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158 // RSD & Rejection Sensitivity Masking in ADHD · ADHD with Confidence | Overcome Anxiety & Self-Doubt, Christian ADHD Coach, ADHD in Women

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  I don't think I need to convince you that rejection sensitivity in ADHD is definitely real.
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  Now, the research has, you know, mixed responses about what causes it,
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  but it is definitely something that we experience.
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  Purpose, and with a purpose. Hey, I'm Kelsey Spronk, fellow ADHD mom and entrepreneur.
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  Join me in building confidence so you can experience success with ADHD in all areas of your life.
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  So go grab yesterday's coffee from the microwave and let's get started.
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  Hey friends, welcome to the ADHD with Confidence podcast. I am your host,
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  Kelsey Spronk, and today I'm going to talk about rejection sensitivity masking
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  in ADHD and rejection sensitive dysphoria.
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  Now make sure you stick around until the end of the episode where I will give
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  you seven tips for dealing with rejection sensitivity in ADHD.
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  According to the National Library of Medicine, they did a research project with
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  a bunch of university students, but they said it was apparent that rejection
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  sensitivity significantly impacts mental well-being,
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  eliciting feelings such as anxiousness, despair, and embarrassment.
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  Now, maybe I don't even need to tell you that because you already know.
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  Some of the other research that they found was that a lot of the participants
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  agreed that the expectation of rejection actually elicited more dysphoria than the rejection itself.
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  So, kind of that anticipation of being rejected, being turned down,
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  failing, whatever it is that they considered to be rejection,
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  that the expectation of it was almost worse.
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  No rejection sensitivity this is this is such a tricky one and I think something
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  that we we often get caught in and this is what I where I found myself the other day,
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  is we get caught in feeling like we shouldn't feel rejected and like this is
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  something broken that we need to fix now let me explain the other day I was
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  it was on a weekend and so my husband's home the kids are home I should have
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  been feeling good but I was not feeling good and when I say I should have been feeling good.
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  I mean, typically I would feel happy and content and whatever, but I wasn't.
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  And I didn't know why. I don't know if this ever happens to you,
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  but sometimes I feel and I don't actually remember why. And it's so frustrating
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  because I go around thinking like, what?
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  Did somebody say something? Did somebody do something? Why do I feel so off? And
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  And finally, I recognized, oh, it was an email that I received.
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  And so what this email was, was I had reached out to several different authors
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  and speakers and experts in the ADHD field.
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  And I had a lot of people that said, you know, yes, I'd love to be on the podcast.
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  I was super excited because I love this part of podcasting.
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  I love that I have the opportunity to interview these incredible people about
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  the work that they've been doing and that I can then, through them,
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  share that information with you.
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  Now, this email that I had received was somebody who had said no to an interview.
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  Now, hear me out. They didn't say it in a rude way. They didn't say absolutely not.
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  There's no way. They didn't say anything bad at all. Essentially,
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  they just said, hey, my podcast interview schedule is too full right now.
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  I can't, you know, thanks for reaching out. Something else that was nice.
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  But I felt it. I felt it in my stomach. I felt sick to my stomach.
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  And what I realized after reflecting on it was that I was feeling this rejection.
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  I was feeling this rejection-sensitive dysphoria where I felt sick to my stomach.
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  And, you know, somebody who doesn't experience that might look at it and say,
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  really? they didn't even say anything mean, and it wasn't about you.
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  And what I realized after that was that.
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  It's so incredibly important for us to allow ourselves to feel and experience
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  our emotions in that moment.
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  Because my initial reaction was to say, come on, Kelsey, get it together.
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  Get over it. This is not a big deal. But all that did was add more shame and
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  just kindle that fire that was already there.
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  And so I stopped for a second. I said, you know what?
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  This is disappointing. I do feel disappointed.
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  Why? Because I absolutely love being able to interview people. It brings so much joy.
