Mission Impossible

Attending a weekly anxiety workshop has been great for me. Not only do I get to learn but I get to experiment and confront my fears. My latest assignment was to write about my worst fear. "No problem" I thought I have already done that - I was wrong.

After I read my 'meeting the ex and the new Mrs' worst fear scenario to the group their task was to find the root cause of my fear. As the group discussed my scenario I started to become uncomfortable. It was determined that my fear had nothing to do with my ex but rather I was afraid of being rejected - not being good enough, not being loveable, not being desired.

So naturally my first response to this was DENIAL! "But I have already been rejected by my ex so what am I afraid of now?! Huh? Huh?!" Unfortunately the group had far more insight than I myself possess and all too quickly answered "Being rejected again". What can I say - the truth hurts - and sometimes it hurts bad!

I have learned many ways to 'protect' myself from being rejected in relationships. I "push" people away in many ways - the most common one by acting insane. I don't "share" much of myself - just the facts jack. I adopt an "icy" demeanour. I keep everything direct, impersonal and businesslike all in an attempt to distance myself. Probably worst of all I tell myself that I don't care about what others think when nothing could be further from the truth. Ultimately I am finding the more I try to protect myself the more I seem to get hurt.

The rest of my assignment - should I choose to accept it - is to confront my fear. So how does one go about confronting this fear - the plan is to be rejected. Not just rejected but rejected by 100 men by the end of the month! The original plan was for me to go to a mall or the airport and start asking men to have coffee with me. Now that was WAY TOO FAR out of my comfort zone!

So we agreed that I will go online and contact men who are "way out of my league" and ask them to meet for coffee. Not an ideal solution but a bit better and less aggressive. There are rules - I am not allowed to delete my rejection emails - those have to come back to class. Once I no longer have emotional reactions to rejection emails I have to 'up the stakes' to face to face rejections. Oh and no answers do not count as a rejection.

I am not so sure how this will play out. I have already sent out 10 emails resulting in 1 rejection, 2 replies and 7 no answers. In reading this you may think that I am making light of my experiment but rest assured I am most anxious but if I know anything about myself it's that I am stubborn beyond belief and I will not let my anxiety get the better of me.

Peace