Transcript…

In this episode, you will learn:

Fear of rejection keeps us stuck, it keeps us small and inside our box.
It is the cock blocker of dreams
It can show up as physical pain in the body
Fear of rejection keeps us from stepping into our power and being our true authentic selves

Episode 41: Is Rejection Real?

Katie Wrigley 0:18

Welcome back to the pain changer podcast. This is episode 41 and I’m your host Katie Wrigley. During my last EFT session with Lauren Fonville, I realized that part of what was making my left shoulder feel so sore was this massive fear of rejection. We released a little of it during that session, and my shoulder was noticeably more aligned after only 30 minutes. It got me thinking though about how common this fear is. But yet, it’s not talked about directly, very often. So that’s what I’m going to do today to talk about how the fear of rejection is impacting me, and how it may be impacting you. This episode was recorded in two parts, something I don’t normally do, because I thought that the best way, the fastest way, the most fun way that I can resolve this and maybe even potentially turn it into a superpower would be to throw some cognomovement at it. So I have a session later today lined up with a practitioner friend, to help me change it. And at this point in time, I have no idea how this is going to change. But I have a lot of faith in this modality that I practice. And so it’s going to be interesting, and we’re going to learn together what happened to this fear of rejection, so stay tuned, you’re not gonna want to miss this one. Shoot, I don’t even want to miss this one. And I’m still recording it.

Before I dive into the meat of this week’s episode, I actually wanted to go back to the humor part. That has been something I haven’t necessarily forgotten about. And I’ve heard a lot of feedback that there have been some funny episodes. But I haven’t had some inappropriate jokes. I haven’t talked about things that are much more aligned with my personality and my sense of humor. And as you know, talking about pain, not the easiest topic, and I got so focused on the messaging that I kind of forgot about the humor. This week’s humor came to me in the form of a site called Livesozy. And I found it when I was doing research for some copywriting that I’m doing around a sex event that someone has coming up. And the way that I’m writing the copy demands that I am not direct about sex, I can’t say sex, I can’t say fuck, I can’t say those things in the manner that I’m writing. And so I wanted to get really creative on some other ways of saying having sex and this page is awesome. It’s absolutely hilarious. So I’m going to share some of these with you. And I’m not trying to make it about heterosexual sex this trying to pick examples that apply to whatever kind of sex you’re having, self sex, heterosexual, homosexual, group. I don’t care. I just hope that you’re out there having sex. And this has some funny ways to talk about it. And yes, it does not escape me that putting yourself out there for sex can be something that has a lot of fear of rejection around it. That’s not an accident that this is all happening today on this episode. So let’s get into some of these euphemisms. These are freaking hilarious.

Some of them come from way back, like “Do the deed of darkness.” “Take a roll in the hay” that came from about the 1920s By the way, “Grope for trout in a peculiar river”. That one’s Shakespeare and I don’t know that I like the peculiar river thing. Now a really, really funny one that came back into the 1600’s “Give one’s arse a salad”. I’m just gonna leave that one there. And then we got some really hilarious ones that come in as little euphemisms. Some of them kind of make me cringe. I’m gonna try to stay away from them but they may slip out and you’ll hear it if I cringe. “Getting laid.” Yeah, cringe. “Makin’ love”. My favorite is actually brown chicken brown cow but that’s actually not on here, that came from I think Two Broke Girls on TV. “Makin’ looove” I do like that one. “Funny business”, “Afternoon delight”, “Knockin’ boots”. “A bit of how’s yer father?” Ah, no, that one came out. “Getting down”, “Getting lucky”, “Tap that”. Tap that… it makes us women sound like a spigot or a man… whatever you’re tapping… I just, I don’t know about that one.

But some of these other terms in a single word. We all know “fuck”, that’s clear. “Shag”, “Bone”, “Bang”, “Boink”, “Screw”, “Nail” “Shtup”. I think I may go back to shtupping again. “Ball”, “Rut”, “Score”, “Smash”. I can’t ever say that I’ve just come out there and said, “Man, I could use a good rutin’ right now”. But maybe I’ll start throwing that one out there again.

