My Journey with RSD

Overcoming the pain and isolation of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD)

Photo by Mike L on Unsplash

Hello fellow cultivator,

I missed my medicine yesterday - both morning and afternoon. I thought yesterday would be challenging, but I feel the effects today. Everything that is not exciting to me or provides zero dopamine do not get me going. Things still need to get done, though, especially at work. But trying to work on this document (for work) is like trying to breathe while I climb up a steep hill at the end of a two-hour hike. It’s like I’m walking with a tired dog that weighs 60 pounds who refuses to move. It’s like I’m being smothered with a pillow while I’m gasping for air. It is not happening. 

I am usually out of bed before my partner, an hour or two before he leaves for work. Today, he checked in with me as he was getting ready to leave the house because I just didn’t want to get out of bed. 

There was no chance of staying in bed once he left because of the dogs. One is wild in the morning, and the other is dramatic about my partner leaving for work. It is ridiculous. 

This playlist on Spotify called Dopamine helped a little. It gave me enough of a dopamine hit to prepare breakfast for myself and the puppies, and then I was able to get started with my workday. 

Later in the afternoon, it took me an hour to leave my desk to exercise. An hour! The workout routine for today was barely 30 minutes, meaning I could have done it twice in the time I spent stalling. 

So you get the idea. It has been a day. A year or even six months ago, I would have chastised myself for not “pulling myself up by my bootstraps” and being productive. Today, I think I know what is going on. Let me provide context here.

I have been implementing this project at work for the past month. The day before yesterday, I was asked to pause it to get other details sorted because it was affecting the project. The lack of documentation had turned my project into a wild goose chase, and my team lead was not a fan. Unfortunately, my brain does not process this as a pause. To this neurospicy brain, being asked to pause on the original project somehow translates to “I am a complete failure”. 

If you are like, what the hell? How does pausing a project lead to ALL THAT?? Let me introduce you to my archnemesis - RSD, aka Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. 

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What is RSD?

According to ADDMagazine, RSD is an extreme emotional sensitivity and pain triggered by the perception that a person has been rejected or criticized by important people in their life. It may also be triggered by a sense of falling short—failing to meet their high standards or others’ expectations.

Yep. The article also says that almost 100% of people with ADHD experience it. Let me tell you what that pain or emotional sensitivity feels like. It feels like getting punched in the stomach. I have been walking around all day, feeling like I am being pulled to the ground.  Earth’s gravity seems stronger for some reason, and moving against it by leaving the couch feels like a stupid idea.

Despite this, I am proud of myself for two things. 

1. I reached out to my partner in the afternoon, asking him to come home early. It would be nice to talk through it or go for a walk with the dogs and not talk about it at all.

2. I have been kind to myself. Okay, okay, kind-ish. I recognize what is happening in my body, acknowledging my feelings and moving accordingly. I am not holding this against myself and am practicing self-compassion.

As someone with ADHD, this is not my first foray into the world of RSD. Due to emotional dysregulation, the feelings caused by rejection are INTENSE. While I can extend compassion to myself in this moment today, it has not always come easily to me. I think self-loathing is where I am the most comfortable - just shaking my head as I write this. Today, I can look back at various instances where I felt those intense emotions take over my body and take away any sense of reason.

My first memory of an RSD-activated reaction would be the time I got very, very upset with my family, mostly my mom, over brand new cushions for the living room. Visiting them for the first time after I moved out at 16 and seeing those new cushions made me feel excluded from these experiences we were all previously sharing. Feelings of abandonment and rejection all mixed for perfect emotional havoc. Think of it as FOMO++ (a little joke for my fellow nerds). Between the ages of 16-18, the time I was away from my family for the very first time was challenging and full of extremely intense emotions. 

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RSD vs. Rejection Sensitivity

While I am uncomfortable going into what “upset” entailed, I want to emphasize that I understand the difference between rejection sensitivity and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria because most of us are sensitive to rejection. If you are wondering how the two differ or what emotional dysregulation means, here’s a snippet from an article by the Cleveland Clinic that I found helpful: 

Emotional dysregulation happens when your brain can’t properly regulate the signals related to your emotions. Without that ability to manage them, it’s as if the TV volume control is stuck at a disruptively or painfully high level. In effect, emotional dysregulation is when your emotions are too loud for you to manage, causing feelings of being overwhelmed, uncomfortable or even in pain.

Emotional dysregulation happens with both rejection sensitivity and RSD. Dysphoria doesn’t. People with rejection sensitivity can do one or more of the following:

• Feel severe anxiety or other negative emotions before an anticipated rejection.

• Have trouble seeing nonpositive interactions (such as neutral or vague reactions) as anything but rejection and react accordingly.

• Overreact to feelings of rejection, leading to behavior that reflects negative emotions like anger, rage, extreme sadness, severe anxiety, etc.

While all of those are also possible with RSD, there’s one more component: People with RSD describe feeling an intense — if not overwhelming — level of emotional pain.

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Managing My RSD

When I think about what is different now in my life, the following management strategies/changes come up:

• Therapy.

  I have mentioned therapy in this space before, so you are aware of my love obsession with therapy. I have been working with my therapist for almost three years now. My biggest lesson has been in feeling my emotions, not just acknowledging or intellectualizing them, but truly feeling them.

• ADHD Diagnosis and everything that comes with it.

  While I would like to get to a point where I don’t need to justify my emotions, I am not there yet. In the meantime, giving those intense emotions a name and finding and understanding why my brain does what it does has been very helpful.

• ADHD medication, which relates to a diagnosis.

  This is not a one-size-fits-all answer to RSD or ADHD. I am still figuring it out for myself, but I know that ADHD medication is definitely helping me in general. (I am happy to talk more about it if anyone is curious.)

• Self-compassion.

  I wrote about self-compassion during Women’s History Month. As I mentioned earlier, this skill is still new to me. I am actively going against my existing brain wiring to learn this completely different way of responding to my shortcomings and, in the process, hopefully, build some different neural pathways!

I am curious to learn about your experience with feelings of rejection. Do you feel anxious or nervous thinking about it? What does your experience with rejection bring up for you?