0:15

Pushkin. I

0:21

had nobody to talk to you about

0:23

what I was going through, so I called my father. My

0:26

dad, who is really not a religious

0:28

man, said Tim, if you're hurting this bad,

0:30

maybe you should go to church. That's

0:33

in church. Why would I want to go to

0:35

church? Why would God do this to me?

0:37

I'm mad at God. This

0:39

is Tim Colesari. Tim

0:41

is telling me about the worst day of his life, a

0:44

day that tested his faith and one, as

0:46

you'll hear, still feels like an open wound.

0:49

Why just crushed me? It was in such

0:51

shock, and I thought, I gotta get out of

0:53

here. I need to go walking, being by my stuff. A

0:56

lot of time has passed since the awful

0:58

day that changed Tim's life forever, but

1:00

as Tim and I chatted, it was clear that the

1:02

pain he felt that fateful day was

1:05

still very fresh in his mind. You

1:07

go through shock. First, just happen,

1:10

and then you're wondering why, And then I

1:12

was just oh my God the whole time

1:15

for so long. So what was the

1:17

event that caused such awful and such long

1:19

lasting pain? For decades? Tim

1:22

got rejected? As

1:25

you'll soon hear, in some historic detail, Tim

1:28

suffered one of the most incredible, protracted

1:30

and over the top rejections I'd

1:32

ever heard of. But even though Tim's

1:35

story of rejection is probably more extreme

1:37

than anything you or I have experienced, I

1:40

bet you can still relate to the hurt he's describing,

1:43

which raises some questions. Why

1:45

does rejection feel so awful? And

1:47

what strategies can we use to blunt the

1:49

sharp emotional pain that it brings. Our

1:54

minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy.

1:57

But what if our minds are wrong? What

1:59

if our minds are lying to us, leading

2:01

us away from what will really make us happy. The

2:04

good news is that understanding the science of mind

2:06

can joint us all back in the right direction. You're

2:09

listening to the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie

2:11

Santos. When

2:22

I began planning this episode about the science of rejection,

2:25

I'd never actually heard of Tim Colseri or

2:27

his story, And when I finally

2:29

did hear his tragic tale, I honestly

2:31

couldn't quite believe it. Tim

2:33

had already endured a pretty dynamic and adventure

2:36

filled life even before the epic

2:38

rejection that changed his path forever. I

2:41

went in the Marines on my eighteenth birthday, went

2:43

to Vietnam, spent thirteen months in Denang and

2:45

got out of my twentieth birthday, and then

2:47

two months later I was at roll to college.

2:50

And after about my senior year,

2:52

one of my good friends turned pro and golf and

2:54

wanted me to caddy form on the tour, and

2:57

I turned pro about a year later. I

2:59

played for about three years, and then I thought

3:01

what am I going to do with myself? Ended up

3:03

in Miami waiting tables, and then I

3:05

got on as an airline flight attendant.

3:07

And actually I've been to Guama's Marine a flight

3:09

attendant and a stand up comedian. I

3:12

don't think anybody can say that. Lots of

3:14

people have their hearts broken trying to make it as a stand

3:16

up comedian or a professional golfer, but

3:18

not Tim. That wasn't where his anguish

3:21

came from. He also wasn't beaten

3:23

down as a low paid waiter or a sleep deprived

3:25

flight attendant. Tim's real

3:27

tale of woe started when he embarked on a new

3:29

career path. On a whim, he

3:31

decided to join a friend for an acting class.

3:34

Teacher said, this is what we call a born natural.

3:37

Nobody came up to me afterwards, I said, you're really good.

3:39

I'm good at acting. That's

3:41

what I'm good at. Tim was determined

3:43

to find his way into the movie business, but

3:46

it was hard for a veteran living in Florida with

3:48

no acting experience to break into Hollywood.

3:50

So when Tim heard about an open casting call

3:53

for a big budget war movie, he decided

3:55

to rent a camera and make an audition video.

3:59

Despite his lack of acting credentials, Tim

4:01

was still hoping to land one of the biggest roles

4:03

in the war film, a boot camp drill

4:05

instructor. He had, after all,

4:08

been a real marine, so I knew I could

4:10

play it. In my mind. Tim scraped

4:12

together enough money for the stamps ten

4:14

dollars and eighty seven cents. I remember

4:16

that distinctly, and bailed off

4:18

his audition tape. I hope it

4:20

gets to where I'm supposed to go, That's all

4:22

I thought. And then three years

4:25

one by I completely forgot

4:27

about the tape completely. One

4:30

faithful day, the phone rang our

4:32

Kim, this is Lewis Blow, president of Warner

4:35

Brothers. Tim. I have a

4:37

tremendous amount of faith in Stanley Kubrick.

