Dealing with/preventing rejection sensitivity dysphoria

[c flat]

So the other day, I experienced what I believe was rejection sensitivity dysphoria and I was absolutely miserable. It happens pretty often (both online as was the case this time and in person), and so in hope of preventing it from feeling so devastating the next time around, I'd like some advice on how to cope with and/or prevent it from happening entirely.
As it might be relevant, I have both Asperger's/HFA and ADHD. Thanks in advance!

 

[Tom]

Never heard of rejection sensitivity dysphoria. Is that getting depressed due to rejection?

 

[c flat]

Nevr heard of rejection sensitivity dysphoria. Is that getting depressed due to rejection?

More or less, though it's usually not as lasting as full-on depression. A quick google search defines it as:

...a condition characterized by extreme emotional sensitivity and pain triggered by the perception of rejection, criticism, or disapproval from others.

It can also manifest as a reaction to failure.

As far as I can tell it's mostly associated with ADHD, but apparently it's an autism thing too, which is why I put this here instead of in the related conditions subforum. If mods feel it'd better fit there, I'm cool with them moving this there.

 

[MNAus]

A few of the theories of autism note that sensory sensitivity might also be present for internal stimuli, such as emotions. Intense World Theory and Enhanced Perceptual Functioning Theory both suggest that people on the spectrum might just receive the emotions "louder". This is backed up by plenty of physical evidence of difference in brain form, function, neuro-chemistry, etc.

I believe this intense perception of negative emotions drives a lot of autism anxiety and behaviours to avoid it. For example: rumination on past failures, intense planning to avoid unknown outcomes, dislike of change. It also links well with the theory of predictive coding, where the brain attempts to predict the world, check against sensory information then updates predictions. Originally it was thought this prediction capability was faulty, but AFAIK it would appear it is not, it is just getting sensory information at a far higher level of gain than predictive. The result is the brain weighing other sensory information as more important than prediction. The net result is an executive function that is desperately trying to avoid a negative emotion fog horn, and with the senses drowning out any form of inner intuition or heuristics as it attempts to do so. That sounds familiar to me as a the downward spiral desperately trying to avoid (for example) social humiliation and trying to process what I see and hear logically to do so.

So it might just be that it's not some sort of separate condition, or failure to "regulate". It might be that the brain is actually receiving signals from internal stimuli like emotion at volume 11, and is actually responding consistently with the way an NT would to that signal volume. Perhaps the signal sent for a minor cold shoulder actually is at a level of being publicly shunned for someone on the spectrum

 

[SusanLR]

@c flat ,
I get what you're saying.
It isn't a long depression, but the slightest perceived insult or rejection gives me the same feeling. I'm feeling that way tonight.

I was watching TV with someone earlier and found the discussion in it interesting.
When I was surprised at something that was said, I repeated a little of it to the other person. They did not find it interesting and said it didn't make sense at all.
I started to explain and was cut off at the first word I said with what might as well amounted to a shut up of don't try and explain it, don't want to hear it.
So, I went silent for the rest of the show and felt down about the retort afterwards.

I believe we have an intense perception also. I don't know how to stop it.
Just how I am.

 

[Hypnalis]

I suppose it makes sense that there's a name for this, but I don't see why there's a question to ask.

The rule is "learn to live with what you cannot change".

Or you can read Stanislaw Lem's "The Futurological Congress" for the 21st century solution, but don't forget the downsides.

Continuing the the old-school sci-fi theme, the writer of the Foundation trilogy, Isaac Asimov, wrote that it's impossible to be liked by everyone, and that realistically, getting on well with 25% of the people you meet is a reasonable expectation.

The next part of this is probably taboo these days, but you should be a be to figure it out yourself /lol..

 

[AuAL]

I have suffered from RSD for many years. When you live your life by the personal philosophy of, “Excellence is the only acceptable objective.” it sort of goes with the territory. Being liked by everyone is, of course, a fool’s errand, but RSD will demand it of you. The really hard part is not being liked by yourself. That took me right to the edge - but discovering I was autistic really helped. (I’m not broken, just different.) I am trying to change, but it is not easy turning the whole direction of your life around. My last therapist queried my relentless pursuit of perfection, given the profound damage to my self-esteem and mental health. I told him that, honestly, I could not see myself changing who I am at such a fundamental level. (This drive has delivered professional benefits and other positives. I know it has also robbed me of so much.) @c flat, sorry I can’t give you a quick/easy solution. If you find one, I’d really like to hear about it.

 

[vergil96]

Psychotherapy? Psychotherapists are really skilled at that kind of issues. Being a people pleaser, because you're sensitive and strongly affected by others reactions is a quite common problem.

With emotional problems, the hard part is that you cannot think your way out of them. Therapy can be helpful with that, another human being makes it easier to get the desired feedback and make it into a loop. You can try to do the same alone as well of course, it's just harder or chances are your environment is not supportive, problematic and keeps you stuck in a loop of feeling not likeable and all that.

