20.RSD
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[00:00:00] The solar system, the liberatory framework, and unmasking unschool for creatively identified autistic folks who are seeking another way to see no and be yourself. This is a radical re-imagining of what's possible when we redefine ourselves from within by unlearning who we are, not making self-connection.

[00:00:19] Our goal, activating the languages of our sensory oriented perception and creating the culture shifts to activate futures and cells. It all starts within.

[00:00:36] Hello Sibling. How are you? I hope the start of the year has been good for you. It's been good for me. At the end of 2022, felt like. Uh, a bit of a crash, crash and burn, not burnout, but, uh, screeching to a halt and wanting to change the way that I structure my week, my working week. And so I've been trying that out the last couple of weeks, and I'm loving it.

[00:01:06] It's working. It feels calm, and I am really enjoying it. So at some point I'll talk about that. Anyway, before we get into the today da da today, please consider if this podcast is helping you, if you're getting anything from it, leave a review. I would really appreciate if you could. Open your phone, go to iTunes or Spotify, wherever you listen, and just let people know why they should listen, what you're getting from it.

[00:01:36] I would really appreciate that. Thank you. And then today is all about a bit of a sticky, icky subject that I have some opinions about, and it's rejection sensitive dysphoria R SD for short. It's a phrase that you may or may not be familiar with. For those that aren't, just have a listen. It's not really about the phrase, because I want to reframe it.

[00:02:02] And for those of you that are familiar, I'm hoping also that this reframing is going to. Give you some hope for how you can not experience the dysphoria of, uh, this level of, uh, sensitivity to rejection that refers to, so this is a phrase that it was coined by Dr. William w Dobson, who's a psychiatrist who specializes in A DHD.

[00:02:30] He came up with it in 2017. So it's really new, but it's, it has, I think, um, caught on in the culture, especially around A DHD, but also for those in my community who aren't A DHD don't recognize themselves in that, but are autistic or otherwise neurodivergent. This also rings a bell with a lot of people.

[00:02:57] And it comes out of a clinical context, right? So presumably he was observing certain patterns and experiences that his people with A DHD had, and he wanted to name it and have a way to refer to it. And in fact, let me just disclaimer. Um, so even though it's not a mental health. Uh, diagnosis or category, it does come from that clinical context.

[00:03:31] And so before we get into today, I just wanna state very clearly that if what, when I'm describing and going through this episode, if any of these experiences are for you, accompanied by. Clinical depression, any kind of self-harm, any kind of suicidal ideation, I want to very explicitly just tell you to go and get professional help, right?

[00:03:58] This podcast doesn't in any way constitute any form of mental health advice. I'm not a therapist. I'm not a counselor. I'm not trained in those professions in any way, so I don't want you to take anything that I offer in this episode. As anything that's in that direction, right? And if that is the case for you, if you do experience those things, then possibly this episode is not for you.

[00:04:24] Okay? So. And, uh, so this episode is not, is only for those of you that are mentally well, that are functioning in your life. And this is not to stigmatize mental illness, right? This is because the framing, the reframing of this I'm gonna offer is coming from a coaching perspective, not a mental health perspective.

[00:04:45] Okay? So disclaimer over, let's get into it. So rejection sensitive dysphoria or sensitivity dysphoria. I can't remember which one. You know what I mean? RSD is, it's essentially, it's, it's referring to a heightened, intense, almost extreme levels of sensitivity to any form of rejection criticism, uh. People not approving having a negative opinion to the level that that is dysphoric.

[00:05:19] Right? That feels very bad. And for some, for some people it's, it feels bad to the extent that they experience physical pain. It feels like a physical pain, so. It's a very strong reaction to people rejecting or criticizing you or being excluded. And it can be part of your experience of being with other people, being in the workplace, relationships anywhere where there's any, uh, possibility of any kind of rejection, right?

[00:05:48] Because it starts to be something that you then get very vigilant around. Around people. So I want to give you a coaching perspective because it comes up, or the things that it refers to, the experiences that it, it kind of covers, um, come up a lot and. There are variations of it and it, and it comes up in different ways, but I would say this is a big barrier to being yourself.

[00:06:18] So if you can unwind it, then so much inner freedom opens up when you do, and it's my position that you can unwind it. So this is not. A life sentence. This is not like something that you have to always live with. It is possible to move into a different relationship with, with rejection and to not experience it so painfully.

