![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cobaltdrgnDoing an infopost on this, because I've recently had friends say, "I didn't know about this, but when you started talking about it, it sounded like me!"
RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) is a Weird Ass condition associated with the Weird Ass neurotype that is ADHD. Which is another way of saying that it crops up in a common cluster of symptoms, many of which seem to be related to dopamine and not absorbing enough of it. In other words, we need more stimulation than the average person to feel motivated... but only sometimes. Sometimes we want to hide in a corner and not be interacted with ever again because the world is too intense.
It's a symptom cluster so it's different for everyone, but I associate my ADHD with symptoms like depression (nothing is motivating enough, so trying to go against the grain and Do Stuff can feel physically painful, or like fighting against an unliftable weight), memory loss, brain fog (being unable to think clearly), and autism-like reactions to being overwhelmed, such as shutdown (feeling paralysed or going into a numb, shock-like state) and meltdown (panicking, flailing physically, or feeling the need to do so). I can feel the impetus to meltdown sometimes before it happens; it feels like a static cling around my body, an electric field of fear. I tend to repress it, turn it inward into a shutdown.
RSD, to me, feels like the beginning of a shutdown or meltdown. Like when a horror movie pulls out the Sting Note, or you realise you've lost your wallet again (another symptom of ADHD, constantly losing important things even though you try so hard not to), and you get a sharp stab of fear in your heart. It's that panic, expanded into waves that numb your whole body, and keep it frozen in place like some videogame paralysis effect. You feel like you should be trying to escape, but also like it's safer to stay still. The freeze and flight instincts are caught in a loop where neither can win.
For some, RSD feels like a physical blow, a gut punch. Others describe it as "the bottom falling out of your world". Either way it's temporary, but while it lasts (which can be for hours, with residual fear and discomfort lasting for a few days afterwards), it could be compared to a trigger response.
So what triggers RSD? It can be deceptively simple, even harmless-seeming: walking into a room where you didn't know you were supposed to be quiet and being told forcefully to "shush"; detecting boredom or annoyance (which may not actually be real) when talking about something you love; someone rolling their eyes or laughing at a mistake you made. It's "rejection-sensitive" dysphoria, so anything that makes you feel like you did something wrong, or embarrassed yourself, or overstepped a line where you annoyed or frustrated someone, can feel like a rejection of your whole being. You may be a rational and calm person when not under the effects of RSD, but in the moment, the other person is Superior and Right, and you are wrong bad scary wrong and you should go away and maybe kill yourself so you never bother anyone again, and also so it stops hurting.
I'm pretty sure this is why so many ADHDers are people-pleasers who have trouble saying "no" directly, or doing things like correcting people when they use the wrong pronouns. When someone says "no" or "shush" or "don't" to me, flatly and without any social "padding", it can trigger RSD, and the idea that I might ever create that feeling in anyone else is also RSD-inducing; so I don't turn people down, or I couch "no"s and "don't"s in terms that soften the blow.
The flip side is that because I'm so sensitive to the possibility that something could be a rejection, I generally take hints very easily. If I ask to hang out, and you say "oh yeah we should do that sometime", I'll see the "not now" implied in that "sometime" and back off. I'm never going to be the stranger who bothers you for conversation while you're trying to read a book, because I know that's annoying.
The flip-flip-side, though, is that I desperately want other people to take my hints and to couch things gently, and this can make friendships with blunt and loud people, such as some autistic people, very frustrating. "I put so many spoons into tiptoeing around your feelings, and you just go and yell and demand and run roughshod all over mine!", my brain thinks. "Why can't you see that I physically flinch whenever you stomp around and slam doors? Why did you have to tell the person giving out samples that the thing they offered was gross? How can you be so ignorant of people’s feelings, when I can’t do anything but think about others’ feelings?" It’s not kind or rational or fair to people who also struggle with their neurotype, and I don't believe these things, but in the moment I get angry because I’m tired of being scared, and tired of being the only one (in some situations) who feels the overwhelming impulse to tiptoe.
I’ve realised that I rely on social politeness scripts, both mine and other people’s, to make me feel secure. I feel like if I follow the right social script for the right situation, people generally won’t get upset at me, and if others follow the right social script then I know what they’re going to do. When people don’t follow those scripts, I feel like a submissive dog who’s rolled over to keep the other dogs from attacking them, but the dogs are still growling. “I made the appeasement gesture! Why won’t you back off?”
You might have noticed that the symptoms of RSD can look a lot like the symptoms of abuse: hypervigilance to any perceived bad mood, panic at raised voices and arguments, never wanting to assert your needs. For many years I wondered if I'd been the victim of some secret abuse or clever manipulation that I just didn't remember, because it was baffling to me that I would react like this otherwise. But ADHDers don't need to be abused to feel like the world is crumbling. It can be confusing and debilitating, and though I’m working hard to try and unlearn these things, there aren’t really any guides. We can’t just “toughen up” like the world expects us to; realising that it isn’t personal helps the episodes to calm down quicker, but it doesn’t stop the initial shock of fear.
RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) is a Weird Ass condition associated with the Weird Ass neurotype that is ADHD. Which is another way of saying that it crops up in a common cluster of symptoms, many of which seem to be related to dopamine and not absorbing enough of it. In other words, we need more stimulation than the average person to feel motivated... but only sometimes. Sometimes we want to hide in a corner and not be interacted with ever again because the world is too intense.
It's a symptom cluster so it's different for everyone, but I associate my ADHD with symptoms like depression (nothing is motivating enough, so trying to go against the grain and Do Stuff can feel physically painful, or like fighting against an unliftable weight), memory loss, brain fog (being unable to think clearly), and autism-like reactions to being overwhelmed, such as shutdown (feeling paralysed or going into a numb, shock-like state) and meltdown (panicking, flailing physically, or feeling the need to do so). I can feel the impetus to meltdown sometimes before it happens; it feels like a static cling around my body, an electric field of fear. I tend to repress it, turn it inward into a shutdown.
RSD, to me, feels like the beginning of a shutdown or meltdown. Like when a horror movie pulls out the Sting Note, or you realise you've lost your wallet again (another symptom of ADHD, constantly losing important things even though you try so hard not to), and you get a sharp stab of fear in your heart. It's that panic, expanded into waves that numb your whole body, and keep it frozen in place like some videogame paralysis effect. You feel like you should be trying to escape, but also like it's safer to stay still. The freeze and flight instincts are caught in a loop where neither can win.
For some, RSD feels like a physical blow, a gut punch. Others describe it as "the bottom falling out of your world". Either way it's temporary, but while it lasts (which can be for hours, with residual fear and discomfort lasting for a few days afterwards), it could be compared to a trigger response.
So what triggers RSD? It can be deceptively simple, even harmless-seeming: walking into a room where you didn't know you were supposed to be quiet and being told forcefully to "shush"; detecting boredom or annoyance (which may not actually be real) when talking about something you love; someone rolling their eyes or laughing at a mistake you made. It's "rejection-sensitive" dysphoria, so anything that makes you feel like you did something wrong, or embarrassed yourself, or overstepped a line where you annoyed or frustrated someone, can feel like a rejection of your whole being. You may be a rational and calm person when not under the effects of RSD, but in the moment, the other person is Superior and Right, and you are wrong bad scary wrong and you should go away and maybe kill yourself so you never bother anyone again, and also so it stops hurting.
I'm pretty sure this is why so many ADHDers are people-pleasers who have trouble saying "no" directly, or doing things like correcting people when they use the wrong pronouns. When someone says "no" or "shush" or "don't" to me, flatly and without any social "padding", it can trigger RSD, and the idea that I might ever create that feeling in anyone else is also RSD-inducing; so I don't turn people down, or I couch "no"s and "don't"s in terms that soften the blow.
The flip side is that because I'm so sensitive to the possibility that something could be a rejection, I generally take hints very easily. If I ask to hang out, and you say "oh yeah we should do that sometime", I'll see the "not now" implied in that "sometime" and back off. I'm never going to be the stranger who bothers you for conversation while you're trying to read a book, because I know that's annoying.
The flip-flip-side, though, is that I desperately want other people to take my hints and to couch things gently, and this can make friendships with blunt and loud people, such as some autistic people, very frustrating. "I put so many spoons into tiptoeing around your feelings, and you just go and yell and demand and run roughshod all over mine!", my brain thinks. "Why can't you see that I physically flinch whenever you stomp around and slam doors? Why did you have to tell the person giving out samples that the thing they offered was gross? How can you be so ignorant of people’s feelings, when I can’t do anything but think about others’ feelings?" It’s not kind or rational or fair to people who also struggle with their neurotype, and I don't believe these things, but in the moment I get angry because I’m tired of being scared, and tired of being the only one (in some situations) who feels the overwhelming impulse to tiptoe.
I’ve realised that I rely on social politeness scripts, both mine and other people’s, to make me feel secure. I feel like if I follow the right social script for the right situation, people generally won’t get upset at me, and if others follow the right social script then I know what they’re going to do. When people don’t follow those scripts, I feel like a submissive dog who’s rolled over to keep the other dogs from attacking them, but the dogs are still growling. “I made the appeasement gesture! Why won’t you back off?”
You might have noticed that the symptoms of RSD can look a lot like the symptoms of abuse: hypervigilance to any perceived bad mood, panic at raised voices and arguments, never wanting to assert your needs. For many years I wondered if I'd been the victim of some secret abuse or clever manipulation that I just didn't remember, because it was baffling to me that I would react like this otherwise. But ADHDers don't need to be abused to feel like the world is crumbling. It can be confusing and debilitating, and though I’m working hard to try and unlearn these things, there aren’t really any guides. We can’t just “toughen up” like the world expects us to; realising that it isn’t personal helps the episodes to calm down quicker, but it doesn’t stop the initial shock of fear.
no subject
2021-01-08 21:54 (UTC)