The food related phrases that they have on here, these are absolutely hilarious. “Doing squat thrusts in a cucumber pouch”. “Bringing an al dente noodle to the spaghetti house”. “Puttin’ the bread in the oven”. I’m not even going to say that next one out loud. “Having a hot beef injection”. Okay, I don’t know how I feel about some of these. “Bordin’ the beef bus”… *chuckles* That’s so wrong. “Banana in a fruit salad”. Although it could be mangoes in a fruit salad just saying. “Batter dap in the corndog” *Bleh* Oh, okay. I’m not sure about some of these. But they are pretty funny. “Passing the gravy.” That was pretty hilarious “making bacon.” Oh, I like that one too. And then we got some weird and wonderful ones. “Bumping uglies”. I think that’s one I’ve heard a lot actually. “Matrimonial Polka” and it can be played pre matrimony too. “Horizontal tango”, “Two person push ups”, “A bit of the old in out bedroom rodeo. Yeehaw.” Now that one I kind of like. A bedroom rodeo that conjures up some creative sex right there. “Bow chicka wow wow”. That’s why I like my brown chicken Brown Cow. “Bushwhacking” Oh, that one is so wrong. “Dipping the wick, disappointing the wife”. *laughs* That was funny. “Balls deep”. I have heard that one. I was actually on the softball team for a while that was balls deep. “Slither in the Hufflepuff”. That one’s good. “Open the gates and mortar”, “Ridin’ the Bony Express”. Oh, goodness…. Yeah. Okay. So you get the point!

Now, let’s go ahead and go into today’s topic. So why is the fear of rejection important? And how in the world does this impact pain? Well, in my experience, rejection is one of the most painful things we can experience. It’s not the most painful. Grief, I would say, is probably the most painful. But fear of rejection, that can lead to some grief. If we’re feeling like we’re being rejected, that can feel like loss. And that leads to grief. So they’re kind of closely together that way. But fear of rejection, it’s keeping you small. It’s keeping you from vocalizing what you want to say, it’s keeping you from speaking your heart, from speaking your mind, from being fully you. And what toll is that taking on your body? So when you start to think about the nature of emotions, and I love what Lauren said, in last week’s episode, that emotions, literally the definition of it is energy in motion. And so our emotions are things that are asking us to look at, be looked at so that they can exit the body so that you can feel better. And when you are holding in how you feel, how in the world are you gonna get it out? It’s good to stay stuck in your body, and it’s going to keep you small, it’s going to keep you stuck. And at some point, it’s going to result in physical symptoms.

I had this amazing conversation with another coach this morning. And oddly enough, she and I have something similar happening in our bodies. And so what I had shared with her, helped her go, “Oh wow, you know, let me let me look at this. Thank you for sharing”. And I have no idea what she’s looking at for herself. That wasn’t what was being disclosed. We were just talking about this, and I was her client in the session. So what I’ve noticed in my body, I’m going to be telling you about a little bit later. But this is directly a physical impact of me not letting all of these things out. Because I have been so afraid of being rejected, being rejected by my audience, being rejected by my boyfriend, being rejected by friends, just being rejected for being me. And it’s kept me small and it puts me in pain and I’m fucking done with it. I cannot be of service the way that I want to be of service, the way that I envision myself being of service, if I’m afraid of you rejecting me. So I just want to let that shit go today. I’m done. I’m done.

