Rejection Sensitivity Is Not a Personality Flaw

What RSD actually is: a neurological response, not a character flaw

We often feel like our emotions are so big. Okay, well, we don’t just feel like it. Our emotions are so big, and we get stuck in that rejection sensitivity dysphoria. So I’m going to talk about what that is first. What is RSD? It’s a neurological and emotional response. I think we often have this wrong thinking that it’s just an emotional response. It’s not. It is a neurological response, which is why our emotions get so entrenched. Heavy. It’s not just being too sensitive or taking things too personally. It’s an intense, instant emotional pain triggered by real or perceived rejection, criticism, or failure.

And it feels huge even when it’s a little criticism. Even “oh, if you would pull your hair back a little, your face would be more exposed” hits differently.

So let’s talk about the neurobiological part of it. It’s not about your character, or the idea that you’re too much, or a drama queen, or whatever we’ve heard. It’s about your brain wiring. Your nervous system reacts: it increases cortisol, it decreases your dopamine, it ramps up your fight-or-flight. It is a survival response. Your brain is trying to protect you, even from social danger. And of course, our brains being overactive as they are, they overshoot it.

Then we also have the trauma-informed part of it. Remember, we’re criticized 20,000 times more than our peers. Twenty thousand. About our emotional responses, about being “too lazy,” whatever, whatever. So emotional regulation gets that fight-or-flight piece added to it, and again, it overshoots. So it is a neurological response, not just an emotional one. And I think that’s the thing people need to remember, because it’s always assumed it’s just emotional. That’s why we’ve gotten all that criticism: “Oh my gosh, you’re so much. You’re too much. You’re so sensitive.”

I had that told to me a lot, Shay said. In fact, and I don’t know that my dad and mom remember this, when I was younger and said I wanted to be a social worker, my dad told me, “There’s no way you could be a social worker. You’re too sensitive.” And I thought, “Oh. Maybe I can’t.” So I never pursued it. I never did, because I thought I couldn’t do it. Do you see how even those little bits and pieces get intertwined in our lives? They can stop us from doing the things we were probably meant to do, or stop us from being who we really are, or from taking a step out of the comfort zone to even try. When we’re told “you’re so sensitive,” that shuts people down.

Rebellion is RSD too

It does. And for me, I was diagnosed as a child with what was then the clinical label for intellectual disability, and my family, in some ways to this day, still treats me like that diagnosis. Mind you, I’m somebody with four master’s degrees, working on my PhD, who has built businesses and sold them. And I think this is part of why: I’m trying to prove them wrong. That is a form of rebellion in me. It has also been a form of rebellion in personal relationships. I’m always trying to prove a point to somebody.

We do that rebellion side of it to push back and prove we are good enough, Shay said. And here’s a funny story, you’re going to laugh at this. My husband had my son and me digging a trench across a driveway at our old house, through that small rock that’s been packed down from 20 years of driving on it. It was hard to get through. And he and my son got into this battle, and it really ticked me off, and I probably went a little too far at him about it. But he made us so mad, and both my son and I are ADHD, that we got that trench dug that afternoon, because we were so pissed off. “Oh yeah? Watch us.” And later he said, “Yeah, I knew that would make you mad enough to do it.” Which is not a nice thing to do. But the reality is, that was an incentive for us. I don’t want it done in a nasty way, but when we recognize that, sometimes we can use it to move us forward. I hate to put everything into a negative frame. What positive thing can come out of RSD? Well, that was one of them, not in the best flavor or form.

I will tell you, my RSD has made me get four degrees and I’m working on my fifth. It’s made me figure out how to do life better, because I didn’t want to live in that. It’s pushing back against the stigma of “you’re just too much, you’re so sensitive, you can’t handle life.” No. We can handle life. But we handle it differently, and we have to understand those big emotions. How are they coming in? Why?

And the other part, where RSD is a negative, is when we get stuck in it. I have so many clients who come in and their ADHD, autism, chronic illness, whatever, has become the reason they can’t do anything, because they’ve been told they can’t. They get stuck in that rejection sensitivity, stuck in the negative phase of it.

Not a superpower: the Iron Man suit

I hate to call ADHD or autism a superpower, because it’s not, unless you have support. It doesn’t always feel that way. And sometimes when people say “superpower,” and this is my own take, it feels like a minimization of what I’m dealing with.