4:40

Tim. Stanley Kubrick

4:42

has a tremendous amount of faith and Tim Coles

4:44

Eric I ran over to the window and

4:46

I put my hand out. I wonder, I went Stanley

4:48

Kubrick, tremendous amount a thing to me. That's

4:52

right, Stanley Kuprick, the director

4:54

of Doctor Strangelove, A clockwork Orange

4:56

two thousand and one of Space Odyssey, and the Shining

4:59

that Stanley Kubrick had picked Tim,

5:01

a complete acting newbie, to star

5:03

in his next project. I was so

5:06

happy, so happy.

5:09

Tim learned that he'd not only been cast in Full

5:11

Metal Jacket, Koprick's epic about

5:13

the horrors of the Vietnam War, but also

5:15

that he landed the lead role of the brutal

5:18

drill instructor. If you haven't seen the

5:20

movie, this character is pretty incredible.

5:22

He takes a bunch of raw marines through their basic

5:24

training, making some and breaking

5:27

others. No spoiler, but he

5:29

eventually meets a tragic end in one of the most

5:31

memorable moments of the movie. Tim

5:33

was over the moon and landing the part, but

5:35

he didn't have much time to celebrate. He was

5:38

quickly flown off to England, where he had to learn

5:40

page after page of dialogue. It

5:42

was a stressful and a lonely time. Because

5:45

I was the drill instructor. They

5:47

kept me away from the rest of

5:49

the actors because they didn't want them to get

5:51

to know me, because they wanted

5:53

me to be menacing and mean in front

5:55

of them when I did the scene. Tim

5:58

spent hours alone in his hotel room

6:00

learning his lengthy monologues, screaming

6:02

like a drill instructor at no one in particular,

6:05

week after week after week. It

6:07

was really tough, dial really hard

6:10

to do. Tim stopped sleeping

6:12

and even had to see a doctor because of all the stress.

6:15

But he thought all the isolation and anxiety

6:17

and insomnia were worth it. After

6:19

all, he had the film's most important

6:21

part, a role that he had dreamed

6:23

about for years. But

6:26

what Tim didn't know was that he wasn't the only

6:28

one who'd been dreaming about the drill instructor role.

6:31

Another former marine, Lee Ermey, had

6:33

wanted to land that very same part, but

6:35

Lee was chosen instead as the film's

6:38

technical advisor, and Lee

6:40

had a plan. Unlike Tim, who

6:42

was locked away learning his dialogue, Lee

6:45

got to spend a lot of time with the cast As

6:47

technical advisor. Lee's job was to work

6:49

with the other actors, which meant that he got

6:51

to ad lib a bunch of lines from the movie, and

6:54

whenever Koprick was around, Lee

6:56

made sure to come up with as many colorful

6:59

new drill instructor lines as he could. He

7:01

tried to embody all the nastiness of

7:03

a real marine sergeant, which

7:05

got Kuprick thinking. Eventually,

7:08

he sent his ass to find him.

7:10

And I opened the door and his face looked like

7:12

death. And I said, immediately,

7:15

is he taken my roll away from me? He

7:18

said, read the letter. He had an envelope and I

7:20

opened it up. In the very first line said near Tim.

7:22

After a painful lot of deliberation, I decided

7:24

to use Lee Army to play Sargent Hartmann. I

7:27

have two starting quarterbacks. I need to choose

7:29

one. Apparently, Cooper

7:31

Kaye decided that he no longer had tremendous

7:34

faith in Tim Colsery. It

7:36

was a crushing rejection. Whatever

7:38

your job is in the world, if you could think the

7:41

highest place you could get to. At

7:43

that time, that was me. The

7:45

best role I could get with

7:47

the best director and the best film,

7:50

and it was mine. So when

7:53

that became taken away, it hurt

7:55

me big time. Tim was totally

7:57

bereft, But then fate

7:59

seemed to intervene. Lee Army was

8:02

in the hospital. I get a phone call

8:04

saying Lee was in a very serious

8:06

car accident. Don't go anywhere.

8:08

You got the role back. Tim was

8:10

going to play the drill sergeant again. Suddenly

8:13

his dream role was back. Until

8:16

it wasn't. He got another phone call.

8:19

It turns out the film was required to allow

8:21

Lee Ermy to recover and complete filming.