[00:06:44] That doesn't mean that it's never that, its that you can get rid of the pain of rejection. Um, but I'm gonna get into it. So the. Things that I want to also acknowledge before we get into this is it's a label and labeling things can be, this is my position. It can be really useful. Right. It can be really helpful.

[00:07:09] It can be. Really powerful to just name something, to name an experience, to say, this is a thing that happens, not just to me, that this is something that I'm experiencing, and it can allow you to just be where you are at and to accept. Your actual experiences and being where you're at is a necessary component, right, of moving on from those kinds of experiences that you don't feel good, right?

[00:07:38] So sometimes labeling is really helpful. However, sometimes it, it individualizes the problem, right? It puts it in your body. It makes it about you. It can also sometimes be something that you take into your identity so it can feel like it's just a facet of your being or it's your reality forever. And so I just want to acknowledge a couple of things before we dive in, which are more about the context, right?

[00:08:13] They are more about the societal and social context. So that you know, and that we state it explicitly, that if this is part of your experience, that it's not your fault and that it's not something that, oh, because you have a DHD or you are autistic or anything like this, that it's therefore just something about you.

[00:08:36] Okay. So let's just acknowledge a couple of things and. I want to start with ableism, the biggest sweeping, uh, value system and way of thinking that is in the fabric of the culture, right? That is in the fabric of our structures and which puts, uh, bodies into a value system, into a hierarchy. It's a way of thinking about bodies according to, um, that some are better than or more worthy of love, acceptance, health, belonging, inclusion, and so on, and some are less worthy of those things.

[00:09:21] And according to ability or body shape or look, or ways of doing things, ways of expressing, uh, cultural heritage, all the things, right? It's the, it's almost the, the is, the ableism is connected to all the other isms. It shares the same roots. And, um, so yeah, it's ableism, but it's all the isms, right? It's all of the ways in which bodies are placed into hierarchies.

[00:09:49] So. You may have many facets of you that in which you experience people projecting onto you those ideas that you somehow are less than. You may. Also, as someone listening to this podcast, have the layer of also that you think differently, and so your way of thinking, of processing, of being in your body, of making sense.

[00:10:21] Is under-resourced in terms of the tools available for the ways that you do all of those things, right? So the ways that knowledge and information and how to make sense of and process your experiences the way you need to do them. Uh, including sensory sensations, but also emotions. Right. So the tools that you have just widely available, there will be less of them.

[00:10:51] They'll, they are under-resourced, underdeveloped under, they're less visible, they're less, um, it's regarded with value that, that, yeah. So. There's that, and then there's also, we move through a lot of, of, um, social structures like school work, training, all of the things that are a structure involving time where perhaps growing up that structure didn't acknowledge or allow for.

[00:11:26] The ways that maybe you process more experience in any given moment. I've talked about that before on the podcast, and I think it was sensory congruencies the episode, and so you're processing more, but you're also organizing that extra perception perceptional information differently. My. A hunch is that sometimes that means that you process, it takes longer to process experiences or there's like so many more distinctions in your perception that need organizing, that need updating, and so there the, there are this kind of extra neural connectivity.

[00:12:10] It just takes longer and sometimes it means that. Things are harder to process if they aren't organized or structured in a way that makes natural sense to you. That caters for the majority, but not for you. So just wanted to give a nod to all of those things because when we are talking about rejection, what we're talking about is emotional processing, right?

[00:12:33] And is being with other people in social situations. So all of this comes into it. And so, yeah, you might have also grown up with not having the time and space to process the way that you need to and or that, that being late or giving you that time would've represented something, uh, unwanted for your caregivers.

[00:12:57] And so it's like your way of processing is at odds. And so maybe. The tools for emotional regulation, the tools for knowing how to deal with rejection, what it means, why you're being rejected and so on, maybe weren't available. And then add in behaviorism as an approach to, yeah, bringing people up that is about, it's like the Pavlov's dog.

[00:13:28] Philosophy, right? It's like punishment and reward for certain behaviors as a way of managing children. And so even though there's so much less of it now, and in fact my kids are being given tools in school, and this is like. They're under 10, right? So they've, they're already been given tools for emotional regulation, for processing, for knowing what to do when they're upset or someone's hurt, the feeling, their feelings.

