I received the following email from someone who had read one of my articles:

“One topic that I feel that I haven’t seen covered much is the issue of body-image related stress, anxiety, and insecurity, and how to fight it. We all age. Personally, I am 27 years old, and rapidly going from a handsome full-headed young man to a completely bald individual in a very looks-dependent society. This process has been devastating to my mental well being in the last 3 years. However much I tell myself that I am in control of how I feel about myself, I cannot rid myself of the fear of never finding the right woman because of a lack of initial attraction on their part.”

There are two ways that we can define our worth: externally or internally. As long as your worth is defined by your looks or your performance, aging will create stress. Telling yourself that you are in control of how you feel about yourself is not going to change the fact that you are defining your worth externally.

All of us, as we were growing up, learned a myriad of ways to try to have control over getting love, avoiding pain, and feeling safe. One of the ways we might have learned is to lie.

We all had many opportunities to learn this way of protecting ourselves, which is a form of manipulation/control:

The fear of rejection is a huge issue in relationships. For some, the fear is so huge that it stops them from being in a relationship. For others, it plagues them throughout their relationships and causes much anxiety.

Rejection is a part of life, and learning to lovingly manage it is very important to our wellbeing.

To help you learn to move beyond the fear of rejection, I would like to help you see who a person is rejecting when they reject you. Are they rejecting your wounded self or your core Self?

Do you live your life with your heart mostly open or mostly closed? Do you spend most of your time protecting against rejection or being taken advantage of, or most of your time open to sharing love with others?

As children, many people had very heartbreaking experiences that caused them to close their heart. What experiences led to you closing your heart?

* Various forms of physical and/or sexual abuse
* Various forms of emotional abuse, such as criticism, judgment, blame, ridicule, or sarcasm
* Being neglected, ignored, discounted, unseen
* Being engulfed and smothered by a parent – pulled on and used to fill up their emptiness
* Rejection by parents, siblings, and/or peers
* Loss of a parent through divorce or death
* Loss of a beloved sibling, friend, or relative
* Physical defects that created limitation

As children, when you experienced any of these and other very challenging situations, and there was no one there to lovingly help you through the pain, the heartbreak may have been too intense for you to manage and you might have closed your heart to survive. You may have learned to be in your head rather than your heart.

However, now, as adults, keeping your heart closed has many negative consequences. While it was necessary for your survival as a child, now it is causing you a lot of pain. As adults, we all need to learn to lovingly manage our heartbreak without closing down.

What Happens Now When You Keep Your Heart Closed?