So here’s how I always explain it, all the negatives we deal with about being neurodivergent or having chronic illness, and chronic illness is obviously a big one for me. Some days it’s hard for me to show up, and today was one of them. I look at being ADHD as Robert Downey Jr. and Iron Man. When he’s just his regular self, he’s freaking annoying and obnoxious and arrogant. When he puts on his Iron Man suit, he has Jarvis in his head, who is way smarter, way more analytical, way more everything, and he has that hardened structure around him supporting everything that’s weak about him.

Sometimes that even reflects things like weighted blankets, Shay said. That hardened structure around him is like the comfort you can pull around you. And somebody else’s voice in his head telling him how to actually get to the point of doing things, instead of just running his mouth.

It cracks me up, because quite a few of my clients will tell me later, “Shay, your voice is stuck in my head.” Sorry, not sorry.

The client whose coach lives in her head

I have a client who reached out to me yesterday. She was so mad at me. She hasn’t been a client in about six months, because she’s done so well that she didn’t need me anymore. And she sent this wall of text; I had to keep scrolling three or four times on my phone to read it all. I asked, “Okay, what’s bringing this up for you?” She said, “I tried to use an AI chatbot, and all it spit back at me was your voice. You’re in my head. You’re in my chat. You’re on my computer. You’re in my planner. Why won’t you go away?” I said, “Well, let’s look at this a little differently.” She said, “No, I did the thing, and I got it done, and it was fantastic. Just go away.” I asked, “But did it give you the structure you needed to get the thing done?” She said, “Yes, but that’s beside the point.” She was joking, she just had to vent. But she said, “You built the structure around me so well that I find it in everything I do now. I very rarely have a day where I fail.”

There you go. That’s what we’re striving for with all of this: to allow people to not have everyday failures. And let me tell you, this woman only worked with me in my group program. She didn’t work with me one-on-one, because she didn’t need that level. She needed community support and the group coaching calls. All of those things are now built into every aspect of her life, so she doesn’t need to keep paying us. She doesn’t need us every day. Though she did say she’s coming back in, because she’s going to be moving. She already knows she’s planning to build structure and a support system around herself for the big events in life, and she’s got those structures embedded into her day-to-day.

And she knows there’s a community there for her at any time, no matter what, Shay said. It doesn’t matter if she’s moving, had a baby, is starting school, has kids with ADHD or autism. There’s a level of comfort in knowing there’s a community there, even if it’s only two people, even if it’s 15 or 20. Community support has been a game-changer for me and for other people around me. Even my husband said, “Wow, since you and Danielle have been working together, you’re moving through things a lot faster than you ever did.” That’s because I have somebody to bounce things off of, not just Danielle but the whole community: “Look, I don’t understand this. Is this ADHD? Is this autism? Is this chronic illness? Please help.” And everybody pitches in and gives the support that’s needed. Because come on, guys. Seriously. We are not here as individuals to live individually.

Why it is called a hive

We weren’t meant to do life alone. Humans in general, neurotypical, neurodivergent, whatever, weren’t meant to do life alone. We were meant to do life in community. And in the hive system, hello, why I named it Hive, your hive is only as strong as the interlocking of each other. We have Shay, who is amazing at relationship building, support, and emotional connection. I am not your emotional support person. You need a tip, a trick, a tool, a how-to? I can give that to you in two seconds flat. But if you start crying, I’m not your best person. Shay is your person.

I’ll just start crying along with you, Shay said, so then we’ll both be crying, and that’s even better. And you know what? That helps.

Perimenopause, hormones, and late diagnosis

And for women, I need to tell all of y’all out there having those crying moments: first, where are you in the age group? If you’re in the younger age group, you’re releasing emotions. That’s part of what we women need to do. If you’re perimenopausal, you’re releasing more emotions, so we cry more, like we’re pregnant all over again.

Okay, I have never been an emotional person, Shay said. Ever. Crying at TV commercials, any of the things women supposedly do when they’re frustrated, I never did that. Then I hit peri, peri-meno, perimenopause. Oh my gosh. We should call it “Mary Penopause,” because that’s what it feels like. We can’t even talk sometimes. But perimenopause affects every woman in some form. And what is not really known out there: perimenopause with any neurodivergence? Get ready. You thought you were riding a roller coaster before; it’s time to put the seat belts on. It can exacerbate all of the ADHD, the autism, everything in that realm. You’re welcome. Get your buns into community, because you’re going to need some support.

