Rejection sensitive dysphoria. Unlike a large proportion of the Neurodivergent community I have a bit of an issue with rejection sensitive dysphoria. Whilst I wholly understand the concept and relate to it in a lot of ways, it makes me feel awkward because yet again it is something that’s telling me that I am wrong for being and feeling the way that I do. I understand that in peoples’ lives there may be different ways that has led them to experiencing RSD. I also will never ever say that things such as trauma therapy should not be pursued if this is decided that this is needed to help somebody within a certain part of their life.
I have been down the route of Talking Therapies throughout my life and I have always found them useful. They may not have always met my needs but they have helped to frame things in a different way so that I could actually cope at the time.
However RSD smacks of that the way that we react needs to be changed, tweaked, morphed, made more acceptable to those that are around us. For me this does not feel right, this feels like it grates on me, this seems to be yet another thing that says we need to change to become accepted. If we have always been oversensitive and this is not a learned reaction why is it it needs changing?
And I totally get that there will be those within the collective that say yes to RSD as a thing, but we can’t not acknowledge that this is something within us that makes us feel bad to name it, label it and pathologise what is naturally occurring within a neurodiversion.
However, for me as I continue my spiritual journey, that brings me back to myself, each time I go through a therapy, each time I go through looking at myself, each time I go through a process, where I can again pull myself to pieces and look at each thing through a microscope. And what it leads me back to every time is having a trust in myself that I know what is best for me.
Not only do I know what is best for me, but if I drop into my Core and I understand how it feels in my stomach, then I know whether this is a right or wrong thing. For me getting back to trusting myself is paramount in my journey, which is why a one size fits all modality will never work unless it leads you back to your authentic self. When it comes to RSD, if I feel the way that I do when I read about it and it spikes off various things, it just smacks home to me that it is yet another big fucking beating stick to say that I’m wrong.
I am going to give an example of this. Recently I had a setback for something I want to study. Due to various circumstances I was unable to be given this time to pursue this line of learning at the moment. It turned out essentially to be a blessing in disguise, due to other things that happened within my life that currently need my attention. However, one of the things that annoyed me the most, was for it to be pointed out how getting overwhelmed and needing help on occasions showed I could not cope with this right now.
This came from someone who had said that they understood me, that they understood the way that I was and the way I reacted. They also said that they understood that throughout my life it wasn’t that I didn’t have the potential to meet higher education needs, it was that the door was always shut in my face. I think what they didn’t appreciate is that’s exactly what they had just done. By pointing out how overwhelmed on occasion I get, which I will and I always will, that therefore I will never be able to study to such a level because this is the way that I am.
Needless to say some things within life, however hard I try, stay the same and I’m trying to work out exactly why that may be. However I’m sure that those within the neurodiverse collective can understand that basically somebody is yet again telling me that I cannot do something because of the way I am. The way I am is not going to change. This may seem like in a lot of ways a defeatist attitude, but it isn’t, because what I’m saying is having been through therapy, having been through CBT, having been through looking at my shadow side and dragging myself through various services to find out why I am the way I am, I am still exactly the way I have always been. And that means that I get very emotional and overwhelmed on occasion, when there are so many things within my life that I am going through and having to fit into the societal mould that is not beneficial for me. It’s not like I can stop and get off.
Having read back through this blog, obviously, before I put it up, I realised that I can be very contradictory in my views on what works and what doesn’t. However as I am showing you my journey, then this is something that is the kind of stuff that my head goes through all the time. Which doesn’t make it easy, but is reflective of what every person within the collective goes through to one extent or another I’m guessing.