8:24

Tim was given a quick never mind, sorry

8:26

to get your hopes up, and I had to

8:28

fly back to the United States. Now everybody's

8:30

going, well, how to go over there? Well, I lost my big role,

8:32

but I got this other role I really want to play. In

8:35

the aftermath of losing his dream part

8:37

twice, Kuprick decided to

8:39

toss him a sort of consolation prize,

8:42

a bit part in the movie that didn't even have

8:44

a name. Tim was asked

8:46

to play a helicopter doorgunner. The

8:49

doorgunner had like three lines of dialogue

8:51

and spent most of his scene gleefully mowing

8:53

down innocent women and children in the fields

8:55

rushing by below. It was a

8:58

tiny, tiny part, but the violent

9:00

scene had left an impression on Tim when

9:02

he'd first seen a copy of the script. I

9:04

immediately said to myself, Man, whoever

9:07

plays that role is going to have a ball. I

9:10

never thought it was going to be me. So

9:12

Tim would be in a Kubrick film after all. He waited

9:14

for the call to return to the set, but

9:17

when the call came, it was yet another disappointment.

9:20

The doorgun Is scene had been cut, and

9:22

I remember hanging up the phone

9:25

and gone, here we go again. Wow.

9:28

I had like an Oscar dominated

9:30

role, the best role I could think about, to another

9:32

great role, to no role. Wow.

9:37

Tim's story, amazingly isn't over

9:39

yet. But what struck me during

9:41

our chat was just how raw this rejection

9:44

still feels decades later. Being

9:46

shunn by Kouprick felt painful and disorienting

9:49

at the time, but the wound Tim received

9:51

as a young man still hurts him deeply.

9:54

Well into his seventies. His

9:56

scars never really healed. That

9:59

was the dream thing of my life.

10:02

Take that away. Anybody

10:04

else's secondary after that, and nothing

10:07

shots you anymore. When

10:09

we get back from the break, we'll explore

10:12

the science of why rejection can leave

10:14

such deep wounds. We'll learn

10:16

a surprising truth about how rejection works

10:18

in the brain and what understanding this strange

10:20

truth means for how we can protect ourselves

10:23

from the pain of being shunned. The

10:25

happiness lab will be right back. Unlike

10:35

most human beings, Naomi's never been rejected.

10:38

It's not true. I'm

10:40

talking to UCLA social neuroscientists

10:42

Naomi Eisenberger and Matt Lieberman. The

10:45

married couple studies how the brain processes

10:47

rejection, but the couple differs

10:50

and their personal experience with this phenomenon.

10:52

The closest is like, if our

10:54

teenage son doesn't hug her enough,

10:57

then she feels rejected, But keep in

10:59

mind he still hugs her, and that's

11:01

what she considers to be an experience

11:03

of rejection. So I think as much

11:06

as she is an expert on the science of rejection,

11:08

she doesn't know any thing about the experience

11:10

of actual rejection. Matt,

11:12

however, has had more than his fair

11:14

share of this painful experience. I

11:17

have had, like major rejection.

11:19

I had a six year relationship

11:22

and completely out of the blue, like just

11:24

had no idea it was coming. It was definitely

11:27

one of the most painful experiences of my life.

11:29

I think up until I had kidney stones,

11:31

I would have said that was the most painful experience

11:33

of my life. It was really brutal, and

11:36

the pain from that was not only awful

11:38

then, but it lasted for a

11:40

solid six months. Early

11:43

on in their careers, Naomi and Matt knew

11:45

that they wanted to study this painful emotion better,

11:48

so they decided to embark on a neuroscientific

11:50

study of rejection to figure out how

11:52

being shunned was processed in our brains.

11:55

But they weren't totally sure how to start,

11:58

because when you think about it, rejection isn't

12:00

all that easy to study in the laboratory,

12:02

let alone inside a brain scanner. I

12:04

mean, researchers can't just assign subjects

12:07

to a condition in which they suddenly break off

12:09

decades long romance or get fired

12:11

from a major motion picture. Naomi

12:14

and Matt were stumped about how to get their subjects

12:16

to experimentally experience a sense

12:18

of spurning. That is until

12:20

they met psychologist Kit Williams and

12:22

learned about his new invention, cyberball.

12:26

Cyber Ball has now become an important

12:28

scientific tool for studying people's social

12:30

emotions, but it kind

12:33

of looks like a bad arcade game from the early

12:35

eighties. Here's how it

12:37

works. Cyber Ball is a three person

12:39

game. You and two other players,

12:41

real people who are allegedly sitting in another

12:43

room, have to toss a virtual ball

12:45

back and forth for a while.

12:48

The ball tossing goes and the way you'd expect,

12:50

you throw the ball to the first player. That player

12:52

throws it to the second player, and then the second player

12:55

throws it back to you, and so on and so on.

12:58

But then something changes.