I always understood RSD at a clinical level, but I very rarely had much RSD come up, or so I thought, because I always looked at my rebellious side as not an RSD thing. It took me a while to understand that my rebellious attitude was a form of RSD. The full-on rejection sensitivity that causes the emotional meltdown was not something I had trouble with, and I’ve known I was ADHD since I was a preteen. But man, perimenopause. It’s a whole new world. And I think that’s part of why so many older women are getting late-diagnosed with ADHD. That hormone shift takes the places where we used to be able to mask, create our own systems, and figure life out, doing life in our slightly quirky way, and suddenly it’s full-on neurodivergence at the max level of every single thing.

And then you’re told, “Oh, you didn’t have ADHD before menopause, so you don’t have it now.” Back up a step. Even if you didn’t have a diagnosis before, that doesn’t mean you didn’t have a milder form of it, and then perimenopause hit, and now you’re full-blown in it. Don’t underestimate what’s going on. And don’t always believe everything the authorities say, because sometimes you know your own body better than they do. They’re not walking in your skin.

What unmasking looks like

So let’s talk about unmasking a little. What has unmasking been for you? Because you’re later-diagnosed, and this is more recent for you.

I was diagnosed in my late 30s or early 40s, Shay said, and I really didn’t start unmasking until last year, and more so this year. When I got the diagnosis, I thought, “Okay, no big deal, I’m not going to change much.” Then I had a car accident, which caused a mild TBI, which exacerbated things. Then we throw on perimenopause, and that exacerbated it more. I was always walking around with “everything’s okay, it’s going to be fine, all of it’s good.” But at home, my husband would tell you, I was falling apart over the stupidest things, getting upset over the dumbest things, because I didn’t have any other release. I couldn’t release it in front of my friends. I was trying to build my coaching business, and there are so many things where we feel we have to look a certain way. I was so afraid that if I didn’t fit into that square box, I wouldn’t be successful. So it was masking all the time. Everything’s okay. It’s all good. Go home. Have a meltdown.

Then the masking came off. And frankly, and this may come across blunt, that’s not how it’s meant: I don’t care. I don’t care what other people think or expect. And that’s not saying I don’t care about people. It’s: this is what I’m trying to do, this is who I am, and if I choose not to live up to your expectation, that’s okay. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad person, or awful, or not good enough. It means I am not accepting that expectation, because it’s not within what I choose.

We have lived so long masking, trying to fit into this mold of what everybody else thinks we should be. I had one client come to me, and this is what turned the light bulb on. She said, “If you had showed up like all the other coaches, makeup on, hair done, jewelry on, looking so professional, I wouldn’t have talked to you.” I asked, “What made the difference?” She said, “You showed up in a hoodie with your hair in a ponytail, hardly any makeup, and I don’t think you had any jewelry on except maybe a necklace. You were relatable. You were relatable to me.” Well, guess what? That’s because she was neurodivergent too. So be yourself, because those are the people you need to reach, and those are the people who are your community. If we stand behind the RSD all the time, the masking all the time, life is going to suck. And sometimes it takes us a while to even recognize we’re doing it.

I love all the new videos of the “I don’t care club,” Shay said. There are so many of them, and I laugh at the ones from people who are just discovering, not diagnosed yet, that they’re neurodivergent. I could fix that for you, if you’d listen. But of course nobody ever does. And I had somebody get really rude about it, because they’re still masking. Masking goes along with perfectionism. And when you drop that perfectionism and that masking, do you know how freeing the last six months have been? Especially after our Disney trip. That was the first time I really was me. Dancing down the street, shouting at the top of my lungs on a ride with one of the other friends, just being me. Chasing Winnie the Pooh and Tigger to take pictures. Maybe.

We have never really been able to just allow ourselves to be. We’ve always been fitting into something, making sure we fix everybody else instead of ourselves. I get very emotional when I talk about it too long, but it allowed me, for the first time, and I’m 54 now, I just had a birthday, to run down the street at 53 years old in the middle of Disney. I know nobody cares, but that was a big deal for me. And when I came back, it was a lot easier to keep doing, because I had a community that still wanted me to be me instead of handing me a box. Unmasking in community is so much easier than trying to do it alone.

The tutu, the crown, and 500 IT guys

Now, I will say I unmasked 15 years ago, almost to the month. There’s a story that goes with it. I went to a professional conference 15 years ago that I was selected to speak at as a woman in tech. Fifteen years ago, very few women spoke at those. The women there were the booth staff and the assistants and the community-expert types, and there’s nothing wrong with those positions, but you get my point. And I decided to go to this conference in costume, because somebody had nicknamed me the minion queen, since managing my team some days felt like having a group of minions. So I decided I was going to go in a crown and a tutu and have fun with it.