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  It brings me so much energy and life. It fills my cup.
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  So when someone says no, it's not just about feeling the rejection of them saying no in that moment.
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  It was recognizing the loss of what I hoped would be in that conversation with that person.
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  And once I allowed myself to really process this and I took away the shame of
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  saying, you know, you should feel this way, you shouldn't feel that way.
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  And I allowed myself to just feel what I was feeling.
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  It made an incredible, incredible difference.
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  In today's episode, I want to share with you from the National Library of Medicine,
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  they also had some of the ways that they said, you know, the effects of rejection sensitivity.
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  And then at the end of the episode, I'm also going to give you seven tips for
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  dealing with rejection sensitivity, because even if we know it's there,
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  it doesn't make it easier to handle.
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  So the effects or the cost of rejection sensitivity, one that they talked about was withdrawal.
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  So meaning that when we're anticipating rejection, we often withdraw,
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  we remove ourselves from that situation, from opportunities,
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  from friendships, relationships, you know, job opportunities.
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  They were talking in the article about the fact that some of these students would even,
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  you know, not hand in an assignment or hand it in late because then there was this excuse of,
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  well, I got this lower grade because I did it last minute, because there was
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  that deep fear of rejection and of failure.
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  Another cost within rejection sensitivity is masking.
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  So when we experience this rejection-sensitive dysphoria, we feel sick to our stomachs.
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  We struggle to be our authentic selves because
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  being rejected when you're pretending to be someone
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  else feels easier or we mask
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  because we don't want to show that part of us that we feel was rejected we don't
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  want to show that anymore but what can happen is that when we are not our authentic
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  selves and we're masking not only can we struggle to have deep meaningful genuine
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  friendships and relationships.
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  They end up being kind of shallow and fake because we are, you know,
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  being faked in one sense, is that we can also lose our sense of self.
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  And that's even scarier, not knowing who we are anymore because we've spent so much time masking.
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  And this can prevent us from having these deeper relationships,
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  from having these different opportunities.
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  And it can also be exhausting it's exhausting
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  pretending that it doesn't hurt pretending we don't
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  care all this pretending is exhausting and
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  it takes that energy away from the things
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  that truly matter the things in your life that you want
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  to invest in there won't be as much
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  left over for those the third
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  cost of rejection sensitivity according to this article was bodily sensations
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  so just having that awareness of something doesn't sit right so what I was describing
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  in my scenario over the weekend was I felt sick to my stomach I just felt off
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  I can feel it in my body there's.
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  Tenseness and almost a nausea of
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  sorts and that is another
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  thing I mean obviously having to deal with that is going
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  to be frustrating you're going to feel it and it's going to affect other areas
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  of your life now the seven tips that I came up with here take them leave them
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  figure out which ones work for you if you have something else that works for
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  you absolutely go for it so number one for this, and I talk about this in previous episodes,
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  is essentially finding healing.
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  So one of those routes can be therapy.
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  I think there are so many layers to who we are.
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  There are so many layers to where this rejection sensitivity can originate from.
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  And there can be things from childhood that we are conditioned,
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  ways we're conditioned to respond, ways that we're conditioned to look out for
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  dangers, so be anticipating that rejection.
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  So I think working on healing through something like therapy can be incredibly helpful with that.
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  I would also encourage you, it can be difficult to find a good therapist or
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  psychologist that matches what you need.
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  So don't be afraid to try a couple of them and also know that you're not alone
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  in having to try multiple people before you find a good fit.
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  The second tip I would have when you're struggling with rejection sensitivity
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  and masking and ADHD is nervous system regulation.
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  I can link the episode below that I did with Jenna Free, but she talks a lot
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  in her book about nervous system regulation and how it can get us out of fight or flight.
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  Because I think when we are already feeling unsafe, we're going to be on the
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  lookout for more danger and rejection feels like danger.
