ADHD and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria

[soc_puppet]

[Content Note for suicide mention at the link]

I'm sharing this absolutely everywhere I think is appropriate, because it is game changing for me.

How ADHD Ignites Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria: "Rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) is an extreme emotional sensitivity and emotional pain triggered by the perception – not necessarily the reality – that a person has been rejected, teased, or criticized by important people in their life. RSD may also be triggered by a sense of failure, or falling short – failing to meet either their own high standards or others’ expectations. [...] RSD can make people with ADHD anticipate rejection — even when it anything but certain. This can make them vigilant about avoiding it, which can be misdiagnosed as social phobia. Social phobia is an intense anticipatory fear that you will embarrass or humiliate yourself in public, or that you will be scrutinized harshly by the outside world."

[Image description for the link: Cartoon man paddling through the ocean using an umbrella as a boat]

Hahaha (sob), I even have to deal with RSD when posting this. "But what if it's not fandom applicable enough?" Hush, brain, it's definitely fandom applicable!

Ahem. For anyone who's ever been absolutely terrified to post something fannish because "what if no one likes it," this might just be the answer you're looking for.

Comments

[lilysea]

Thank you for this post. ^_^

[soc_puppet]

:) <3 My pleasure.

[alatefeline]

I am glad you posted this.

[soc_puppet]

This is a soothing balm to my RSD <3

[alatefeline]

:D I think it's important to give people positive feedback for doing good things.

[davidgillon]

Fandom applicable enough I want to link to it on Fans for Accessible Conventions! (Assuming you haven't, and my current fail-brain remembers)

[soc_puppet]

Please do! I have indeed not posted it over there, and would love to see it get spread far and wide, because this is information that is worth having and yet hardly anyone seems to have it.

[davidgillon]

Done ;)

[inoru_no_hoshi]

... WELP. I didn't know this was a thing (...and I'm not diagnosed with ADHD but I keep seeing things that make me go IT ME), but boy howdy does that look really familiar! /o\

Edit: Also thank you for giving me a name for some of my brainweasels. <3

[soc_puppet]

That exact feeling is why I'm sharing it everywhere I can think of. It seems so important, so why am I only learning about it well over a decade after I was first diagnosed with ADHD? Honestly, if the association were more well known, I probably could've been diagnosed in elementary school instead of late high school. Or at least we could've been putting out feelers/been ready for it when I was diagnosed.

That said, I do have two other people wondering if it's possible that RSD manifests separately from ADHD, so I'm considering it a possibility, though the fact that ADHD diagnostics (like Autism spectrum diagnostics) are based primarily on white presumed-cis boys certainly complicates things.

[jazzyjj]

This is very interesting. I don't have any type of mental-health disability, but some of my friends do. I'm curious to know whether RSD and consumption of caffeine are in any way linked. The reason I'm curious about this is that one of these friends drinks coffee like it is going out of stock, and he has epilepsy plus some form of mental illness. He drinks decaf from time to time, but by in large he pushes the caffeine big time. He says he's tried everything to rid himself of the habit, and honestly I think some of us have been a little hard on him. I'm by no means a mental-health professional, nor will I ever claim to be one. However, it would be interesting to find out if these 2 are in fact linked.

[soc_puppet]

I mean, I know of some links between ADHD and caffeine, so it's not totally implausible. (Namely: Pregnant people who consume a lot of caffeine are more likely to have children with ADHD than pregnant people who don't; and caffeine is a stimulant and has been used as a sort of "home remedy" for ADHD, the same way some people use St. John's Wort for depression.)

To the Grant Cave! We need to form a Research Team to get to the bottom of this!

[lauredhel]

I don't think it's a stretch to guess that the pregnant people who were continuing to imbibe a lot of caffeine may well have been self-treating their own undiagnosed ADHD in that scenario.

[shehasathree]

I was going to suggest that.

In my family we have:
1) my mother, who gave up drinking anything more strongly caffeinated than weak black tea when pregnant, bc it made her too jittery otherwise, and
2) my Dad, who drinks ~500mL of coffee every night before bed and sleeps fine (he doesn't even need an alarm clock to wake up on time).

(Neither of my parents have official diagnoses of anything, but my Dad fits a lot of the ADHD stereotypes.)

[shehasathree]

Apart from the obvious stimulant effects, caffeine is also genuinely addictive, in the sense that tolerance develops so you need more to get the same effect, and people experience withdrawal effects if they cut down consumption too quickly.

[ageofblossoms]

I experience this a lot, when I'm in a chat and a bunch of people say they don't like something I really like.
It hurts a lot. I think I've cut people off or left communities over saying they don't like something I love en masse.