In the following passage some of the words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the correct answer for the given blank out of the four alternatives.

After a rejection, we tend to beat ourselves up over the things that might have (1) ______ us to be rejected - and might even end up dwelling on these negative (2) ______, a process called rumination. This habit, however, inevitably causes us to (3) ______ worse. “The first thing a lot of people do when they get rejected is to be unkind to (4) ______, and they start coming up with all kinds of ideas about what’s (5) ______ with them,” Gottlieb notes.