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  Number three get to know who you are
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  it it can be easier to feel that rejection
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  when we are already rejecting ourselves i've
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  noticed this recently even the other day at the at the coffee shop where i go
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  all the time one of the girls who works there calls me a conversation hijacker
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  and don't get me wrong i do definitely join a lot of people's conversations
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  but i try to gauge you know whether the type of people that want me to join
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  their conversation or not.
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  But the other day she made a joke. She came to sit down with her friends and
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  said, don't hijack our conversation.
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  And I was just gutted.
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  I felt awful. And when I look at it,
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  I leading up to that, I had already been feeling self-conscious about,
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  you know, maybe when she says it, maybe she's, maybe she kind of means that
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  maybe I need to stop into like, you know, joining people's conversations,
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  even though I try to be sensitive and then not talk to them for too long and
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  ask them questions and things like that.
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  But I was already at a place of feeling insecure about that.
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  And so when she said that, I started to cry, to be honest, in this coffee shop.
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  And she had walked away. When she came back, she felt terrible and said,
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  I wouldn't joke with you if I didn't like who you are and all these things.
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  And it was fine. And we had a hug and it was all good.
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  But essentially what I'm saying is that when we are already in a place of feeling
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  low or feeling unsure about who we are, it.
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  I believe it makes us even more sensitive to feeling rejection,
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  to that perception of rejection. It makes it more difficult to recover from
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  it when we don't have a solid foundation.
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  So getting to know who you are, your worth, where does your worth come?
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  I believe our worth comes from God, from the fact that we are His children. We're made in His image.
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  He created us. He did not make us wrong.
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  Getting to know who you are can also involve figuring out what will fill your
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  cup, What will be life-giving for you?
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  What are your needs? What are your values? What's important to you?
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  Another part is your gifts and your talents. Another part, what are you passionate
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  about and what is your purpose?
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  How can you serve and love others?
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  The fourth tip I have, and this comes from the book, You're Not the Problem,
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  The Impact of Narcissism and Emotional Abuse and How to Heal.
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  Very good book. I will link it below. I also just interviewed one of the co-authors.
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  So that episode will be coming out soon make sure
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  you follow if you want to hear that one step or tip number four is go through
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  the emotions not around them so on page 315 of the book it says when you fully
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  feel the grief you move through it you don't sit in victimhood and let it define you.
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  And so thinking about when we feel this rejection, when I talked about,
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  you know, that email that I got where that person said no, it was hard,
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  but so helpful for me to go through the emotions, to feel the emotions.
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  And a part of this also is not shaming ourselves, not shaming ourselves for
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  having those emotions, not shaming ourselves or feeling embarrassed about it.
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  I don't think there's any need to feel embarrassed about the emotions that we have.
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  And when we go through those, it helps us to process them so that we can move beyond that.
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  When we try to shove down those emotions or we try to go around them, they stay there.
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  They're still there. We haven't actually worked through them.
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  We've just, you know, cast them aside temporarily.
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  So in this step i encourage
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  you to go through the emotions what you're experiencing what
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  is the fear of rejection tied to
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  what are you worried about happening number five this is not always possible
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  but when it is i want you to look for a reframe so when you go through those
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  emotions and you're feeling fear of rejection about whatever it is i want you
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  to look at is there a narrative from the past?
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  Is there a story that you're telling yourself because of what your dad said to you in seventh grade?
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  Is there a narrative, you know, what happened in high school or university or whatever it is?
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  Then I want you to look at how else can I look at this?
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  And so a way that I mean by this is, once again, from the book, You're Not the Problem.
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  It says, 99% of the time when a person rejects us, it's more about them than it is about us.
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  Very encouraging. I find that very encouraging. And such an important reminder.
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  When you are looking at a situation and it feels like someone is rejecting you.
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  I had this the other day. I said to somebody I know, one of my sister-in-laws
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  actually, I said, hey, like our kids should have a play date. Wouldn't that be fun?