[00:14:02] So they're being given all of these tools by the school, and a lot of them are somatic or breath work or things like that. It's amazing. However you listening to this may have not been given any of that. And you may have also. Been parented by people who came from that lineage of punishment and reward parenting, or for whom your displaying of emotions or distress or sensory overwhelm may have been a problem.

[00:14:37] And so you've learned to fear having strong, negative emotions, uh, instead of being taught how to move through them and regulate them. So those are the things that I just wanted to nod to and acknowledge, and then there's probably loads more there. There's obviously like workplace implications of rejection.

[00:14:58] There's like material and physical safety. There's like racism if you're experiencing exclusion, rejection, prejudice as a regular thing because you are a body that doesn't fit the value system of, of the context that you are in. Then of course, you're gonna be vigilant and hyper aware of and hypersensitive to the possibility of rejection.

[00:15:27] So it's no wonder, right? It's no wonder that you might be highly attuned to the possibility of rejection and that your brain is seeking ways to avoid it and prevent it. And so there may have been many instances growing up where you expressing or having an emotion or a strong sensation coupled with the meaning that your parents came, or your, your guardians, your caregivers, responded to that with imparted the meaning that you.

[00:16:04] Having a strong emotion was something to fear, but also they may have responded to someone rejecting you in ways that give it more power, right? That sometimes, like imagine there's two kids in a playground, one calls the other one a mean word, but doesn't know its mean, and it doesn't have that meaning for them.

[00:16:27] They didn't intend it that way, but. An adult in earshot, swoops in makes them wrong for it, rejects them for calling the name and then swoops into the top. The child that got called the name and imparts the meaning that they need to be protected, that the words have an impact and a decree over who they are and try and make the tears go away straight away.

[00:16:54] Right? So there may have been instances like that just to kind of give a story and an an example. And I'm saying all of this stuff because here's how I want to reframe rejection sensitive dysphoria as self abandonment. That happens in response to rejection and that that self abandonment is the thing that you really fear.

[00:17:19] So it's that you're experiencing rejection as an external cause of internal self abandonment. And that that self abandonment, that disconnecting from your own emotions and making that rejection means something about your whole self. Is the thing that's way more painful than actual rejection, which is not to say that rejection isn't painful, but that you are, when you're exiling your whole self and throwing yourself out with it, it's, it's so much more painful, right?

[00:17:54] It's so much more a cause of fear, and when you are rejecting yourself as a response to someone rejecting you, it's no wonder that sometimes it causes physical pain, right? My shoulders, I used to get really sharp, like intense, sharp digging pains in the top of my back when, uh, my ego had got too big or too small.

[00:18:22] In other words, when I was in thinking about myself in the eyes of someone else as better than something, or less than something. So anyway, that self abandonment, that disconnecting from your own emotions, the fear of negative emotions, that response, you are experiencing it then as being in someone else's control based on what they do and whether they reject you or accept you.

[00:18:51] Right? So. The possibility of your own self abandonment response suddenly becomes attached to how other people are around you. And this is what the brain is trying to protect you from, right? Because it's a response to how other people behave, what they do, what they are thinking, uh, how they react towards you, and it feels like it's in their control.

[00:19:19] But it creates these deeply self rejecting, painful feelings in you, and it's that happening instead of actually processing just the rejection itself. So what you might then try to do if your sense of self is in this way attached to how other people treat you, right, is. To try and gain back control so as not to experience that self abandonment again.

[00:19:50] You might try and work on what? On, on the external, right? So people pleasing, trying to fit in with their meaning, making be good, be perceived, well, not fail, do not do things wrong in their eyes, right? So try and not be rejected and looking out for, and being vigilant and hyper aware of any instance where you might be rejected.

[00:20:14] And so on top of that. You are making all this extra effort to fit in, to not be rejected, and then sometimes the effort to not be rejected isn't always rewarded with acceptance, right? Sometimes you do all the things, you do, the checklist you fit in, you fulfill the brief, you contort yourself to please them.

[00:20:39] And then it still doesn't work. So there is going to feel even more like it's out of your control. That's gonna create intense frustration. It's gonna create rage, anger, and so maybe then you have angry outbursts and externalize it and it becomes this, this external response that you have that maybe also creates even more shame or self admonishment.

