Again, there are different things going on with people. Working on one does not discount the other, nor does it deny the other things exist.
A triggered response to something is not a story. There is emotional content there, and a story is created to try to explain it. This has nothing to do with walking around telling yourself a story that 'this girl rejected me and it sucks, girls don't like me.' If someone was attacked by a dog and has a fear of them they aren't 'telling themselves a story' about dogs which is the cause. They actually will be telling themselves all kinds of stories, but those are not the source, they are trying to wrap a context around the feeling. Telling themselves all day 'dogs are awesome!' will not do very much to the ingrained response in the nervous system, which is the same mechanism that rides a bike. It's not a belief about dogs or girls. That doesn't mean those things can't exist.
That's one type of work.
Most of us also have plenty of non-useful stories and ideas about things we repeat to ourselves all day, that don't have such a specific basis (they actually do but that's another story). Observing them and focusing on other things, reframing, they can serve a function there. They don't heal traumas, but it can have a lot of positive benefits for guys.
I don't use that term but if I did, a Band-Aid is not some useless piece of shit, it's a tool that helps healing it is just not always the right tool for the job. Nor is diving into emotions.
The bottom line though is that If you don't have unprocessed shit around something, and you are able to see something directly for what it is, you don't have ANY story about it. Do you get upset if the clouds move a certain way? No, because you have not made any associations with them and yourself, you don't take it personally.
Walking around with the thought 'all girls dig me!' is going to be more positive and probably yield better results than "all girls hate me!" of course. I'm not going to say all work like that is pointless.
Or you can break these associations so you don't need to have a story one way or the other - there's no trigger around a girl rejecting you meaning anything about you, and you don't need to tell yourself it's because you are just so sexy she couldn't handle it. That's fine as a tool if it helps you. If the end goal is to be a self-actualized adult male and live in the real world where each moment is unique and each girl is and each situation is what it is, and you can be fine with it and treat it accordingly, that's a particular animal.
You will be creative because you have no choice, it's human nature. Visualizing and all of that stuff is great. It can be fun and effective and even a useful tool as part of healing. My experience is it is much more effective when you are clear on something than when it is coming from a place of trying to compensate.
Maybe I can pretend like it never happened. But no, I can't because it did happen and it really hurt me. Maybe there's the possibility that I’m really overreacting to this and it's not a big deal at all. No that's not right because this really did happen and it really did hurt so I have to believe in this story and keep my emotions attached to that outcome. Maybe I can pretend like the girl wanted me so bad that she just couldn't handle it and she felt really embarrassed because she was only 12-13 years old and had no experience with boys so she had to reject me because she didn't know what else to do so she acted like she didn't like me so her friends would laugh. No I can't do that because that's just a band aid and it happened this way and I would be lying to myself about what my life is like because the truth is I put a lot of time and built up a lot of evidence to support that this is what my life is like and anything that goes against it is false. And I would be fabricating the frame of it and the truth is that I’m not successful and girls aren't attracted to me. So this is my story and it's true and I’m sticking with it. So what I'm going to do is dive into this emotion and be with it because that's all I can do. I can't try to look at it any other way, I can't try to spin it into something positive or visualize anything else because that wouldn't be healthy. Maybe if I sit with this emotion long enough I'll stop believing that it's real and it will disappear on its own. Does that sound right?
None of that mental gymnastics sounds right to me.
You're arguing all sorts of points no one actually said. Who said you can't visualize alternatives? "Sit with this emotion long enough until you stop believing it's real" is literally the opposite of what was suggested. It almost sounds like you are arguing in some two-sided debate where you need to discredit an opponent, but there isn't one here.
The girl responded the way she did. It hurt.
Period. That's what is dealt with.