My wife and I had a recent conversation about my problem. I acknowledge that I can be rude and arrogant to people sometimes, when I need to minimize contact with them for some reason. “Rude and arrogant” here means things like avoiding eye contact when it’s expected, ignoring people on the street, or showing a guest less attention when they prefer someone else.

In all these behaviors I’m rejecting someone. This usually precedes a dread of being rejected first, so it must be a kind of “first stike” in cases where rejection might be inevitable. For the first time ever, I recounted to my wife how my father tried to drown me when I was five or six and how I feared for my life at that moment. I also told her the times when he and my mom would tell people (when I was around the same age) that I was a bad kid, in somber tones and within earshot (well, I was right in the room) and how deeply I felt ashamed of myself in those moments, wondering if there was truly something wrong with me.

The above incidents are memories and examples of me being rejected. Today I have a visceral fear of it; the dread is so deep that I lose control of myself and it almost feels like a panic attack.

She pointed out that yes, I had gone through all that but then why do others who had similar experiences recover? I gave that some thought: genetics? But is there another reason… maybe I perpetuate this. Maybe rejection today isn’t so clear cut. For sure, it’s all a negative cycle today. After I “treat someone like shit” I feel incredibly guilty about it, then sometimes try to make up for it (with varied success - at any rate they’ve learned something negative about me). The guilt is a painful thing to carry through life, believe me.

Going back to how I perpetuate it, there are moments when I am so uncomfortable that I just “cut off” contact with the other in various ways. In such moments I feel extremely emotional and the feelings threaten to come out of me in uncontrollable waves. Some of the recent Christmas parties we had to go to made me feel this way.

But what if I just tried to tolerate it, despite the pain? I’ve told myself this many times, with mixed results since it’s far easier said than done. At our own Christmas Eve dinner with friends recently, I really tried to live this resolution - I made sure not to give off any hints of rejecting anyone in any circumstance, and will continue to try to live this way.