13:00

You're playing this game with two other people, and

13:03

all of a sudden, they completely leave

13:05

you out and they're just playing with each other. All

13:07

of a sudden, and totally without warning, the

13:10

other players stopped throwing you the ball in

13:13

a flash. You are being rejected.

13:17

Now. Of course, getting disc by two strangers

13:19

in some lame arcade game isn't the

13:21

same as getting dumped by your fiance or

13:24

fired by Stanley Kuprick. But

13:26

Williams found that subjects who experience being

13:28

left out in the game still have some amazingly

13:31

strong reactions. Many subjects

13:33

reported feeling deeply troubled, some

13:36

got super pissed off, others

13:38

just felt kind of sad. And hurt. I

13:41

don't understand. Why did they do that

13:43

to me? That was so mean? I

13:46

annoyed, I felt upset. Cyberball

13:48

may look clunky, but the game causes

13:50

people to feel all the hallmarks of social

13:53

rejection. It was the exact sort of

13:55

task that Matt and Naomi had been looking for. Wow,

13:57

we could bring this into the fMRI scanner

14:00

and see what is going on

14:02

in the brain when people are being excluded.

14:06

But even though Matt and Naomi had been thinking about

14:08

studying rejection in the brain for a while, they

14:10

weren't totally sure what they'd see. One

14:13

possibility was that rejection worked like

14:15

other negative emotions, and so

14:17

you might expect to see neurons firing in regions

14:20

like the amygdala, a part of the brain

14:22

that's now famous for its role, and yucky feelings

14:24

like anxiety and fear. But Naomi's

14:27

own intense terror of being shunned God

14:29

heard thinking that rejection might work differently

14:31

than the usual fear response. You

14:33

know, what is it in our brains

14:36

that is treating the possibility

14:38

of rejection like you

14:40

know, the possibility of imminent

14:42

death? Like? Why are they connected? So

14:44

the couple began to wonder whether rejection could

14:47

affect our body and brain in the same way

14:49

as other physically deadly things

14:51

like a gunshot, wound, or cancer. We

14:53

definitely talk about rejection as though it's

14:55

a physical injury. We say someone

14:58

hurt our feelings or broke our hearts.

15:00

We talk about other people's actions as cutting

15:03

to the core or leaving us emotionally

15:05

scarred. Our colleagues Jeff McDonald

15:07

and Mark Leary have sort of surveyed

15:10

different languages to see is

15:12

this a universal thing, is this specific

15:14

to the English language, And they found pretty

15:17

universal patterns where across

15:19

all of these different languages you see people

15:22

using pain related words to describe

15:24

rejection, and they actually argue

15:26

that we have no other way to describe

15:29

experiences of rejection except

15:31

with these pain words. Our

15:34

language might lump heartache and heart burn

15:36

together, but to our brains really

15:38

experience emotional hurt in the same way

15:40

as physical pain. Naomi

15:42

and Matt decided to test this by putting

15:44

people inside an fMRI scanner and

15:47

then having them play cyberball. The

15:49

couple then looked at the parts of the brain that were

15:51

more active when people got rejected. Their

15:54

answer came one faithful afternoon when

15:57

Naomi was beginning her data analysis in

15:59

a shared graduate student office, which

16:02

meant that Naomi wasn't the only one looking

16:04

at brain scan results my office

16:06

made. At the time, she had done a study looking

16:09

at pain, serious

16:11

pain like this was an irritable bowel

16:13

syndrome patients who were being stimulated

16:16

in various ways, So this was real painful

16:18

experience Naomi in her office

16:20

made. Both had pictures of their subject's brain responses

16:23

up on the screen. When Matt walked in. When

16:25

he looked back and forth at the two computer screens,

16:28

he was shocked. He couldn't tell which set

16:30

of results was which. The brain

16:32

responses of people who were in bowel pain looked

16:34

just like the brain response of people who were

16:37

rejected in cyberball. The

16:39

results took the neuroscience community by storm

16:41

and made many scholars realize that we hadn't

16:44

given the pain of rejection the scientific attention

16:46

it deserved. Humans are set up

16:48

to value connection, to value

16:50

social connections so much that

16:53

our brains have figured out a way

16:56

to use circuitry that's typically

16:58

there to keep us from

17:00

injuring our bodies, to keep us from feeling

17:02

physical pain that seem circuitry

17:05

is being used to make sure that

17:07

we don't get it off from others.

