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Rejection sets off alarms for folks with low self-esteem

Few can tolerate such romantic or professional rebuffs as “It’s not you, it’s me” and “we regret to inform you that your application was not successful.” But while a healthy dose of self-esteem can absorb the shock of rejection, poor self-esteem can trigger the primal fight-or-flight response, according to a new study from the University of California, Berkeley.

That doesn’t mean people with low self-esteem are doomed to respond defensively to criticism and rejection. The UC Berkeley study suggests that those among them who are better at controlling their impulses are less vulnerable to rejection. This lays the groundwork for further investigation into what people who feel they don’t measure up can do to cope with disappointment and maintain close relationships.

“Social rejection is inevitable in society,” said Anett Gyurak, a graduate student who co-authored the study with Ozlem Ayduk, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of psychology. “But our findings suggest that if people with low self-esteem can improve their attention control skills, they might feel less terrible about themselves and counter the negative effects of rejection.”

While remedies to improve attention control require further study, researchers speculate that training the mind to focus for extended time periods and behavioral therapy that teaches people with low self-esteem to take a more positive or contextual approach to disappointment may help.

Just from a work place perspective low self esteem is the below the radar opposite of the arrogant know it all that usually doesn’t. It is tough to walk the middle ground. To be confident without being obnoxious. To be reflective without getting lost in finding inner fault for every little thing.

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The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages? by Deborah Cameron

I sensed early on in this delightfully spiky book that Deborah Cameron — an Oxford professor of language and communication — would give a first-class kros, and enjoy it, too. The only problem would be limiting the number of victims to one. Cameron’s targets are many: there’s John Gray, the author of the psychobabble classic, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, Deborah Tannen, the author of You Just Don’t Understand, Simon Baron-Cohen, the author of The Essential Difference, and the husband-and-wife team behind a slim volume called Why Men Don’t Iron.

These writers all subscribe to some version of what Cameron dubs the Mars-Venus myth, which holds that women are more verbal than men, that women talk more about people, relationships and feelings, while men talk more about things and facts, that women use language in a co-operative way, whereas men use it competitively. Oh, and that these differences mean that men and women routinely fail to communicate, but can learn to do better —

The terms masculine and feminine Mars and Venus seem too wide, too restrictive they’ve become inadequate and rely too much on stereotypes to describe the differences between men and women. The sexes have too much in common to be analogous to being from different planets. Other then the usual variation from one person to the next, on the genetic level we only differ by one gene. There are differences and as much as those differences can be a barrier they’re also what attracts us. That duality seems to makes life more interesting or depending on your POV more irritating.