How Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria & ADHD can impact relationships
For me, the most debilitating thing about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is how it impacts my relationships.
RSD is the one emotional condition linked only with ADHD - when we experience intense mood swings lasting for a few hours due to real or perceived rejection that are so painful, we will do anything to avoid it.
I talk a lot about ADHD, RSD, and taking responsibility for the impacts it can have on your life. My way of dealing with these things is to turn my 'poison into medicine'. I coach people, write books, and create courses. I know how to turn these things into objective 'success'. Even so, creating golden statues to cover up the mess doesn't make it go away: it just buries it deeper.
Having been bullied throughout school, I find friendships super challenging. I grew up watching how other people connected with each other, studying the best ways of surviving, of not being called out for being weird. My survival mechanism was to find the other misfits and figure out ways to be useful. This has carried on into adulthood, where relationships with other humans still somehow feel like completing a complex jigsaw puzzle without the box.
Healthy relationships are not one-sided. They are not a formula to be solved. Before I was diagnosed with ADHD, I was surrounded by toxic people that I prioritised above those who were kind to me. If someone obviously used me, I felt like I was needed - like my side of the bargain was a clear process that I could at least follow. This meant I felt like I was constantly exploiting myself, turning the anger inwards, blaming myself for consciously choosing to enter these situations. Doing this allows us to feel a sense of control, even if it is literally self-defeating - at least we know what to expect.
Fortunately, as I learned about my own brain and took medication that helped me to stop feeling like a shot of tequila was a necessary introduction to any social engagement, I managed to stop entering these situations. I stopped going out clubbing, and started choosing healthier strategies, like going to yoga at 8am.
Even so, the RSD still hits.
It might be when you're sitting with friends who are just chatting about their life, and you're wondering why you can't feel that same joy and ease in conversation. It might be when you lose track of the invitations to hang out and triple-book yourself, attempting to show up everywhere and nowhere at the same time, as your brain is worrying about the next place you're already late to. It might be when your partner doesn't understand why you have been physically unable to clean up after yourself. It might be when your colleagues go out for drinks and you're trying to figure out what on earth to talk about that isn't work.
Maybe it's when you say something embarrassing in conversation, and spend the rest of the night overthinking it. Or when you interrupt someone, and beat yourself up, forgetting to listen to the rest of the conversation you've lost track of. Or when you see your friends tagging each other in posts online, jumping to conclusions about why you don't get comments like these.
When you feel hyper-sensitive and are on the lookout for signs people don't want you around, you imagine them to be everywhere. You gaslight yourself, feeling as though you are being irrational for overthinking that message in the group chat that was ignored. You ignore it, repressing it down, but then it hits you again like a tidal wave - and then you've left the group chat. Your friends don't understand what's happened, and you can't explain it. Re-entering the group feels way too embarrassing.
When you have a neurodevelopmental delay in executive functioning skills like self-awareness and emotional regulation, you can often find out what you're feeling at the same time as everybody around you. It makes it hard to trust yourself, and by extension, the people who genuinely care about you.
Asking for help seems impossible, because you can't consciously put into words how you're feeling or what you need. Maybe you can see the 'real problems' that other people experience, and by comparison, yours might feel pathetic. When you are unaware that you even need help, it feels like intense shame to admit that you don't have everything figured out. Even more so when you don't know what you'd ask for, even if you could.
Maybe it comes from a lifetime of being given advice that you can't follow, regardless of how many times people tell you to 'just concentrate' or 'just use a to do list'. Being given help feels like your brain immediately flips to high alert, unable to concentrate on anything being said to you because you're trying to think about whether your face looks the right mix of grateful and interested whilst your brain is firing off a narrative of how lovely it would be to be able to follow this advice - and then you realise they're waiting for you to answer a question. 'Yes, that's so helpful. Thanks!'
Your brain starts ruminating on how ridiculous you're being, and convinces you that you should stop trying - that you should stop being a burden and blend into the background. You stop accepting invitations to hang out and don't reply to messages, stop turning up to social gatherings and instead watch them play out on social media, without you.
Feeling your brain shut down as you enter into some form of dissociative, hyper-focused distraction, is like relief from the immense pain of feeling like you don't fit into the world and can't function like other people. You end up incredibly stressed out and burned out, needing support more than ever, but still unable to receive it.
You work harder and harder at those 'objective' measures of success, convincing yourself that when you reach it, then you'll be ready to go to a party and tell people about what you've been up to lately. After you've figured out your problem, you can tell people about how you solved it. Not before. The risk involved with the vulnerability of having actually trusted someone with your feelings and having them not follow up on that help simply doesn't feel worth it.
When the people who care about you become worried and check in on you, you might be overly sensitive. You might push them away, assuming the worst. Your brain makes up stories: that you're a burden, that you're annoying, that they pity you. That they're only getting in touch because they want something. That they are unfairly annoyed because you didn't reply to them as quickly as you usually do. You might even feel angry at them for imagining that you're struggling when you aren't even conscious of this yourself.