This rejection, it keeps you small. It keeps me small, like I said, and it’s also going to keep you scared. Because I mean, hello. It’s built right into the title of what we’re talking about: fear of rejection. Fear is the cock blocker of dreams. That’s one of my favorite quotes. Fear is another way to keep you small, to keep you away from yourself. It can also get to a point where he keeps you trapped. Because you’re afraid to go after that job you really want, you’re afraid to go after that partner that you really want, you’re afraid to go for that thing that lights your soul that makes you feel alive, that makes you feel more engaged with life than you’ve ever been. Fear of rejection is blocking you from all of that. And it’s blocking me from all of that, and I am physically feeling it in my body. And so the way that this represented, first of all, it started back in the days when I was married. And I tried to tell myself that it was because I had been sleeping on my left side, because my right side, I’ve had tendonitis in my right shoulder since I was 12. I clearly do not care enough about it, it doesn’t hurt enough for me to do anything about it. But my right side can be limited, or it used to be limited to sleep on it. So I started sleeping on my left. And then I noticed around the start of 2017, which was when I was going through my divorce, that it was starting to roll forward. And it was combining with the bone spur and nerve pain that I had that was in my C five, C six in my neck. So the two of them were starting to play together. And it actually wound up turning into a full on frozen shoulder, which was a diagnosed condition, I think, in 2018, or 2019, when they were just piling all the diagnoses on me because I was looking for them and I was getting them. And it was not making me feel any better just by the way. And I started to take action to try to undo it. And again, it wasn’t bothering me enough that I stayed focused on it. And back then I had enough problems with my knees, with my back, with the rest of my body, with correcting the double atom bomb that I blown up in my life, getting my finances back in order, I had such a mess that I needed to clean up that was a much higher priority than my shoulder. And I’m laughing now because I’ve healed through all of that. And it’s easy to talk about. And of course, I didn’t pay attention to my shoulder. And of course, you aren’t going to be paying attention to the whispers in your body when other parts of your body are screaming. And Thank you Lauren again for that quote and love that. We want to listen when it’s whispering, or you’re going to be listening, when it’s screaming, it’s way easier to reverse the whispers than it is the screams, just please keep that in mind. So what I noticed is the shoulder was still rolling forward. And sometimes it’s actually noticeably higher or lower than the other shoulder depending on what else is going on in my body, my back, all of this. So in this last session with Lauren, I had really kind of forgotten about it. But I had noticed and I’ve said on this podcast even, that I noticed that my shoulders were feeling more and more sore lately. So I started to really pay attention, I started to meditate more and really tap into my body and ask what was going on there. What was burdening me, what was weighing on me. And this is stuff I’m still sorting through. So I’m not going to share those details yet. But the fear of rejection was the big one that I have sorted, am sorting with a cognomovement session. Fear of rejection was really standing out to me and it felt ready to deal with. So like I said, I noticed that the shoulder was turning in and then Lauren and I worked on it. And that day, it was like probably I don’t know, quarter, maybe half an inch higher than my other shoulder and she could see it too. And so we did a couple rounds of tapping and that evened it out. And I wasn’t even sure what it was about. I was like, “Can we just work on my shoulder today? Because there’s something here and I’m not even really sure what it is yet”. And so that session actually got me super clear that it was fear of rejection because as we’re tapping she’s like, “Oh, what’s there?” and I’m like “Fear of rejection” like, Huh. And then I realized what was actually happening is my shoulder is trying to roll forward to protect my heart. Because leading with my heart is incredibly important to me for you guys to be able to see me, know me. See if I resonate with you to know whether you want to work with me or not, or whether you want to listen to me, or whether you want to follow anything I do. Leading with my heart is so important to me and I can’t do that if I’m cock blocking myself with fear. I can’t. It’s literally not possible. And my arm, the more I try to step out into my more authentic voice still with this fear intact. The more over my shoulder is rolling forward. So the more it was hurting me and the more uncomfortable I was getting.

And so I’d set up a cognomovement session. And then one of the things that I do every week is I go to barre class with my mom, it’s for both of us. And it gives me time to spend with her. So last week, in barre class, I noticed that my middle upper back, felt really tired after class and kind of overrode this, like, urge to do a spinal twist and really kind of stretch out those sore muscles in there. And overrode that, like, I’ll be fine, I need to go, I was in a rush that day. So ran out the door, didn’t really stretch it. And noticed that it was locking up more and more, and it’s not a place, I’m used to having my back hurt. And my back actually hasn’t been really bothering me. So it was really standing out. And it was kind of annoying. And I noticed that it just I couldn’t really pinpoint where it was, it seemed to be moving and much to Lauren’s point, emotions. And we see this in cognomovement too, emotions are going to be moving. When the physical sensation is attached to an emotion, that’s going to move. And so I couldn’t really pinpoint where I had pulled the muscle, where it was knotted, where it was spasming. I couldn’t even actually really pinpoint what was happening in there. So for four or five days, I’m like trying to chase this part of my back, I finally find it and I’m like, Oh, my gosh, I realize it is this whole muscle, that it’s one of your stabilizers in your back, that helps keep you upright. And it’s all on my left side. The left side is the feminine, just if you’re curious. And I am leading, when you’re leading with your heart, you’re leading with your feminine power, whether you’re masculine or not, this is a subject for another positive podcast. But just as a brief kind of how I’m coming to make sense of the messages my body are telling me that are giving me the idea now that I understand this, this fear of rejection, this is what I am now reading in my body, as I’m coming to understand what messages my body has for me with the sensations. So I noticed that it was this big stabilizer muscle that goes all up and down. And so I started today with some meditation, knowing that I’m doing cognomovement later, and meditated, and my little Infrared Sauna blanket, which I absolutely love, and really focused on that area, and asked her what was there. And I saw some financial stuff come up that I can easily remedy. And I saw this idea of standing in my power, of supporting myself, of having the strength to support myself. So this is all valuable information that I can now take into my cognomovement session.

So I’m going to wrap this part of the episode here. But like I said, I am going to be coming back and doing a second round. Well, to you, it’s just all one podcast episode. But to me, it’s two rounds. But I want to leave you there. And I’m asking you to look at your own body. And measure what I’m explaining to you about what I’m seeing in my own body as far as now that I know that the shoulder is about fear of rejection. What other messages I have been able to find. So ask your body, whatever you’re feeling. If it’s the same as what I described, or something else, if there’s some other nagging sensation, or maybe as I’m talking, some part of your body started to bark at you a little bit. Tune into that. Ask it if it has to do with fear of rejection, see what it has to say. Take some notes, because we’re going to flip this on its head. And I’m going to come back on the other side of this and show you how to do that but just observe. Have you been witnessing fear of rejection within your own body, within your own life? And how is it affecting you?