If you don't know how to do it, dealing with trauma is called emotional processing and you can find how to do it online. It's hard to quickly explain it. Because RSD is a kind of trauma - about rejection. It doesn't matter if someone else would find the same event unimportant, for you it was very hard. It's normal and it's okay to be more sensitive than others. There is a beauty and insight not available for those who are more numb. So you process the emotions and face whatever led to them, it's likely going to result in some changes and better choice of people around you.

 

[Rodafina]

I think there are two things to focus on that could help.

1. Self esteem. As @AuAL noted, "The really hard part is not being liked by yourself." I think this is the crux of RSD - if you cannot like yourself and feel a sense of pride and confidence in who you are, it can be very easy to see yourself in a negative light through others' eyes. Most often, we don't actually know what people are thinking about us, and so, we can be prone to guessing (also known as mind reading). Our minds can fill in the blanks with negative, horrible things if we are already inclined toward self loathing.

2. Judgment. If you can work on your ability to be non judgmental toward others, then eventually, you may be able to turn this idea of acceptance and tolerance for differences inward. I think people that are constantly annoyed by and disappointed in others can easily assume that they, too, can be annoying and disappointing to others. A response to this feeling is to become a people pleaser and fear encountering any level of rejection from others. I think that the more we can be accepting of others, the more we can eventually accept ourselves.

 

[marc_101]

@c flat

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) could help. Some of the suggestions you're getting are a sort of CBT session: recognizing the feeling, questioning the reason, changing the story, then changing the feeling. Working on a new scenario...

My other suggestion: if you tell yourself that you suffer from "rejection sensitivity dysphoria" then you're telling yourself that rejection is part of who you're, like having ASD or dyslexia. It could be, but most probably not. Rejection is part of life and something that comes and go and you can work with it.

If you think it's something so bad that requires a diagnosis, seek professional help.

 

[Misty Avich]

Sorry, I can't offer much advice because I struggle with RSD too. I never heard of RSD until a couple of years ago when I was diagnosed with ADHD. When I read up about it all the symptoms described me and it felt like it had answered a lot of things in my life. I think RSD began when I was about 10 or 11.

Can you relate to any of these?

- Feel more devastated than the average person if they lose a friend

This is me and has been for many years.

- Be sensitive to criticism

Unless criticism is light or constructive or just someone giving their opinions, I don't take the other sort of criticism so well if it's about my feelings or what I should do, think, etc.

- Not able to deal with double standards very well

I faced a lot of double standards at school, like if I did something acceptable it still wasn't accepted by my peers, and I'd just be told to shut up or go away when just trying to fit in. It really made me miserable and made me wish so much that I was normal like them.

- Worry that the world is out to get them, as in target them (like trust issues)

Not in a paranoid delusional way, as it depends on how much trust you have in a person. If I am close enough to a person then I'm more likely to offer them chances if they do criticise or not agree or seem off with me. If I don't know a person well enough and they've demonstrated hostility or whatever before then I tend to get anxious and distrustful of them. This is why my social anxiety is higher around strangers.

- Be very sensitive to tone of voice and body language

Not sure how it is for autistics with RSD but as an ADHDer I am totally sensitive to non-verbal social cues and can pick up on moods and body language very quickly.

- Fear of being rejected when making friends

This probably contributes to why I don't have many friends, or only have friends who are also non-NT. Unless someone is showing an open interest in me and seems keen to hang out, I tend to just take it very slowly and carefully as to not tread too far and be told the awful words of rejection ("stop following me", "do you want something?", etc)

- Feel embarrassment more intensely than the average person

I get embarrassed very easily and my pride and dignity is very important to me. I just get embarrassed about stuff all the time.

- Beat themselves up a lot

I beat myself up over any social errors I make. I seem to make more social errors online than I do offline and I don't know why.

- Blame themselves for other people's problems

I do this because I've always been a bit stressful to be around so I feel that any problems others have it might somehow boil down to dealing with me or I might have said something offensive without meaning to be offensive (the latter happens online more)

- Can physically feel pain when rejected or shunned, like a knot in the chest of stomach

Yes, I get a physical pain that sometimes makes me bend over. It's hard to describe and it's amazing how an emotion can really hurt you.

- Constantly worry about saying the wrong thing even if their social filters are average

This is me. Offline I seem to have good social filters generally, but online I can get carried away with myself and not think before I post. It's similar to impulse buying, especially with ADHD you often end up buying things you don't need as an impulse sort of thing. It's the same when socialising online, I have a habit of posting things I don't really need to.

- Feel easily intimidated or socially anxious when ganged up on or judged negatively

I can sense a clique a mile away and I often feel sad when I'm not part of a clique, even though being in a clique isn't really good. But it's the feeling of being left out that is the issue.

 

[Hypnalis]

@Misty Avich

Not questioning your diagnosis, but that list is just a sales pitch for "talk therapy".

