide. 'He's keeping me,' he whispered to the kitten.
Pebble chirped. Oscar's eyes flicked to the books underneath his bed. They called out to him: Misfit. Orphan. Idiot.
Oscar coughed and shifted his eyes back to Pebble. 'He thinks I can work the shop ... He said he knew I could do it.'
Wolf: He didn't see you work the shop. He doesn't know. Just wait until he hears.
'He wants me to do the best I can.'
Wolf: If only he knew how bad that was. He'll know soon.
Oscar clenched his hands into fists and squeezed his eyes shut ... 'I'm not going to disappoint him,' Oscar said. He repeated himself once more, in case the words themselves had any power. 'I'm not. — Anne Ursu

I tell the girls in our student ministry, You don't really want sex. What you want is intimacy. You want to meet a guy, fall in love, and know you can trust him completely. You want somebody with whom you can share everything there is to know about you without fear of betrayal or rejection. You want to be fully known and to know him fully. Purity now paves the way to intimacy later. — Andy Stanley

We humans, male and female, exist behind emotional barriers as lonely, autonomous souls longing for freedom and love. Our yearning or Sehnsucht is for release from isolation, rejection, and death. We are autonomous but not free. We nevertheless fear intimacy and its theological counterpart, holiness. If it breaks through to us, it may destroy us. If we fall into a sea of holiness, we may drown. We have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, have recognized our nakedness, and have clothed ourselves. We do not want to be found naked, and we know that if intimacy breaks through our barriers, our shame will be made visible. We cannot bear to let go of the false freedom of being an autonomous agent. — Duane Garrett