Oh, wiggle wiggle. Hi, hello, hi. So today I want to talk to you all about ADHD. Specifically what I want to talk about is one of the lesser known symptoms of ADHD called rejection sensitive dysphoria, also known as RSD. Before we get into this, of course, trigger warning. We are talking about mental health and mental health symptoms. I just wanted to prepare you for that so that you know what we're talking about and you're not taking off guard. So what is rejection sensitive dysphoria? Well, glad you asked. Rejection sensitive dysphoria is extreme emotional response to rejection and or extreme fear of rejection. It could even be extreme emotional reactions to the potential of being rejected. So that means a lot of things. It's not only being rejected by others but being rejected by yourself. So I'll elaborate on that. Having extremely high expectations for yourself that you can never attain, never feeling satisfied with any of your work, avoiding taking on new projects or meeting new people or going to new places because you're worried that you will not be enough. Worried that you'll somehow fail the situation that you won't be able to do it? That is rejection sensitive dysphoria. Oftentimes rejection sensitive dysphoria could be misdiagnosed, especially in people who are assigned female at birth as borderline personality disorder. This is because borderline personality disorder. One of its main characteristics is extreme emotional responses. But they are very different. So rejection sensitive dysphoria is actually caused genetically. It's caused by your ADHD and it's something that's passed down genetically and it has nothing to do with trauma. Trauma can of course exacerbate the symptoms of rejection sensitive dysphoria but it will never be the cause of rejection sensitive dysphoria, whereas borderline personality disorder is usually the direct result of trauma, particularly childhood trauma. Another thing that differentiates BPD from RSD is that RSD episodes tend to be very intense but short-lived. So let's say a lot of people with RSD might experience symptoms of social anxiety, like not wanting to make a phone call because you're afraid you're gonna mess it up or you're afraid of rejection, you're afraid that the person on the other line you don't know how they're going to react so you'll avoid it. But once the phone call is done, if someone else makes a phone call, if you made the phone call, typically the symptoms of distress should be gone, whereas someone with BPD will often experience more prolonged feelings of distress and it'll take longer to come down from that. They're also differentiated in that rejection sensitive dysphoria is more about the fear of rejection whereas borderline personality disorder is more about the fear of abandonment. I know that they sound really similar but they're not actually exactly the same. There are also major differences in that BPD includes an unstable self-image so thinking that you're really really great but then very quickly thinking that you're absolutely the worst person ever. That's not characteristic of someone with rejection sensitive dysphoria. Dissociative episodes are not part of rejection sensitive dysphoria although they could be part of other disorders including PTSD. A good way to explain the difference I think between fear of rejection versus fear of abandonment would be let's say like I'm gonna use myself as an example when I met my girlfriend. I was definitely very afraid that you would reject me and it made me almost not want to see her. As much as I enjoyed spending time with her, my knee-jerk reaction was I need to get away from this person because I have to wait until like I'm absolutely perfect so that then I could see her and this way I know she'll not hate me but the thing about rejection sensitive dysphoria is that you will likely never attain that expectation. I'm not gonna wake up one day and like turn into like a super saiyan or like go into the avatar state and suddenly it's going to be like the perfect day to see my girlfriend whereas someone with BPD let's say could be in a long-term stable relationship and still continue to feel the fear of rejection and that could cause a lot of unhealthy dynamics in the relationship it's just it's different and it's a lot more complex in that way. So hopefully that clarifies it a bit. I don't want to focus too much on BPD because this is a video about rejection sensitive dysphoria but it was just to clarify that because upon first learning about RSD my first response was what was the difference between this and BPD so just to hopefully that clarified that a bit. Why do people with ADHD have rejection sensitive dysphoria? Like I said before it's caused genetically it's part of what was passed down to you the same way that your ADHD is caused genetically but to explain a little more why is this a part of ADHD? Why does this happen? What does that have to do with ADHD? Well part of ADHD the reason we experience a lot of our symptoms is an overreaction in our nervous system. When you have ADHD your nervous system overreacts to things in the outside world. This is also why a lot of people with ADHD will experience over stimulation and why a lot of people with ADHD will benefit from having separate exam rooms, noise-canceling headphones. It's because of this overreaction of the