What a pain … Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria is! 

It can silently reek havoc in a relationship. With neither party really understanding what is happening, but both feeling misunderstood.

So what exactly is Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD)?

Let’s start with how it feels to the person that has RSD …

RSD is a little like stubbing your toe … albeit, stubbing it REALLY HARD! 

It’s just a little toe, and a little injury, in the full spectrum of human injuries, but my goodness, doesn’t it hurt! Doesn’t it stop you in your tracks!

To be fair, sometimes RSD feels more like a total gut punch! A winding that leaves you unable to breathe, let alone talk, or reason, or explain. You’re left just gasping for air to survive.

Well that is what RSD can feel like – a dirty great big ‘stubbing’ or ‘gut punch’ to a person’s ‘sense of self’. A small thing, sometimes inconsequentially said, can create a literal world of pain for the person with RSD.

OK, so RSD is like a really sharp painful feeling for the person. But why does it hijack the relationship so badly?

So what do you do when you stub your toe? 

Swear? Jump around making a lot of noise? Blame somebody or something?

I bet you temporarily lose the ability to continue the conversation you may have been in?

I bet you temporarily lose sight of your partner and their needs in that moment?

Or do you go quiet, just consumed by the pain in your toe? 

But still losing the ability to pay attention to that conversation you were having, or that person you were with?

Similarly, because RSD feels like a physical pain, it hijacks the person’s ability to stay calmly present in what they were just doing – having a conversation, enjoying some time with the family, finishing that thing they promised to do. They are likely to go into fight or flight. Perhaps an angry outburst of blame, or a slamming of the door or phone, as they abruptly end the conversation. Or maybe they stay physically present but mentally hijacked, with their partner none the wiser that they are no longer in the same conversation. RSD has literally ‘stopped them in their tracks’ possibly ruminating on all sorts of catastrophising and limiting beliefs.

 

 

If it is a really bad ‘stubbing’, they may lose their ability to be present for any conversations for several hours … even days. Leaving their loved ones floundering to understand. What just happened? What triggered their partner so badly? The partner too can then retreat to an internal dialogue, wrestling with their reality. It can all look and feel totally unreasonable to the partner, as if they are being stonewalled for something they didn’t mean, or even sometimes, something they didn’t say!

Yes, horrifyingly, RSD can even make up it’s own ‘stubbing’ or ‘gut punch’ from its ‘internal critic’ repertoire, imagining a slight where others hear, and genuinely mean, none. 

(Please note: I’m not referring to true gaslighting that can go on in toxic relationships here!)

It’s the rapidity and hiddenness of RSD that makes it so problematic in relationships.

A major difference between stubbing your toe and having a bout of RSD, is that other people can see when you have stubbed your toe and they know how that hurts. They care for you.

They give you a moment to collect yourself.

But RSD is silent, no one sees the ‘stubbing’ or ‘gut punch’ to the ‘sense of self’. It literally happens in a thousandth of a second. It all happens internally and therefore doesn’t get the understanding or care from others that would help so much in that moment.

Whilst no one sees the pain, they do experience the reaction to the pain – the outraged attack that seems to come from nowhere over ‘nothing’. Or the person simply going off line, totally shutting down, going into what we now know to be the dorsal vagal nervous system (Stephen Porges, 2014).

Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) truly is a pain – it is felt like a physical pain for the person suffering it … and it is also a pain to the people trying to love them.

So, RSD is just relevant to neurodiversity? 

No, RSD can spread its wings and infect others! You can suffer RSD if you had highly critical parents, or if getting things wrong, or being wrong just wasn’t safe in relationships that you have previously experienced or maybe, it’s just in the present relationship that you feel so judged, blamed and shamed? You can become overly sensitised, and sensitive, to how others may think of you, or may continually judge or blame you. 

I can sometimes find that both clients in a ‘relationship lock down’, each have a big dose of RSD, but maybe from differing origins. One has the racing assumptive making thoughts of ADHD. The other has a trauma history of trying to please their parents from childhood and sadly, too often the ADHD person has the double whammy of both origins! 

But isn’t RSD just another excuse so that it’s all about them and they get to control the relationship? 

It sure can feel like that when your partner blows up mid conversation or simply shuts down, appearing to stone wall you for days. Maybe for something you didn’t even say! It is really confusing and this is where a good therapist can help untangle the dynamics of the relationship. A well qualified counsellor can help you see, is this RSD or is this straight up abuse where a strategy is being used to control the conversation, and probably you too at the same time. Let’s face the harsh reality, that RSD can have the partner walking on eggshells scared that they might trigger another RSD incident. That can look a lot like a person who is being narcissistically abused, but that isn’t the true intention of the ADHDer with RSD. 

 

So … what can be done to reduce the impact of RSD? 

Luckily there are solutions – and you will probably need a combination of these – along with some loving kindness and patience towards yourselves, and each other, in the early days of changing the relational dynamic. 

 

# S_L_O_W_I_N_G it all down is the most helpful strategy (and the most difficult thing for an ADHD person to do!) 

 

# Medication can be such a helpful strategy here – it provides an 8 second breather between receiving, and reacting to, something the person believes they heard and understood. Medication allows a more considered response. In that 8 seconds, those with RSD can challenge the feeling and automated limiting belief that accompanies it. Asking themselves, “Even though this feeling is so strong, so present, is it really meaning this? Or could it be something else I hadn’t initially thought of?”

 

# Deep Breathing and Tapping (EFT) or Havening can all help to regulate the nervous system to bring rational thinking back on line. At the beginning, the RSD affected person may need support to action one, or a combination of these strategies. However, how this is suggested is critical to success and not another layer of RSD exploding! First, in a calm space agree upon what might feel a safe a nurturing way for the RSD sufferer to be supported in using one of the calming techniques. Write these down so there is a clear understanding of what you have both agreed to try (don’t skip this bit – a visual cue for ADHD working memory is gold). Then it’s trial and tweaking to find what best suits both of you.

 

#  Tapping together is a brilliant technique to calm both of your nervous systems and get you both back on the same page – perhaps try the video below?

 

# Journalling or writing down all that you are feeling and believing in that moment can be useful not just to get it all out of your head and in black and white, but to come back to at a later time for you to reflect on and unpack it all. Sharing your journaling in therapy or with your partner, if or when they feel regulated (again this is key!), will also help to get you on the same page. (Of course I am going to suggest Tapping as you do this … because hearing such an opposing reality or belief system to yours, can be really challenging for all of us.)

 

# Sharing your experiences in a group of people who suffer RSD can begin to normalise what feels ‘crazy making’ when it is just stuck in your head. 

 

# Most importantly, self compassion for the feelings you are experiencing, allows you to more easily have compassion for others, and what they think and feel – this is key to calming RSD.

Finally, reminding yourself that what we think, does not make it true! What we feel, does not make it true. Feelings and thoughts can be so situational and not the full picture. Slow it down, by calming your nervous system, and offering yourself compassionate understanding, whilst challenging those automated feelings and thoughts.

You’ve got this … one little change at a time.