17:10

To me, that's a really amazing thing, and it sort

17:12

of helps normalize some

17:14

of the intense spheres that I might have

17:17

of rejection, Like, Okay, that is part

17:19

of how we have evolved in humans

17:21

to place such an important value on

17:23

social bonds that the possibility

17:26

of having those bonds broken really

17:28

does put us at greater risk, and maybe is

17:30

why our bodies respond in this really

17:33

intense way to the possibility of being

17:35

separated from others. Yeah, you

17:37

know, one of the takeaways from

17:39

this is that you know, in our

17:41

society, we're kind of wired

17:44

to take everybody else's physical pain

17:46

very very seriously, like, oh, you sprained

17:48

your ankle, let's get you somewhere to get that treated

17:51

right away, and we tend

17:53

to look at other people social pain is something

17:55

that's kind of like, hey, that's your business,

17:58

just like take care of that. Don't let that interfere

18:00

with your work or your class work or whatever

18:02

it is. And the thing is is

18:04

that the brain probably doesn't differentiate

18:06

them in the way that we're

18:08

treat eating them, and so I think it's

18:10

probably made me a bit more

18:13

sort of empathic. But

18:17

Naomi and Matt's findings also got them

18:19

thinking about creative ways to alleviate

18:22

the pain that feeling jolted can cause. The

18:24

couple's brain finding suggested a straightforward

18:27

but also incredible possibility. If

18:29

the brain processes rejection like a painful

18:31

physical injury, say a kidney stone,

18:34

could the same drugs we take to stop physical

18:36

discomfort also protect us

18:39

from social hurt. What if

18:41

you sort of prescribed pain medicine

18:43

for people who had social pain? Wouldn't that be

18:46

hilarious? Like it was almost going to be a punchline

18:48

in a talk. But we never thought it would

18:50

work, so we never ran

18:53

that study. But Nathan

18:55

Dawal, a professor of psychology at the University

18:57

of Kentucky, thought it was worth trying

18:59

out. He gave his subjects either pain

19:02

medication, a seat of menifit the active

19:04

ingredient in thailan all, or a placebo

19:06

pill. For three weeks. Participants

19:09

in both groups were asked to fill out a nightly survey

19:12

on whether they'd felt teased or hurt by other

19:14

people during the day. He also

19:16

had a smaller group of these subjects performed

19:18

Naomi and Matt's cyberball brain scan task.

19:21

What happened by the ninth day of treatment,

19:24

subjects taking a seat of menefin we're feeling

19:26

less hurt by their daily rejections than

19:28

subjects taking the fake pill. Their

19:30

brains also showed less activity in

19:32

those same pain regions when playing cyberball,

19:35

So it looked like there was really evidence

19:37

that, yeah, this physical

19:40

pain killer seems to be having an effect

19:42

on social pain too. It is

19:44

really important to include the

19:47

warning label, which is that tailon Al's

19:49

actually quite toxic. So when

19:51

I talk about this with large audiences, I always

19:54

tell them this because people were like, oh cool,

19:56

the next time I get rejected, I'll just take a bottle

19:58

of tailon al and that will

20:00

kill you. People should not try to do this at

20:02

home and self administer, because it's actually dangerous.

20:06

I just want to echo Matt here again. Do

20:09

not take an aspirin or a tylenol or

20:11

any other painkiller to ease the heart of rejection.

20:14

It is dangerous. Do not do it, never,

20:16

ever, seriously. Not

20:18

a smart strategy. But

20:21

Naomi and Matt's findings do provide

20:23

an existence proof that there are ways

20:25

to turn off the pain of rejection. When

20:27

we get back from the break, we'll see that

20:29

there are some safe ways to innoculate ourselves

20:32

and the people we love from the pain of rejection.

20:34

We'll learn that we don't need a drug to alleviate

20:36

the heart of being jilted, but we do need

20:39

to get the right strategies to make sure our

20:41

rejection cuts don't get infected. In

20:44

fact, we'll talk to a scientist who's come

20:46

up with a host of simple strategies we can

20:48

use to fight our heartaches and feel

20:50

better. When

21:00

I applied to graduate school for a PhD program,

21:03

there were ten programs that I wanted to apply

21:05

to. Nine of them are good, one of them

21:07

wasn't. I decided to apply old.

21:09

The nine good ones said no. The tenth

21:11

didn't even bother responding. This

21:14

is psychologist Guy Winch. His first

21:16

round of graduate school applications didn't

21:18

go so well, and I felt very, very rejected.

21:21

And then I realized, they're not rejecting

21:23

me. They're rejecting my application.

21:25

My application is something I can work on, and

21:28

so it got my head together again. This

21:30

might sound like a pretty enlightened reaction from an

21:32

applicant who didn't even get a note thank you from

21:35

the worst program in his entire field. But

21:37

Guy has long been an expert on strategies

21:39

we can use to bounce back. Guy

21:42

is the co host of Dear Therapists,

21:44

a podcast that gives practical tips for

21:46

how to recover when things don't work out in life.