* "Very sensitive to tone of voice or body language" is generally a good thing, not a bad one.
Incorrectly interpreting the signals is an issue though - i.e. the list asks the wrong question.

* Two are obviously statistically questionable: "Feel more of X than the average person".
There's a 50% chance of a "hit" on those at best, and they're subjective (how can one person know what the average is?).
On balance, negligible diagnostic value.

* "Intimidated or anxious when ganged up on". This one is a tautology.

* etc

Only one item makes real sense (the physical pain one).


That kind of list that makes an illness out of normal human behavior is a bad thing for everyone ...

... but mostly bad for people who have the same thing to a degree that they genuinely need help (which seems to include you), because the treatment services get overloaded with hypochondriacs, hobbyists, and whiners.

 

[Misty Avich]

Well RSD is familiar to everyone to an extent (not that everyone knows about it but if they did they'd probably be able to relate to some of the behaviours) but, like everything, when taken to an extreme it can be problematic.
I do definitely have RSD, it was mentioned in my ADHD assessment and I relate to all the traits of RSD.

 

[Hypnalis]

Well RSD is familiar to everyone to an extent (not that everyone knows about it but if they did they'd probably be able to relate to some of the behaviours) but, like everything, when taken to an extreme it can be problematic.
I do definitely have RSD, it was mentioned in my ADHD assessment and I relate to all the traits of RSD.

I 100% agree it's a real thing.

When I was (much) younger I had some very annoying problems in this area.
Most of it "went away" as a result of my spending many years in customer-facing IT marketing.
(BTW as a career choice that isn't as strange as it sounds. IT has a lot of ASD and "ASD-adjacent" people, so we get along well in IT. )

OFC training something away over 10 years or so isn't useful advice to someone else with a chronic problem

But it did teach me that it does no harm to face it head-on, and it can be very helpful.

 

[Wolfiedog]

i see rejection where there is none.
It was disabling as a child/teen.
In older age, i don’t care anymore and recognize it for what it is.

 

[Misty Avich]

Most of my social problems are down to RSD and social anxiety.

 

[c flat]

Alright, wow, this a much bigger response than I expected.
So it seems this is largely related to the emotional dysregulation found in ADHD as well as the social problems in autism. If I can learn to manage the former and stop some bad habits in the latter, that should help.

@SusanLR That sucks, I hope you're feeling better now. At least it usually doesn't last too long.

@Misty Avich Most of those do describe me pretty well, though some of them are hard to quantify. I've cut contact with/ghosted more people than people have done the same to me. And as for nonverbal cues, I can identify them in a laboratory setting but out in the real world I don't really pay attention to nor pick up on them. Now that I think about it, it's caused a lot more falling-outs and actual ostracization than I realized.

I do definitely strive for excellency and perfection to a harmful degree, and go to a lot of effort to avoid rejection and failure. I've been making a conscious effort to avoid "people-pleasing" lately and I think it's been making a (positive) difference.

And thanks a lot, I've gotten more help than I know what to do with at this point!

 

[Misty Avich]

Usually I get rejected because of my quirkiness and most NT people are too shallow to handle it. That's why I make friends easier with the less shallow people, which include non-NTs, older NTs, and NTs who are more sensitive and open-minded (which usually includes older NTs). I don't think I have any actual NT friends of my age. Even my husband is a lot older than me. I just attract older people.

That's why I feel more self-conscious around most NTs in their 30s and younger, especially if they are extroverts. Older extroverts, like in their 60s, seem less intimidating to me.

 

[Misty Avich]

@Misty Avich Most of those do describe me pretty well, though some of them are hard to quantify. I've cut contact with/ghosted more people than people have done the same to me. And as for nonverbal cues, I can identify them in a laboratory setting but out in the real world I don't really pay attention to nor pick up on them. Now that I think about it, it's caused a lot more falling-outs and actual ostracization than I realized.

I'm a textbook example of RSD, so if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them. I'm just not very useful with giving advice.

Another thing I'd like to mention is when I was at college and some new people joined the group, I made such bad first impressions and got mocked because of it, that I just couldn't face them for a while after that so I stayed home for two weeks in the hope that it would be forgotten. It's how embarrassed I felt. I think it was because I fitted in quite well with the smaller group and it felt like a family, then when the new people added to the group I tried to make friends with them too but sort of embarrassed myself, probably because they were more obnoxious and judgemental than the others I was friendly with.

 

[jsilver256]

There’s indeed an element to autism where it feels like you’re navigating the world without any social feedback whatsoever. And that can be tiring. So I understand the obsession about getting approval etc, because we rarely get clear feedback on that and often it ends in us getting blindsided about our own bad behavior.

It would seem from my uninformed perspective, not having RSD, is that basing self-worth on external validation combined with neurodivergence is the perfect recipe for RSD. Outside of a small group of people, I don’t particularly care if I’m popular or not. I’d rather be my best authentic self, and I do know my best authentic self isn’t naturally all that conventionally popular. It is what it is.