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  And she literally didn't say anything in response. It was just dead silent.
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  And it was so awkward and also made me feel very rejected as I thought about it after.
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  But recognizing that that moment, she was probably just really tired.
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  Maybe she didn't hear me fully and we were in a crowded place.
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  Maybe she did say something and I didn't hear her
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  response or maybe it was because we were
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  you know busy at this event whatever it was but essentially most of the time
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  when a person rejects us or we feel rejected it's more about them than it is
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  about us often you know if somebody has an insecurity and something in your
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  interactions with them brings that up that can be a reason why they,
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  reject you or push you away but it's it's not most
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  of the time it's not about you and i find that can be incredibly helpful tip
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  number six build community now i'm making it sound like that's super easy i'm
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  not saying that's super easy it does take time and intentionality but that's
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  the important part is being intentional and not.
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  Closing ourselves off completely. I mean, earlier I said, you know,
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  masking is one of the effects that we often see to rejection sensitivity is
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  we mask or we withdraw and we hide.
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  And so I want to encourage you to
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  find your reasons for why community and connection is important for you.
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  What would that allow in your life? What would that change in your life to feel
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  like you have community, supportive people around you, genuine friendships with people?
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  And a part of this I talked about in a recent episode was, you know,
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  showing up authentically as yourself, knowing who you are, and then showing up as that person.
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  Part of that is asking for what you need and speaking up with those you trust.
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  And so part of that, I'm not saying asking for what you need as far as,
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  you know, material And that can be sometimes the case.
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  But I mean, even asking for encouragement or asking, you know.
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  Do you understand this about what I'm going through or whatever it is,
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  because sometimes people don't know.
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  I had somebody actually the other day at church, she approached me.
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  And, you know, she said, hey, how have you been with everything going on lately for you?
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  And after we talked, I said, you know, thank you for approaching me.
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  And she says back to me, yeah, I never know whether I should approach people
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  or whether they want to be left alone.
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  And so what I'm saying here is that we don't always know how other people operate or why.
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  Maybe sometimes they don't say anything to us. They don't encourage us because
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  they don't think we need it.
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  Another example, another friend the other day, I encouraged her and she said,
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  no, no, no, like don't, don't do that.
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  And for me, that was very strange. But she said, you know, don't,
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  don't say too many of those nice things because I struggle with pride.
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  And that for me was just nothing that I would have ever thought of because I
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  feel like my tendency is to see the negative in myself,
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  which I obviously have worked on and come so far in.
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  But for me to understand that some people might not encourage because,
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  you know, they struggle with pride, so they don't necessarily want to be encouraged.
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  My point here is that you need to ask for what you need in those meaningful
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  relationships with those people that you trust.
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  Ask a friend that you know really well. Say, hey, what is the good that you see in me?
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  Hey, what is something about me that you appreciate?
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  And yeah, that feels vulnerable and a little bit uncomfortable at first,
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  but I do think that is an important piece in us being able to handle rejection
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  sensitivity, in being able to move past or move through rejection sensitivity,
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  is knowing the good in us and knowing that there are people in our lives that
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  see and appreciate the good in us.
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  Number seven, last but certainly not least when you are struggling with rejection
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  sensitivity is we need to rely on Jesus.
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  He is the only one who will truly understand us.
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  Somebody reminded me of this the other day when I was saying,
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  you know, I don't feel understood sometimes by my spouse or I don't feel understood
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  by my family or whatever it is.
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  They said to me, you know what, we understand that it's important to feel understood by other people.
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  But first, you need to know that you are already understood by Jesus,
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  that you are made in God's image, you are created by Him, and that He truly does understand you.
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  And there is so much hope and peace and encouragement in functioning from that
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  as a foundation, as a starting place.
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  Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. As I said,
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  there are some really great episodes coming up, so don't forget to click that follow button.
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  Thank you for being here with me today. It's always an honor.
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  Until next time, God bless.