Your subconscious has entered them into a game that is impossible to win: they're set up to be the ones making the effort, and then you can say it's not enough.
You might gaslight yourself, questioning what is 'normal', what is a 'healthy' amount of contact, overthinking all of the ways you have reached this point where it feels like you are stuck in an invisible prison cell that nobody else can see.
Then you might explode. Maybe it's unleashing every single tiny irrational grievance against them, all of the moments that you've ignored for months for being 'stupid', all hurtling out of your brain without warning.
The shame that arrives afterwards might feel unbearable. Maybe the people in your life are shocked and hurt. This self-sabotage at least gives you the sense of satisfaction and proof that you were right: they don't really like you. The guilt sticks around like an annoying cold you can't shake off - the questioning of whether you overreacted, the ruminating on the messages, the research to gather evidence that you were just 'sticking up for yourself'.
You end up lashing out at everyone, watching your social life crumble around you with the delayed self-awareness that maybe you are the common denominator in all of the drama that has suddenly erupted like a volcano you didn't even know was there in the first place. Sending around a group newsletter email to let them know that it was because of your 'Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria' seems like the worst excuse in the world. You don't want to remind them of how needy you are, so it might feel easier to simply cut them off.
And then you do it all over again, with a new set of triggers embedded into your subconscious belief that you are simply not made for 'normal' relationships. That there's something deeply 'wrong' with you.
A few months ago, I had a bad break up. Fortunately, it destroyed my belief that romantic relationships were the answer to this - with clearly set out roles, and one person to study and be able to successfully anticipate all of their needs. It made me realise that no matter how hard I try to solve people's problems and 'do' things for them, and no matter how much they proclaim to love you, they can still destroy you. Or probably more accurately, you can still destroy yourself.
Meeting the needs of other people in place of your own isn't the answer. Attempting to control the opinions of others by working as hard as you possibly can to make them like you isn't the solution. Intellectualising these topics to the point where you're presenting on them to the World Health Organisation doesn't save you from feeling them. There's just the gentle kindness to yourself, the reminder that you're doing the best you can, with the tools you have available - along with everybody else.
There's the reminder that you are not alone in experiencing this. That the entire world has just gone through collective trauma that's relegated our relationships to zoom calls and voice notes. That social media has replaced friends with followers, and exposed us all to more social commitments than we can even begin to comprehend. The hundreds of messages, emails, calls, and 'engagements' are enough to exhaust anybody. The constant barrage of comparisons, of metrics blasted in our faces, of being able to see the projected highlights of people in our life, whilst our own feels like a continuous series of lowlights, is not something you are going through alone. We are all in it together.
I don't know if this is Autism or ADHD or Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria or trauma or simply being human. Whatever it is, it's exhausting.
If you're reading this, I encourage you to give your friends a call. Be honest when you are having a bad time. Don't box yourself off. Tell them that irrational fear that's popping up in your mind when it pops up. Make the effort to make the effort and meet up in real life. Travel to see them. Consciously decide to believe that you are worthy of being liked regardless of how 'well' you're doing. Try your best to challenge the RSD radio blaring in your head. Consciously respond to people when they ask how you are. Put pictures of the good times up on your walls, and force yourself to go to that meet up even when you really, really do not want to.
Remember that rejection is very rarely as personal as it feels. That the people in your life do genuinely care about you, and you are not superhuman. That it is a gift to allow someone in to help you, who gets to feel the same endorphin high of helping people that we may be so addicted to. That real connections are the key to happiness, and you deserve to be loved. That we're all going through tough times, even if we don't see it on social media. And no matter the trail of destruction left in your path, you are still worthy of love. You are loved, and you are capable of healthy relationships. Think of yourself like a baby: it doesn't have to 'do' anything to be loved - it simply exists.
If you have ADHD, try to remember that, and surround yourself with people who understand. It's something I am ironically terribly guilty of ignoring, until it whacks me around the face with the reminder that I do need to give myself a break. I do have executive functioning challenges that aren't going to disappear, regardless of how much coaching or therapy or strategies I do. They are simply a part of me, along with all of the best bits. The infectious compassion, kindness, enthusiasm, and ability to put these experiences into words to hopefully help other people going through the same things.
Some advice I picked up from this podcast is:
Remember that we overestimate how much people know about our mental states, and how much we know about theirs.
Figure out what it is you need help with right now.
Tell someone about it - preferably on the phone or in person, which is apparently 34 times more effective than email or text.
Be specific: say what you are struggling with and how this will help you. This doesn’t have to look like a ready made list of adjustments, but more direct than ‘shall we grab a coffee one day?’
Don’t offer something in exchange. This makes people actually less likely to help you, because it removes the endorphins of simply being able to do something nice for someone else.
Remember that your most ‘successful’ or ‘popular’ friends are more likely to be struggling. Apparently, there are more accidents in pools with more parents watching kids, because of the illusion that everything is fine.
'Self-sufficiency is a blocker to connection'.
If you want to join the Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria course starting on October 1st, head here.
If you want to sign up to the ADHD Works at Work course in November, head here.