BONUS: Dr Guy Winch on rejection, heartbreak and healing
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Why does modern dating feel like a constant stream of tiny rejections?
This is an ABC podcast. Ever been keen on someone, sent them a message and then they've just not replied? It's a pretty shitty feeling, right? Rejection hurts and it sucks. Even being rejected by someone you didn't even like that much, it still stings. And when we're putting ourselves out there and dating, we're getting rejected all the time. Not just people turning us down for second dates or sex, but every time we swipe and don't get a match, every time someone ghosts us, every time we check our phones and someone hasn't responded or reacted, all of those experiences are tiny rejections. And it builds up. D here, your hookup producer, NatsofS6. So I'm stepping in to bring you a convo we recorded earlier about how to deal with hurt rejection and heartbreak.
It's with world-renowned psychologist Dr. Guy Winch. And not only is Guy a psychologist, he's also the advice columnist for TED Ideas and the author of Emotional First Aid. It's basically a book with practical strategies for treating failure, rejection, guilt, and other everyday psychological injuries. Guy reckons young people are the most rejected generation in our history and it's really messing with our mental health. So to help cope, we need to start treating emotional pain like physical pain. Honestly, he's got such a brain and there's so much to learn from this chat, not only just about micro-rejections and dating, but also how to heal from a big heartbreak. So I hope you love it. Here's Nat.
Enjoy. Thank you so much for taking the time out to be with us all the way from New York.
It's my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
You are an expert in realms of emotional pain and heartbreak and helping people heal from that. Um, you've established the idea of emotional first aid. Um, I think before we get into the pain around relationships, just talk to me about the this concept and why it's important to look after our emotional selves as much as our Our physical selves.
Well, we get injured emotionally as adults or, you know, young adults even more than we do physical injuries. We experience rejections daily. We experience failures. We experience loneliness. We experience all these emotional wounds. That we should actually do something About and yet our sophistication when it comes to what to do. is very lagging behind where we are, you know, when it comes to the physical domain. If I get a cut, I kind of know and most people do, do I need a stitched dirt, maybe a bandage, or do I hail a cap quick to the ER because I'm gushing. But we don't even know what an emotional wound is. And there are all these science based techniques we could use to soothe and heal emotional wounds.
So we heal more fully and more quickly. But we don't think to do it and we don't know enough about it. So that's what I'm trying to spread the word about that we pay attention to emotional pain because it's a sign of an emotional.
And what can happen if emotional wounds are left untended? You know, we know that if we don't go to the hospital and get our legs sorted out, we could lose it potentially. So what long term impacts can ignoring emotional um trauma do to us?
Well, just l let's look at a very simple example. You get you're on a dating app, you get rejected and it's really painful and you're not soothing that pain. You're not addressing it. Your instinct is likely to be and I hear this all the time, Well, I'll just gonna I'm just not gonna be on the app for a while. I'm just gonna sit it out. And what that does, it then makes it more scary to get back on the app. It makes you more anxious. It makes you less confident because you're not dealing, you're avoiding. And then you're feeling more lonely. So then suddenly you're feeling lonely and you're feeling disconnected. And that's putting you in a bad mood. So when there is an opportunity to meet someone, you're not bringing your best self and you can see a cascade.
happening because that initial wound wasn't taken care of and we leave it to our autopilot and our autopilot doesn't steer us well when we're in emotional distress most of the time.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Why does modern dating feel like a constant stream of tiny rejections?
0:02–7:21
2
What is emotional first‑aid and why should we treat emotional pain like physical pain?
7:21–18:06
3
How do brain‑imaging studies show that social rejection hurts as much as physical injury?
18:06–23:15
4
Why do dating‑app swipes and ghosting create a ‘rejection machine’ for young people?
23:15–28:57
5
What practical steps can we take to stop the autopilot of avoidance and manage social‑media use?
28:57–32:00