[00:21:07] Or maybe you're someone who internalizes it as, uh, more of an internal, deeply negative, painful relationship with yourself or idea of yourself. So, so then you're becoming hyper aware of any instances where you might be rejected. And then you're even reading rejection where there isn't any, right? The brain does this.

[00:21:28] It's like, if there's something to protect you from, it's gonna focus on that. And it's even going to read it into things where it's not actually there. It's gonna project into unknowns, right? So my friend didn't text me back, that must mean they don't like me. Or partner comes home in a bad mood and you start feeling guilty or bad, like it's your fault, like you've done something wrong.

[00:21:53] When actually they're just in a bad mood. So maybe you are responding as if there are all these kind of places of rejection. So this sucks, right? Because you're going about your life in this kind of rejection prevention mode and need to be highly acceptable and need to be perfect. I need to be beyond reput.

[00:22:14] I can't fail. I'm not gonna try things that might be hard or that I might fail at. I'm gonna give up quickly if it's not working, because that failure feels like a kind of criticism. It's like, I'm not good enough, or I'm just not gonna be around people, or I'm gonna be in this very defensive mode around them and, or maybe it's that you dissect and you do these postmortems on conversations and you find all the things that you did wrong.

[00:22:39] So that you don't do them again, or you're mean to yourself and your self-talk is full of like admonishment, like, I shouldn't have done that, or I'm an idiot, or I did that wrong. And then also second guessing what other people's actions mean. Right? So it's all this compensating and you're trying to overdeliver and maybe even get burnt out by, by all of the kind of compulsively helping or responding or being hyper aware of how they think and what they want you to do, and.

[00:23:16] At the same time, resenting them for it, and then you're people pleasing and then someone criticizes you. Or even if it's good criticism, like constructive, helpful feedback, it also feels negative and it's because everything feels outside of your control and it's really frustrating and rage inducing. The world feels against you.

[00:23:36] You feel like you can't meet these high standards. And it just fuels it even more. And then maybe you're having these outbursts or you are, or you are recoiling in, in hurt and pain, and people tell you you're just being oversensitive. Right. So then there's this like other layer of shame. So it's layers and layers, and I want to first of all just acknowledge your reaction.

[00:24:03] The experience, the pain of it is in line with the perception of what's happening, right? When someone rejects you, it's like, oh, my whole self is being rejected. Because your self-concept, your idea, and your thoughts of yourself are somehow. Tied up in how they see you, and you're using that as, uh, a way to not process the actual rejection and, and do that, but instead abandoning yourself and making the, the, their idea of you is the reality of who you are.

[00:24:41] So the response is real, right? The emotions, it's, it's a, it's real. Like this is hard. This is a horrible experience. But it's also a re a response to the perception of what's happening, right? The perception of yourself. So how you solve for this is in your own perception and thinking. In the thinking that has your idea of self tied up in how other people see you and respond to you, and it's you rejecting yourself, rejecting yourself.

[00:25:17] So making what they think or do means something about you. And in that instance, disconnecting from self, which actually blocks the possibility of moving through and processing. Just the hurt and pain of rejection itself without you rejecting you along with it, which is far more painful. So the perspective I have from coaching is you can solve this, right?

[00:25:47] It's not something that you need to think of as this is just how it is, this is how my life is, and that it's part of who you are. So that pain is solvable, right? Can't solve the pain of actual rejection. But the pain of rejection isn't as bad as the pain of self-rejection, and it's the response of self abandonment that is the thing that you are fearing and the thing that you are hypervigilant around.

[00:26:15] So the solution is to not make what anyone says, thinks or does mean anything about you. I'm not saying that's easy. It's hard, especially if this is a, a, a learned response and, uh, a nervous system, automated response, right? And the solution is also to then not abandon yourself, not disconnect from yourself in response to rejection.

[00:26:47] So that's the work sounds simple. Don't make it mean anything about you. Don't abandon yourself as a response. But it is not easy, but it is the work, right? And it is possible. The thoughts that you will have about what you've made it mean will be specific to you. They'll be specific to the scenario.

[00:27:08] They'll be specific to your history, your past. So they're gonna be nuanced for everyone. And in the particular instances where you're experiencing this, and it shows up differently for different people I coach and in different ways. This is why coaching is part of the solar system, right? Because it's about liberating your mind by showing you the meanings that your mind is creating that we just believe, right?

