Play the numbers to blunt rejection
Over-focusing on one thing you might be rejected for amplifies RSD. Spread the risk instead: apply broadly, expect roughly a one-in-ten hit rate, and plan for rejection as the default. When any single 'no' is expected statistical noise rather than a personal verdict, it stops mattering so much.
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Rejection sensitivity feeds on concentration: pin your hopes on one application, one ask, one outcome, and every possible ‘no’ becomes a referendum on you. Playing the numbers dilutes that. Apply to many things at once and go in expecting only a fraction to land — a rough one-in-ten rule, where ten attempts buy roughly one yes — so that no single result carries the whole weight. The key is to pre-plan for rejection as the baseline rather than hope to avoid it: if a no is what you expected, it reads as ordinary statistical noise instead of a personal indictment, and a yes becomes a pleasant surprise on top. This reframes the whole activity from ‘will I be rejected’ (a question RSD answers catastrophically) to ‘how many attempts am I running’ (a question about volume, not worth). Spreading risk across many low-stakes tries, and planning for most of them to fail, keeps any one refusal from becoming the thing that ruins the day.