We are now at the part of the recording where I have done my cognomovement session around the fear of rejection, it was really interesting. Before I go into that, though, I want to add one thing, and I made sure I wrote it down after I stopped the recording earlier. So like I said, previously, you know, I wanted to make sure that I covered really the amount that this was affecting me. So some of the places I saw it, not just in business and being hesitant to make offers to people that I know I can help who I feel are asking for my help. That’s the place that’s pretty detrimental to me, but the places that really hurt was locking myself in around my friends, around my partner. You know, it’s it keeps me from letting my partner see me where he has shown me that I can trust him. And when I have been at my most vulnerable, he has met me with kindness and compassion, and giant bear hugs, and has been with me and held space for me to be there. So there, I have no evidence that he would reject me for anything, but it keeps me from letting him get in closer. And with a lot of these new friends that I’ve been meeting through entrepreneurial groups, through copywriting, because that’s something else that I do as well, I’m meeting a lot of Christian women who I absolutely adore. They are so open, so accepting, they are just the epitome of love. And I was afraid to let them fully see me, I was afraid to let them know that I swear a lot. And so I was curbing my mouth. And I was afraid to let them know that I use cannabis. And I was even afraid to say on here that I still use it because I do want to stop my dependence on it. But whenever I check in with myself, I’m hearing that my body hasn’t healed to that point where I can fully let go of it yet, but I’m so close. And I’m just allowing this at that point. But I was actually really kind of rejecting my authentic self with pushing myself to do that before the time is right. And then I didn’t want to share it with anybody else. Because I was afraid I was going to get rejected.

So in the session, holy shit. So I would be shocked if this is different for anyone else. There have been so many places where I felt rejected in my life. And the practitioner I was working with had me really like look at where am I rejecting myself. And there were some surprising things I found in there. And I was able to clear them all. And I was able to actually flip it around, because one of the questions I was asking was, “what if rejection is an illusion? What if it’s not real? What if it actually has nothing to do with me?” It has nothing to do with you. What if rejection only has to do with the person who we’re perceiving as rejecting us? Then what is actual rejection? Is it rejection? Or is it actually giving us data. And so with cognomovement, there’s two ways that you can work things you can focus on the positive. And anything that is in the way of the positive is just going to get out of the way, as you do that, because you can’t go into that positive. If there’s something in the way just that’s not the way our neurology is wired, we want to clear all those blocks in the way of this positive perspective. Or we focus on the negative. So the funny thing was, I couldn’t really feel it much in my body, which was really surprising. But when we got into the eye movements, oh, that was one of the most painful eye movement sessions that I’ve had. But now the eyes were fully clear when we ended and what that tells me and what that tells a practitioner working with me is that it is cleared out of my neurology for now. Do I know if this is permanent, right now? No, I know, I got another layer, the whole left side of my back, which had been bothering me which came from the shoulder, the shoulder is a little less rolled forward now. And my back feels, I don’t know, maybe an eighth of as tight as it felt before. And I know for my body that that’s residual. It’s what I call a shadow sensation. It’s not actually really there anymore. It’s not really hurting me anymore. So all of that got cleared out of my body right now, which tells me that the layers that are available to me right now are now resolved. So what I expect is going to happen from here is that I’m ready to hear no, from people that I want to work with. I am ready to put more offers out there into the world. I’m ready to stop hiding parts of myself and my completely legal cannabis use like a lot of the stigma comes from days it wasn’t legal and all that and it’s still not federally but whatever. Whole other podcast episode right there. There’s no reason for me to hide it. It’s a part of me like if I could walk around wearing my unicorn hat with pom poms on it like, which is not nearly as socially acceptable as partaking in cannabis. However, you partake, like, I think I can own that too. But I feel really, really, really good right now. I feel clear, I feel focused. I feel very driven. And I’m not at all afraid of rejection right now. And if it comes back, I’ll own it, you. I’ve come back many times and corrected myself and I’ve been wrong before. So please trust that I will again.

And I thank you so much for joining me here today. And I really hope that you’re going to come back again with me next week. Next week, we’re going to be talking to another expert. He and his wife run a company called the boundless body and he introduced me to something called the carnivore diet. So I’m actually a week into it now. And I will be two weeks into it by the time I record that episode. And you are going to hear all about how it is working with me and all the science behind this because trust me, it was totally counterintuitive and went against everything I had ever been taught about diet and I am shocked at how my body is responding. So see you again next week. And until then, please remember that chronic doesn’t have to mean permanent.