RSD — a pain in the brain
There is no other way to put this, in my opinion, but rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), is one of my worst autistic traits.
Let’s set out very simply what this is. It means that I take criticism, even when there is no actual criticism, hard, I mean to extreme levels.
I have lost friends over it. It is not “being fragile”, it is also something entirely outside of my control, to an extent. Being diagnosed and learning about RSD has allowed me to recognise it, and try and create strategies to help with it, but it doesn’t actually change the feeling.
What it also doesn’t change is the embarrassment I feel for knowingly taking things too hard. It also doesn’t change that it has led to extreme people pleasing behaviour to avoid conflict and rejection.
I once took a job, many years ago now, purely because I couldn’t face telling the person offering it to me that I didn’t want to do it. In fact, I had the opportunity at a better job, it is just that I knew the person for this one and didn’t want to hurt their feelings by turning it down.
That’s the thing, RSD isn’t “just” about feeling criticism, perceived as well as actual, more harshly,. It can be about taking extreme lengths to avoid facing that criticism. This obviously carries quite a lot of risks with it at well, some highly severe.
For those of you who have never faced RSD before I want you to think back to the worst feeling you ever had when being criticised. That time when you felt like you wanted the whole world to end just to stop it. Okay, got that in your head? Great, now imagine that is what your brain projects when a friend leaves your message on read for 30 seconds longer than it thinks is acceptable.
Imagine this in a work setting, where even the most minor of constructive criticism can cause you to believe that you clearly can’t work there anymore. Pretty obviously this has some, shall we say, negative implications. I would argue that it is one reason why autistic individuals are far more likely to be unemployed, including than other disable individuals. It is also, again I would argue, a contributing factor to why autistic individuals are at so much higher risk of taking their own lives, 66% of autistic adults are reported to have considered it, and 35% have attempted it.
Here’s the thing, most people with RSD tend to know all of this. We know that in reality that edit made to our piece of work doesn’t mean that we are a failure who people would be better off if they didn’t exist. It doesn’t stop us feeling that way, and telling us to “get over it” is more likely to increase the spiral than help.
For me, and others I have talked to, RSD also exacerbates our intrusive thoughts. This means that not only are we feeling embarrassed at the perception we are “overreacting”, but then we are also feeling guilty about the, sometimes truly hideous, things running through our head.
As an aside I also have what is known as alexithymia, which is the inability to identify what I am feeling a lot of the time, while still feeling it. You can imagine what this jumble of emotions does to your sense of well-being.
People can develop coping mechanisms, I have some, but they aren’t “cures”. I get it though, it sounds strange to someone who hasn’t gone through it, and it is still massively understudied. The key thing to take away is that it isn’t personal, and we, honestly, can’t help it. Sometimes the person who needs to remember that last bit the most are those of us with it.