21:48

He's also the author of Emotional First Aid,

21:51

Healing, Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other

21:53

Everyday Hurts Well. The idea is that

21:55

we all have a medicine cabinet at home, and

21:57

we're actually very good. If you get a cutch, you can

21:59

actually most people can look at it and estimate

22:02

whether that requires a band aid,

22:04

a stitch, or a uber to the emergency

22:06

room. But we get emotional

22:09

wounds on a daily basis much more than we do physical

22:11

ones these days because we're not skateboarding as much as

22:13

adult so maybe we are, but we're not scraping

22:15

our knees as much. We are experiencing

22:17

failure, we are experiencing rejection, we are

22:19

experiencing loneliness, and there's a lot

22:21

of research that can tell us how we can soothe

22:24

some of those pains and treat some of those wounds, except

22:26

we're not aware of it, and we don't use it. Now.

22:29

That's not to say that we don't try to deal with our rejection

22:31

pain. We often react very strongly

22:33

to these emotions. The problem, according

22:36

to Guy, is that we do so in some very

22:38

unhelpful ways, like getting

22:40

really angry when we stop Bartow.

22:42

Our instinct is to go and kick the desk of draws

22:44

that did it, or to punch something. I mean, our instinct

22:47

for pain is to lash out, and rejection

22:49

is pain, and our instinct is to lash out.

22:53

Studies have vividly shown that the anger projection

22:55

makes us want to hurt other people. In

22:57

one experiment, subjects first got rejected

22:59

in a game of cyberball and then had a chance

23:02

to lash out against a group of innocent

23:04

bystanders. Subjects were told that

23:06

they needed to decide how much hot sauce to

23:08

make people drink in an upcoming taste test

23:10

experiment. They were told that

23:12

these taste testers didn't like spicy food,

23:14

but that they would have to drink whatever size shot

23:16

of hot sauce the subject poured. What

23:19

happened, Subjects who were rejected

23:21

in the cyberball task poured more than

23:23

four times as much hot sauce as people

23:25

who didn't get dissed. Other studies of

23:27

rejection have found that jolted subjects are

23:29

more willing to punish strangers with a white

23:31

noise blast that's longer and louder

23:34

than non rejected subjects choose. And

23:36

that's mild, right, that's hot sauce and

23:38

loud noise. But we also know that

23:40

there are a ton of crimes of passion, except

23:43

there are actually consequences of rejection,

23:45

and they often involved very little passion, just the anger

23:48

that comes from being rejected. And it's something

23:50

that costs a lot of lives, especially for women,

23:52

on an annual basis. Given the

23:55

potential for such dire consequences,

23:57

Guy argues that we need to learn how to treat rejection

23:59

pain right away, the same way we'd grab

24:02

a first aid kit to put a band aid on a cut.

24:04

If you leave it up to our mind to make the decision

24:06

about what's the best way to heal an emotional it

24:09

will inadvertently send you down

24:11

the wrong path. It will do the wrong thing because it's just trying

24:13

to protect you from having that wound again. It's not

24:15

trying to heal it in an adaptive

24:17

way. When I think of rejection first aid. I'll

24:20

be honest, I think of booze frankly, and ice

24:22

cream. It's like what I think of, you know,

24:24

so like is this kind of common? You

24:26

didn't invent booze and ice cream, you know, like in other

24:28

words, that is the go too. But

24:30

we are We tend to numb the pain. That's

24:33

our basic response. Let's numb it

24:35

with sugar, let's numb it with alcohol. All

24:37

very well doesn't actually solve anything. You'll

24:39

wake up feeling both hungover or

24:42

nauseous and still in emotional pain the next day.

24:44

So it's not necessarily the most useful. What

24:46

would be useful is to count some of the impacts

24:49

by first of all, exhibiting self compassion.

24:52

You know, like we literally go and

24:54

find ways to beat ourselves up when

24:56

our self esteem is at its lowest point, and so

24:58

instead of reviving our self esteem and

25:00

our confidence, we're actually doing the opposite.

25:02

It's one of the most unfortunate tendencies we have post

25:05

rejection. So that's the first step of rejection.

25:07

First aid, stop me all those

25:09

rejection wounds. Worse, don't kick

25:11

yourself when you're already down with all that

25:13

negative self talk. But a second step

25:16

is to fight the urge to lick your wounds in solitude.