nervous system. However over stimulation is not something that is exclusively sensation related if that makes sense. Your emotional response is also a response to outside stimulus and so that same stress response that causes this overreaction to physical stimulation also causes an overreaction to emotional stimulation and that's why people with ADHD usually have some degree of rejection sensitive dysphoria and rejection sensitive dysphoria also plays into executive dysfunction. I had made a video about executive dysfunction I believe I'm gonna leave a link in the description but in short executive dysfunction is the inability or immense difficulty in executing or seeing through tasks. This could range from doing homework to just checking your mailbox to taking out your trash to just putting on your socks like just executing any task. The inability or extreme difficulty with executing those tasks or seeing the task through is executive dysfunction. Rejection sensitive dysphoria plays a role in executive dysfunction in that oftentimes part of that inability to do things is being exacerbated by the fear of rejection that emotional and physical response the feeling that you just you can't start this task you don't know how to start the task that like when it feels impossible that wall that you hit oftentimes it will be coupled with or it could even be caused by this fear of failure of inadequacy of like there's no way I can do this that I'm just I'm overwhelmed I can't and speaking of that speaking of that you know feeling like you physically can't do something. Often times the emotional reaction we have from rejection sensitive dysphoria is in fact physical. I have explained this before in other videos and it's so funny that for a long time I didn't know but growing up if I would be really like really severely punished by a parent like not just punished but like put down and hurt by one of my parents I used to feel a physical pain in my chest and it would like radiate from my chest to my fingertips and it it ached it actually physically hurt and I don't know how to describe it to anyone because I'm like I know that that's a metaphor often used like you're in so much pain that it feels like you're aching but I'm like no no like like seriously seriously it felt like I got hit in the chest where I got stabbed in the chest and it was just like this this pain that radiated all the way to my fingertips it was just the strangest thing and I don't think people realized how much I meant it when I said that like it was a physical pain it hurt now I understand that that's rejection sensitive dysphoria going back to how this is part of ADHD it is your nervous system overreacting to a stimulus be it a physical stimulus or an emotional stimulus it is a physical stress response that is a lot more extreme than what is typically supposed to happen some last little symptoms of RSD because I know I didn't go through all of them in great detail but just to like list some off our low self esteem being easily embarrassed with drawing from people with drawn from social situations feeling like a failure or that you're not living up to other people's expectations even if no one is saying anything it's just that's how you feel and as you could see a lot of those tick the box for an anxiety disorder let's say I have a lot of difficulty texting people back I like I'm really bad at it like I I've tried everything and it feels physical I have tried I've been therapy for a long time and I'm like I just can't sometimes it's that it's actually that it's I can't respond to them in that moment it is a mix of things but that mix of things is rejection sensitive dysphoria I'm trying to formulate a response I'm having difficulty formulating a response like reading what they wrote and then responding because of executive dysfunction I worry that the things that I'm writing are not good enough that I'm not giving the right amount of support or the right amount of response to my friend I'm worried that they won't be satisfied with my responses to them I'm worried that I won't be able to answer back after they receive the text and send me another text it's this whole thing where I'm just it I feel like I'm not good enough and I just in that moment I just can't do it I need lower stimulation what helps me is usually like noise cancelling headphones not too much bright light the same things I do when I feel physically overstimulated I do those things when I feel emotionally overstimulated and that'll usually help me work through it so yeah hopefully that made sense I'm just here to let you know that that's a symptom of ADHD particularly in people who are assigned female at birth and it's often like really really often misdiagnosed as borderline personality disorder and I just think it's really important to differentiate the two because they are absolutely not the same thing and so the course of treatment is not the same thing I could talk more about this if you like I just didn't want to make the video too long it's kind of hard to talk about really complex topics in a short amount of time but kind of like in a nutshell that's rejection-sensitive dysphoria hope that was informative let me know what you think thank you so much for watching I hope you have a great day and a great week and you take care of yourselves all right thanks bye