A companion to the main ADHD article, written for professors and higher-education professionals.
A curt one line reply from a department chair sits in your inbox and you've now spent twenty minutes deciding it means your contract is in danger. It's probably just a busy Tuesday.
What this actually is
RSD turns ambiguous social signals, a flat email, a canceled meeting, a colleague who seems distant, into confirmed proof of rejection. It runs in relationships at every level: partners, friends, and the professional relationships academia is built on.
How it shows up
In you, if you run this way: you overanalyze a peer reviewer's terse tone, you avoid a colleague after an ambiguous exchange rather than just asking what happened, you read a student's low course evaluation as a referendum on your entire career, you go quiet at home after a rough day because reaching out feels riskier than isolating.
In your students: a student who withdraws from a study group after one member seemed short with them, who reads a classmate's group project silence as personal exclusion, who avoids emailing you again after one reply felt curt, who assumes a bad grade means you think less of them as a person.
What actually helps
Model direct checking rather than assuming. When you're unsure what a short email meant, ask. It costs one sentence and it teaches students watching you that this is a normal, non-humiliating thing to do.
In advising relationships, over-communicate tone in writing. A quick "no urgency here, just flagging" at the top of an email prevents days of a student's spiraling.
Build explicit check-in language into group project structures so students don't have to guess at each other's silence, a required weekly one line status update removes the ambiguity RSD feeds on.
If you catch yourself assuming the worst about a colleague's short reply, apply your own rule: ask before you assume, and give yourself the same 24 hour buffer you'd recommend to a student.
One move this term
Add one sentence to your standard group project rubric: "if you're unsure what a teammate meant, ask them directly before assuming." Small instruction, fewer imagined conflicts.
Bottom line: most of the rejection you're bracing for was never actually sent.
Go deeper
Read the full piece: Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria in Relationships
ND Hive is coaching and community, not therapy or medical care.
Written by ND Hive.