25:18

Healing from rejection requires a dose

25:21

of social connection with tribal animals,

25:23

and part of the rejection is about our

25:25

need to belong or need to feel affiliated

25:28

with certain groups. It can be a church

25:30

group, it can be amateurst softball

25:32

league, it can be a clique of friends, our college

25:34

roommates. But that group membership gives

25:36

us literally this layer of protection,

25:39

this shield. Because we

25:41

feel part of a group, we feel more protected

25:43

in the moment of rejection. You won't but then go

25:46

and reach out to your group and reconnect

25:48

and have a few chats with people in the group

25:50

to remind yourself of your fact

25:53

that you belong, that people appreciate you, and

25:55

it's an amazing tonic. But

25:58

what if you can't get that social support in person.

26:01

What if you're like Tim Colseri, stuck in a foreign

26:03

country away from your friends and family when you

26:05

get fired or jolted for situations

26:08

like these, guy recommends a practice he calls

26:10

social snacking. Just as we grab

26:12

a snack when we're hungry but can't eat a full meal,

26:15

so too, can we ease our social hunger with

26:17

small reminders that were connected to others. Studies

26:20

show that merely surrounding yourself with pictures

26:22

and mementos of people you love can

26:24

make the hurt of rejection subside of it. But

26:26

the most important rejection for staid treatment,

26:29

according to Guy, is a practice

26:31

that actively helps you remember your own value.

26:34

You need to recall that you're still a good person,

26:37

but not in the way that self help books suggest.

26:40

You don't need to launch into a bunch of cheesy positive

26:42

affirmations like I'm beautiful

26:45

and I'm going to find great love kind of things, and

26:47

they often don't work because in the moment of rejection

26:49

you actually don't feel beautiful or very optimistic

26:51

about finding great love. That will actually make you feel

26:53

worse. Guy's work has found that

26:56

a better value boosting technique is

26:58

to get really specific. Let's say

27:00

it's the romantic domain your head is going

27:02

to take you to. All your shortcomings and deficiencies.

27:04

What you need to do is balance then out. So make a

27:06

list of every quality that you know you

27:08

have. It's got to be stuff you know you have, not stuff

27:10

you would like to have, but things you know you have. It's got

27:12

to be real that make you a good dating

27:14

prospect, you're emotionally available, you're

27:17

good within ors, you make stupendous

27:19

muffins, you give a BackRub, whatever it is. Make

27:21

the list long and exhaustive and varied, and

27:24

then choose one of those things that's actually meaningful

27:26

and write a couple of paragraphs about why

27:28

that's a meaningful thing in relationships,

27:30

how you've exhibited it in the past, and how it's

27:32

been appreciated or how it might be appreciated

27:35

in the future. Do one of those a day

27:37

when you're feeling rejected romantically, if

27:39

it's about you got rejected from a job, do one about

27:41

what makes you a good employee. You're loyal,

27:44

you're reliable, you're responsible, you're timely, whatever

27:46

it is. But do the things you know. Write

27:48

out what you're bringing to the table, what makes

27:51

you valuable. To directly counter

27:53

that tendency to do the opposite in your

27:55

head. Guy

27:59

has found that leaving our emotional wounds untreated

28:01

without any rejection first aid, can

28:03

have long term negative impacts on our psychological

28:06

health. We do think differently.

28:08

We become very very risk averse. We

28:10

withdrawal instinct, isn't it Then go out

28:13

and reconnect with the people who we can reconnect

28:15

with. It's to withdrawal because we become risk of

28:17

us We just don't want to suffer any more rejections. Guy's

28:20

description of these long term wounds made

28:22

me think back to my conversation with actor

28:24

Tim Colseri. Tim's experience

28:26

of rejection cast a lifelong shadow over

28:29

what should have been a moment of triumph to savor

28:31

and enjoy, because in the end, Tim

28:33

did get to be in Kuprick's full metal jacket,

28:36

his Consolation Prize role as that violent

28:39

doorgunner get reinstated, and he

28:41

found out that it was a more prestigious part

28:43

than he initially realized. I

28:45

found out later that they were thinking about Bruce Willis

28:47

and Valt kilm Are also for the role. Shooting

28:49

the Doorgunner roll also meant spending an

28:51

entire day with the director who had hurt

28:54

him so badly. Well, I'm sitting back in

28:56

Danley's backyard of a helicopter right

28:58

behind him, sipping wine, and he looked

29:00

at me and went, Tim, you have more energy

29:02

than Kirk Douglas. Nobody will ever believe

29:05

this. Connecting

29:07

with Kouprick was Tim's first up to improving

29:09

his sense of belonging and self worth. But

29:12

Tim got an even bigger sense of his own value

29:14

when he attended the film's Gallo Movie

29:16

premiere. Keep people over his Clint

29:18

Eastwood and his wife, you know, at Cisco

29:20

and even Nicholas Cage. Everybody's

29:22

there, and I'm going on, this is weird. You know. When

29:26

the film began, Tim was still distracted

29:28

by his feelings of rejection. He watched

29:30

his replacement Lee Earmi's drill sergeant

29:32

scenes with a jealous eye.

