Rejection Letter

The day before yesterday, I got a rejection letter for a job I applied for a few weeks ago.

Since then, I have had an increasing number of negative thoughts and a vague sense of anxiety, a feeling that something bad is going to happen to me. I try to counteract these thoughts, which reduces the tension to a lower level, but it doesn't fully go away.

I know that a big part of the problem was that I really wanted this particular job. Once a therapist suggested applying to jobs that I didn't really care if I got or not, for practice. Maybe I should try that again.

Over the past few years, whenever I would apply for jobs, I would have all sorts of bad feelings that manifest on a physical level: heartburn, dizziness, feeling like my breath is stuck and I can't catch my breath, feeling of unreality, etc. Even when I tried making phone calls to temp agencies in my therapist's office, I had to keep running to the bathroom, and had to drink a lot of water because my mouth kept going dry.