HOW TO BOUNCE BACK FROM REJECTION

We've all experienced THE DEEP HURT OF BEING DISMISSED OR SNUBBED, whether in romance, our friendships, or our careers. The pain is real, but there are CLEAR, SCIENCE-BACKED WAYS TO REBOUND.

- JENNIFER KING LINDLEY

Friends told Laine Doss, who is 58 and a newspaper editor in Miami, that she and her husband had the perfect marriage. “He was a pilot, so we traveled to amazing places,” she says. “We loved to go running together. I was that person on Facebook who was always posting OMG I have the best husband in the entire world.”

Then, six years ago, the relationship started getting tense and distant. Still, Doss was not prepared when she arrived home from work one Wednesday and found that her husband of 14 years had simply walked out. “He had cleaned out his closet and taken all his clothes,” she says. “No crying together. No tries at therapy. I was in complete shock, embarrassed and ashamed. This doesn’t happen in normal life. Your husband is not supposed to ghost you.”

Rejection. Our stories are all different, but we have all felt its sting. The pain can be so vivid that we feel it physically. And though romantic jilting might seem the most difficult type to manage (and result in the sale of the most pints of ice cream), all kinds of brush-offs can feel brutal: the “No, thanks” after the interview for a dream job, the wedding invitation snub, and, if you’re in the online dating jungle, all those left swipes!

“Rejections are the most common emotional wounds we sustain in daily life,” says Guy Winch, Ph.D., the author of Emotional First Aid: Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Hurts. Today we suffer more such jabs than ever, Winch adds. “It used to be that rejection was usually face-to-face. With social media, we can feel that way constantly. We hit Like on a friend’s holiday pictures, but they don’t Like ours back. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a big or small rejection: It all smarts.”

Why it hurts SO BADLY