29:35

I remember saying, Oh, I could have

29:37

done that line better. That's a new one.

29:40

Oh that's good. That's a good one. He

29:42

didn't give that enough to that, you know, I knew

29:44

I could do that a little better. Oh,

29:46

oh that's a good one too. And then when

29:48

I came on, which is an hour

29:50

into the movie, if I in the very middle of

29:52

the film, I come on, I

29:55

heard laughter throughout

29:57

the audience, chuckling kind of, and

30:00

I thought to myself, was

30:02

I good? I didn't know if I was good at bat really didn't

30:04

know was Tim good. I watched

30:07

the film again recently, and Tim's perform

30:09

moments is great. He's

30:15

only on screen for a minute or two, but his dark

30:17

and disturbing scene is one of the most memorable

30:19

of the film.

30:23

But as the years went by, the recognition

30:26

he received still wasn't enough to blot

30:28

out all the hurt he experienced. You

30:30

know what I said, for thirty five years, every

30:32

single person said you were in full metal jacket.

30:35

The very first thing I said

30:37

was yeah, I originally was the drill instructor

30:39

before that doorgunner. I always wanted

30:42

to tell them I had that role, which

30:44

is terrible. I should have been proud. Did you

30:46

say I was the Doorgunner and talk about that?

30:49

But I always wanted to refer back

30:52

to pour me getting

30:54

screwed by having the best role in the movie.

30:56

You know, I don't know why I was like that,

30:58

but it took me a long time to get over that. Only

31:02

now decades later has Tim finally

31:04

taken steps to treat his emotional pain. In

31:07

fact, he started to follow a lot of the vice

31:09

Guy described. Tim recently

31:11

developed an entire one man show about his life.

31:14

The show does address the Koprick debacle, but

31:16

it spends even more time on the other parts of Tim's

31:19

life, ones that he's proud of, like

31:21

his own time in boot camp, and funny stories

31:23

from his life as a flight attendant. We

31:26

had two doors each of the aircraft and window

31:28

excess over each wing, Jack a coke buddy

31:31

Mary. In the end, Tim

31:33

has successfully applied the first aid needed

31:35

to heal his feelings of hurt. He's

31:37

even been able to look back more philosophically

31:40

on his relationship with Stanley Kuprick. He

31:42

wanted me in his movie, you know,

31:45

and I appreciate that. I mean somehow

31:47

Stanley and me made it work,

31:50

and it really worked. It worked

31:53

more than probably Stanley ever thought. Army

31:55

people to this day still recite almost

31:57

all my dialogue just blows

31:59

me away. When

32:04

someone lets you know that they don't want you in their life,

32:06

in their workplace, in their school, for even

32:09

their Hollywood movie, it can be a crushing

32:11

flow. But in making

32:13

this episode, I've learned that we don't

32:15

need to suffer the pain of rejection. By

32:18

understanding how rejection works, we

32:20

can learn how to heal life's emotional wounds.

32:23

But the science shows that we do need to take

32:25

that pain seriously. We need to

32:27

react to life's rejections quickly, just

32:29

like we would a cut or a burn. When

32:32

we're in emotional pain. We need quick

32:34

emotional first aid. So

32:36

the next time you're rebuffed, don't just do what comes

32:39

naturally and turn to the ice cream and booze.

32:41

Ease your hurt by making sure you connect with

32:43

people who love and value you, and

32:45

be sure to prevent that long term emotional scarring

32:48

by reminding yourself of the many qualities

32:50

and blessings you still enjoy, ones

32:52

that losing a job or a romantic partner just

32:55

don't change. And of course it

32:57

never hurts to learn more about other strategies

32:59

you can use to feel happier even in tough times.

33:02

That's a dose of medicine you're sure to get in

33:04

the next episode of The Happiness Lab with

33:07

me Doctor Laurie Santos. The

33:16

Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan

33:19

Delly. Our original music was composed

33:21

by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring,

33:23

mixing and mastering by Evan Biola.

33:26

Joseph Friedman checked our facts. Sophie

33:28

Crane mckibbon edited our scripts. Marilyn

33:30

Rust offered additional production support. Special

33:33

thanks to Miela Belle, Carl mcgliori,

33:36

Heather Fame, Maggie Taylor, Daniella

33:39

Lucarne, Maya Kanig, Nicole

33:41

Morano, Eric Xandler, Royston

33:43

Reserve, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent,

33:45

Ben Davis. That Happiness Lab is brought

33:47

to you by Pushkin Industries and Me, Doctor

33:50

Laurie Santos