[00:27:37] We just believe our thoughts. We move through the world, reacting to our own thinking, and it's, it sometimes requires us to see what we are thinking, see the meaning that we've created. And sometimes that meaning is just experienced as a feeling, right? Sometimes we have to go into the feeling to know what we've made it mean, to find the thought that's created it.

[00:28:00] So this is not about that. I just need to like, think positively. This is about opening up and looking at and unraveling the conclusions that you, that you have made. In that instance, there are probably conclusions that you've made a lot, and so they've created a, a kind of belief in you. And so when someone rejects you, it's like it triggers that belief and it affirms that belief, but that belief isn't true and that belief creates disconnect in you and it.

[00:28:34] Leads you to abandon yourself because yourself and your truth, they feel good, right? So if you're having a thought about yourself that doesn't feel good, it's because it's not true. So finding all of the beliefs, all of the ideas about yourself that you've internalized from all the isms, from the structures, and the the social systems that we're in, from the ways that you've been parented.

[00:29:01] But we don't need to deep dive all into your past. We can look at what is the specific thought in that specific circumstance. What's the meaning you you made? And we do it one at a time. And once you do it once or twice or a few times, it creates a new relationship, both with your own thoughts and also with your own internal responses in your relationship with yourself.

[00:29:26] That is starts to become aware that. Oh, this is optional, right? My, the way I'm thinking about this is optional. The way that I've been seeing myself doesn't have to be true. I don't have to respond as if I am this person, right? So someone react, rejecting you. It's triggering some idea that you have about yourself as if you are fundamentally rejectable.

[00:29:55] So that's where we do the work. And then the other area that we do the work is to create safety in your nervous system, to stay with yourself through feeling negative emotion. So rejection, pain hurt to realize that in your nervous system. It is safe to feel those things. The negative emotion is temporary and to be able to hold yourself all the way through moving into and facing and allowing the feeling, the sensation to move through your body, to identify it, to identify the sensation.

[00:30:36] Where is it? How does it feel? Is it warm? Is it cold? Is it heavy? If it had a color, what would that be? Allowing yourself to go into it and process it fully and be in the crescendo of it, and not disconnect from yourself in response, right? But instead, stay with yourself until it dissipates and as it dissipates, that emotion leaves your gift, right?

[00:31:04] It gives you some insight, some wisdom, some clarity, a boundary, a truth, a new level of compassion. A new level of self-acceptance, a new level of self-connection. 'cause I can withstand even that pain, right? I can go through even that and still be with myself. So a new level of safety to feel the negative emotions, to know it's nothing to fear.

[00:31:32] So those would be the ingredients. And all of this work means that you then get to let people be wrong about you. And that you are not taking in their perspective as something that you need to defend or something you need to react to, or something that even means anything about you, right? You can let people have thoughts, do things, knowing that it's a reflection of their models.

[00:32:01] And when I'm saying models, I mean their thinking, their models, a reality, their way that they make meaning. How they experience truth and reality, right? And it doesn't have to mean anything about you. Their thoughts are up to them. Your thoughts are up to you. Their feelings belong to them. Your feelings belong to you.

[00:32:24] And so your thoughts about yourself and your response suddenly become your own, and you're not subject to. Unwanted responses and unwanted experiences in yourself relationship because of what someone else does, and that means that you don't have to worry about what other people are thinking. You don't have to be as vigilant around the possibility of rejection, not because it won't be painful, but because it won't have your whole self being rejected along with it.

[00:32:55] Right? It will just be, oh, that hurt, but it won't be, I. Go along with it. I'm rejecting my whole self. I'm disconnecting from self. So what opens up as a result of doing this work in your relationship with yourself and therefore in your relationship with anyone and everyone else, with your day-to-day, with the demands and expectations that are constantly coming at us right in, it means that in your experience.

[00:33:30] Of that, you feel stable and grounded. You are feeling in control and you are not having, uh, to manage the disconnects, right? So, and it also means that you're not having to try and manage how you're seen and try and get out of the possibility of rejection in all instances. So this means that you can take the kinds of risks that your deepest, most fervently held dreams might involve, right?

