Rejection sucks any way you slice it, always right around the corner, yet it’s an inescapable, inevitable and indispensable part of life.
A very commonly seen way to deal with rejection is to internalize it and let it leave a dent in our self-esteem and self-worth, but it’s acutally indeed an act of narssism.
A better way is to normalize rejections as a statistical possibility, it can also happen to the best of us, regularly and repeatedly, so an average person like me for sure won’t get away with it. I also need to take people off the pedestal, we are all insecure deep down. Someone that supposedly loved me rejected me at one point while also whispering sweet nothings in my ears. The young guy who at first was really enthused about professing love to me but ended up tearing my heart into pieces. A brusied ego may be temporay but questioning self-worth and reevaluting my whole life is much suckier.