Social Rejection Physical Pain: Why a No Hurts.
The link between social rejection physical pain is real, because both share brain machinery. So your fear before asking is not irrational or a defect. However, some of what you feel is not fear at all, but the dizziness Kierkegaard called anxiety.
The science of social rejection physical pain.
Naomi Eisenberger and Matthew Lieberman found rejection activating the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula. Those regions are also involved in physical pain. In 2005, Geoff MacDonald and Mark Leary reviewed the evidence in Psychological Bulletin. They concluded that both kinds of pain share real physiological machinery.
Also, a UCLA team found that one gene variation predicts sensitivity to both physical pain and social rejection.
An alarm doing its job.
Being turned down runs through circuitry that morphine quiets. Therefore, a closing stomach in the hallway is an alarm doing what it evolved to do. Your body cannot tell a hostile tribe from one man declining a watch. Industry data, not peer-reviewed psychology, links fear of rejection in sales to one key behaviour: initiating first contact.
Fear with an object, anxiety without one.
In 1844 Kierkegaard wrote The Concept of Anxiety, and the point of kierkegaard anxiety vs fear is simple. Fear has an object, such as a customer saying no. Anxiety, however, comes from freedom itself. So it feels like a man on a cliff, dizzy because he could jump.
That dizziness is not a sign you are unready. Instead, it is freedom when it is finally your turn.
Work with social rejection physical pain, not against it.
Write down which part of your feeling is fear of a specific no and which is anxiety.
Send one first-contact message tonight, since initiating is the behaviour everything else depends on.
From the book.
So when your stomach closes in the hallway, that is not weakness and it is not a character defect. It is an alarm system doing exactly what it evolved to do, in a situation nobody designed it for. Your body cannot tell the difference between a hostile tribe and one man declining to buy a watch.
I Want to Start a Business but I Don't Have Money, chapter 5: The first dollar
Questions about social rejection physical pain.
Is the link between social rejection physical pain real?
Yes. Research found shared brain regions and shared physiological machinery between the two.
How did Kierkegaard separate anxiety from fear?
Fear has a specific object. Anxiety has none and comes from realising the next step is yours to decide.
What predicts sales performance in the industry data?
Whether salespeople initiate first contact. That data is industry instrumentation rather than peer-reviewed research.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 5, “The first dollar”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 Selling Stuff at School as a Kid: The Watch Lesson.
- 02 What Counts as a Real Sale: Money From a Stranger.
- 03 People Underestimate Compliance: How Many Say Yes.
- 04 Implementation Intentions: Turn a Wish Into Thursday.
- 05 Social Rejection Physical Pain: Why a No Hurts.
- 06 Does Selling to Family Count: Why Your Mother Is Not a Market.
- 07 Homemade Pickle Business: Four Kilograms to a Company.