[00:34:05] Because if you fail or someone thinks it's a bad idea, or people don't understand the choices you're making, it's not so much an issue, you know, you can handle it. And that in learning to. Fail and do all of those things. You are also, when you are not rejecting yourself, actually affirming and increasing the amount of self-trust, uh, the confidence, the, the, the worthiness that you have to do the things that you want to do, so you become more okay with.

[00:34:45] Being wrong, getting it wrong, not being understood, failing, and it means that you get to move through the world in a completely different way. So there's inner freedom that opens up that's like a bandwidth suddenly available in your nervous system. So consider how much it's worth to you to have that right to start doing the work, to start working on yourself, knowing it's possible.

[00:35:12] And that if anything you've experienced that resembles what is called rejection sensitive dysphoria or anything, I've described that it doesn't have to be a life sentence, right? It doesn't have to be always this way. So I hope I've inspired you to dive into the works, start working on yourself. Know that your future can look completely different when you do this work.

[00:35:35] You start to get to actually find out who you are when you aren't. In that vigilance around protecting your own yourself from your own self abandonment response to what other people do. And I also just wanna acknowledge that. Doing this work, it can feel scary, right? It can feel like, I don't wanna open up the cupboard of all this stuff.

[00:36:00] I don't want to look at who I'm being and what's not working and unravel it. And maybe you're worried and maybe you're scared, and I get it, right? I get it. I know it. It's not easy. I'm not here going to tell you that. It's just simple and easy. But it is the thing that will create the bandwidth to do the things that you want, right?

[00:36:21] To start making outside change, to start making a life that really reflects and supports the inside you. It means that you get your energy back, you get your spoons back, and that some of those coping mechanisms that you've had as a defense system, right? That got you here, right? We don't wanna. We don't wanna hate on that version of you.

[00:36:45] We want to love that version of you, right? Kept you safe. Got you here, right? You survived. You are incredible. Yeah, you did that. You got here. But now those, those ways of doing things are exhausting, right? It's exhausting being that stressed and overworked, just doing the day-to-day life. So when you do start to unpack the stuff that is being held in your nervous system, that is in the bandwidth, and that is taking up a lot of your energy, right?

[00:37:18] Then when you start clearing through it, you start to get energy back. You start to get your own thinking back, you start to find out who you are and you start to be able to give. So you start to be able to create things that previously felt impossible. So you want things to change. It starts in you. It starts with you being good with you.

[00:37:43] And in the solar system plus siblings, we have all the ingredients to do that, right? It's the context, it's the community, it's the guidance, it's the space to unravel all of the ways that you've been being and start relearning how you want to be next. And so it's, this is about. Taking you out of hypothetical, like one day in the future and into a context where you can start that future now, because you can experience being held, being seen, being heard, being read accurately and being coached through all of the unlearning and the relearning of how to be you.

[00:38:24] And then you have an experience of a social context where you can, you can experience acceptance in your nervous system, right? Which no amount of internet information or podcasts can make up for. So you can move on from I'm not good enough and into I'm enough. Like that's a given. That's done. I know that already.

[00:38:47] There's nothing that is, there's nothing that that's contingent on anymore. And therefore, what do I wanna do? And what am I going to do next? How am I gonna rewrite my past based on how I'm going to shift things now? So if you are ready, if you are ready to no longer delay, and live by the excuses of like one day.

[00:39:12] If you're ready to invest in you, you being the pin that holds everything together, right? When you are good with you, you start being good with everything else, and to value your experience of your own life and to start making those changes. Consider joining us. Click the link in the bio and in the top of this podcast.

[00:39:33] I would love to have you in the solar system and to do this work with you. Alright, sibling, I hope this was helpful. Love you. Bye. Thanks for listening to this week's Sensory Siblings podcast. Head over to Solar Systems, do XYZ where you can join the plus siblings Discord. Server and discuss the topics explored with other listeners, and if you are ready to go deeper into activating your future self, I want to invite you to join my six month unmasking unschool called the Solar System Plus Siblings.

[00:40:07] You're going to unlearn the habits of self negating, then create self-esteem, self clarity, and this. Self-belief to model the social esteem that will create culture shifts first in yourself, and then rippling out into everything you do and beyond. Head over to solar systems xyz slash siblings where you can join the solar system, plus siblings and I will see you inside night.