I walked up on stage in front of about 500 IT guys in a pink, really poofy tutu, double my size widthwise, a crown, a purple sparkly shirt that was actively shedding sparkles, I left a trail of sparkles everywhere I went so everybody knew Danielle had just been through, combat boots, and crazy sparkly makeup. For the first 15 minutes or so, all of these guys sat in their seats with their pamphlets in front of their faces, peeking over at me every once in a while, trying to figure out who I was. By the time we were done, that room of extremely neurodivergent men was interacting with me and talking with me, and the funniest thing happened: I had an entourage everywhere I went after that.

Isn’t it interesting, Shay said, how being you is what actually drew people to you? That’s where we miss out. When we’re not being ourselves, we’re not allowing the people who really need to connect with us to do it. That’s where unmasking comes in, to build community where you live, where you work, where you interact.

It can look like wearing the Disney ears to a coaching call. It can look like the tutu and the crown at a professional conference, and yes, that is my signature now and I do it all the time. I’m not sure the organizers of the big national ADHD conferences are always amused with me, because I end up with people hanging out with me and wanting to talk to me everywhere, and it’s so much fun. That first year, V had a hula hoop and was hula hooping in the hallway, and we had bubbles, and we were lying on the floor coloring, and we all had tutus and crowns on.

There is no one way to unmask

But it doesn’t always have to look like that. It can just look like wearing your hair in a ponytail and not wearing the uncomfortable, itchy makeup to a phone call. It can look like giggling while you color in a coloring book in a corner by yourself. It can look like saying, “I don’t give a fuck,” which makes it a lot easier. It does not have to mean you’re loud and quirky.

You don’t have to be running up and down the street screaming, “I’m neurodivergent, I have ADHD, and I’m going to be me,” Shay said. You can if you want to. But being you doesn’t mean you have to be a certain way. There is no expectation to unmasking. And I think that’s really hard, especially for neurodivergent women, to figure out. What does unmasking look like? That’s where we need each other, because sometimes we have to figure out what it means together.

For a good portion of my clients, just because of who I attract, it does mean something wild and quirky and loud. We are indeed out loud here. And we take people to Disney to allow them that space in a safe area, because let me tell you, you can dress however you want and be as loud as you want and giggle and laugh in Disney World, and nobody looks at you funny. Taking a group of neurodivergent people who don’t necessarily know how to do that to Disney World just helps it along, because there are others doing it.

And I wasn’t even loud, Shay said. I was free. There’s no expectation for you to be an out-loud person or outlandish. You’re just stepping out from behind that mask and being you. Which is something we need. Women are so locked into so many roles that we focus so much on those roles, we forget who we were before those roles stepped in.

Find your hive

So, what does being out loud mean to you? What does being unmasked mean to you? What does allowing space for your RSD mean to you? If you don’t know, if you’re frustrated by how RSD makes you feel, if you’re frustrated because you can’t figure out how to unmask, come join us at ND Hive. We have a safe space, and you can melt down and cry, or be loud, or be very sweary today, whatever it is you need to be. Just be. Because when you’re being, you’re you, and that’s what attracts the others to you.

ND Hive has created so many really close friendships and relationships. We have created friend groups. And I’m not the center of every one of those groups. We have three or four different little mini-hives of people who hang out together. I’ve got my Tuesday night hive, my Monday morning hive, our Wednesday hive. Everybody has created their friendships so they gravitate together and get the support they need.

Support is so underrated, Shay said. People don’t realize how much even this much support can change your life. Because we’re not telling anybody how to be ADHD, or how to be autistic, or how to cure your whatever.

Don’t get me started on that, because you’re not going to cure it, first of all. Number two, it’s about figuring out how to support yourself and create the systems you need. And they aren’t routines, and they aren’t new habits you have to build. The only habit I want you to build is to show up. When you show up, you’re showing up for yourself, not for us, not for anybody else. When you show up, that’s when change comes. And if you don’t show up, you’ve got a team behind you, a support group that checks in on you. “Hey, how are you doing? Where are you? What’s going on? Do you need a meme? Do you need a phone call? Do you need a text? What do you need?”

So, what do you need today? Find your hive. I really encourage you to find your hive, whether that’s with us or someone else. Please find your hive. We would love for you to reach out to us. Come join us and get daily support, five days a week, actually seven, because people were messaging each other all weekend, and somebody did a two-hour body doubling session yesterday. Come join us, because everybody’s available all the time, and the support works the way you need it to work for you.