Q. How does rejection affect the brain? How can you overcome and process the feelings of being rejected?

A. Rejection is a type of social-emotional hurt—a loss of something you wanted or thought you wanted. Sadness is the emotion that helps you recover from a loss. To change the way you feel, you must change the way you think, because feelings always follow thoughts. According to research from Case Western Reserve University, exposure to rejection led participants to have an immediate drop of 30 percent in cognition or mental reasoning and a 25 percent drop in IQ—which can make it difficult to process the experience in a rational and timely manner. Fortunately, as you recover from the hurt, the drop in cognition and IQ can reverse. A few sessions with a good counselor often can assist with recovery from rejection. I think of it like this: some people will always reject you; some will accept you some of the time, but all will never accept you all the time—and really, you don’t accept all people all the time. Here is my brain’s opinion: it is most important to first accept yourself. Think of anything beyond that as a bonus.