The Rejections Don’t Invalidate the Acceptance
On combatting negative bias in my author career (and life)
The rejections don’t invalidate the acceptance.
Like many people, I struggle with negative bias—that is, a cognitive distortion that is a tendency to pay more attention to and give more weight to negative information over positive information. Human brains love patterns, and negative bias loves the pattern of negativity. Negative bias lies in wait for more negative data to add to the pile to prove its hypothesis that everything is awful, and like all biases, it’s not a good scientist. It will toss out or minimize all data that doesn’t fit the “everything is awful” hypothesis, rather than changing the hypothesis.
I’m trying to work on catching and challenging this distorted thought pattern, and that involves a few steps.
1) Acknowledging where it might have come from and what it’s trying to do. For me, negative bias, especially related to my author career, is tied to feelings of imposter syndrome and fear of failure/perfectionism. It’s a cognitive distortion that is basically a broken self-defense mechanism. My brain thinks it’s Jason Bourne identifying threats in order to be prepared, but what it’s actually doing is making shadows into monsters. My brain also decided at some point that success=only positives, and if there are negatives, that means I have failed, ergo, I am a failure AND a fraud. So, my brilliant brain thought it would be on the lookout for those negatives to make sure they never crop up. When they inevitably do, I’ve accidentally trained myself to spot them, like a game of Slug Bug where instead of VMW Beetles, I’m looking for negative data, and instead of gently punching a friend, I start mentally beating myself to a pulp. (There are now several confused people. Just…go Google slug bug game, and no, I don’t get why, either 😆😅) Acknowledging where this bias developed—basically a misguided, broken, subconscious coping mechanism—helps me see that it truly is broken. It’s not helpful. It’s not making me successful, not making me perfect, not protecting me from failure, and in fact is making me feel worse.
2) Acknowledging how negative bias makes me feel and what my thought process is, bringing it from a subconscious level to a conscious level so I can address it. Or really, more working backwards from what I’m already feeling. “I feel like shit and am thinking about quitting writing, or deleting all of my social media, or moving to a cabin in the woods with no wi-fi and never speaking to a human again, or perhaps all of the above, perhaps with some darker thoughts as a chaser. What started this? Ah. Something that felt like rejection, and my negative bias decided to put that rejection and every other one I’ve ever received on a pedestal under a spotlight in the middle of a stadium and declare it the most important evidence about me and my life.”
3) Challenging and/or reframing that thought. Some suggestions from my therapist, tweaked a little into my own words:
-I don’t need to dwell on a single negative. This negative does not define me or my work.
-I am allowed to value positives just as much as if not more than negatives.
-I am allowed to take pride in my accomplishments. I am allowed to embrace positive reactions. In fact, I should. It’s healthy to celebrate wins.
-Is this negative really the ONLY point of data? Is it actually a more weighty piece of evidence? Says who?
-A negative data point is not more “real” or “accurate” or “true” than a positive data point.
-What is the bigger picture here?
-I can be grateful for the good things (and even for the negatives—example, someone unsubscribing from my email list means they probably weren’t a good fit for it, anyway. I want people to get my emails who will want to open them, so I can be grateful that person self-filtered themselves out, rather than me sending unopened emails to them for months or years). It’s healthy to be grateful for positives. It’s healthy to accept compliments.
And thus: The rejections don’t invalidate the acceptance.
Examples:
Fact: There were people who saw my post and did not “like” it.
Negative bias: All I see is that not everyone liked it.
Feeling: No one likes what I do. No one likes me.
Acknowledgement: This is me focusing on the negative out of a misguided attempt to prove my worth based on being liked. It’s not helpful and it’s not even accurate if we allow more facts.
Also fact: There were people who saw my post and DID “like” it. Maybe there were even people who commented because they liked it so much.
Reframed thought: The post wasn’t for everyone, and some people not liking it doesn’t invalidate the people who did. It certainly doesn’t invalidate me for posting it. My post didn’t resonate with those people. But it did with these, and that matters, too. Plus, the reaction to one post isn’t proof of my value as a person or whether or not I should be posting, etc.
Fact: This friend didn’t read about my book yet, and I know they have it. Or this person gave it a bad review.
Negative bias: This is another sign that the book is bad, and I’m a bad writer. Remember that bad review? And that one? And that other author friend still hasn’t read it. And that other friend read it and never said a word about it, because they probably hated it. They thought it was lame and you’re stupid for writing it. All of this points to one truth: You suck and you should stop.
Feeling: *dark mental and emotional spirals*
Acknowledgement: This is my negative bias trying to weigh my worth based on reception, but it’s ignoring large amounts of data. It’s not helpful and is in fact harming me.
Further facts: No book is universally loved. No book is for everyone. There can be many reasons someone didn’t click with a book. The book may have had weakness—in fact, of course it does, because also no book is perfect and without flaws.
There are other people who did enjoy it. There are people who loved it.
Reframed thought: All of the people who did like it matter, too. Why would I decide that one person’s opinion matters more? Or even why should I decide that 3% of people’s strong negative reaction is a “more accurate” representation of my work than the 49% of people who had a really strong positive reaction and the 31% who had a positive reaction? Is there a good reason for me to dismiss the evidence that runs counter to the hypothesis that “my writing sucks”? No. Is there a good reason for me to take this one data point and make it the focus of my attention and assess my entire writing ability and career on this one person’s opinion? No.
I am going to be grateful that my book has found people that resonated with it, that loved it, and choose to accept that some people will reject it, and that doesn’t invalidate the positive responses.
Do I have this perfectly figured out? No.
Is it a constant, recurring battle? Yes.
Is it much harder some days? Yes. (For example, when a few rejections arrive closer together, or when my hormones are negatively affecting my brain chemistry, or when I’m struggling through an edit, or when in some unfortunate turn of events a few of those coincide? Yes.)
(Also, I want to be really clear—the problem is my cognitive distortions, including but not limited to negative bias. Not the person(s) who didn’t like my post or praise my book or posted the one-star review or whatever.)
But is working to address negative bias worth it? I think so.
Which was the point of this post: A reminder for anyone else that the negative doesn’t invalidate the positive; the rejection doesn’t automatically carry more weight than the approval. An encouragement that you can combat those distorted thought patterns. And a gentle coaxing to remind you to try, to not give up on the hard and often exhausting, non-linear, recurring work of retraining your brain.
You deserve better than to believe that a few negative data points are the most significant evidence about your worth or the value of your work. 💜
Oof. Needing this this week. Thank you so so much for sharing this post.
Additional reframing idea for the post-like thought: Not everyone who sees and likes a post on social media takes the time to "like" it. Maybe they forgot or were in a hurry. Maybe they got interrupted and their phone refreshed their feed (LOOKING AT YOU, PHONE). Maybe they aren't in the habit of liking everything because they feel that likes have become almost meaningless in many contexts.
(Offering this in part because all these and more have happened to me, and I'd hate for you or anyone else to think I didn't like your post specifically because it didn't resonate with me. I see lots of things on social media that I like but don't "like." Maybe I'm weird. XD)