Taming Your RSD: Soothing Strategies for a Calmer Mind
🌟 My new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is available to preorder here 🌟
In this week’s wisdom episode, we explore Chapter 3 (Understanding Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) of The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit to discover how we can work with our minds, rather than against them, using empowerment, self-compassion, and practical ADHD tools for emotional regulation.
If you feel things deeply, struggle with managing anxiety, or find it hard to let go of perceived criticism, this conversation with Grace (a late-diagnosed ADHDer, writer, educator, and certified breathwork teacher) and Kristen (an ADHD coach, expert, and podcast host diagnosed at 21) offers clarity and comfort to navigate RSD.
What You'll Learn:
- What "clickbait thoughts" are, and why recognising familiar thought patterns can help us manage rejection sensitivity.
- How emotional habits and brain feedback loops influence our reactions, especially in high-stress or vulnerable moments.
- The impact of hormones, lack of sleep, and nutrition on our emotional regulation and thought processes.
- How curiosity and self-compassion can interrupt RSD thoughts to reframe negative thinking.
- The importance of creating safe internal spaces and seeing RSD as a lifelong partner we can learn to live with.
- Why acknowledging perfectionism and self-doubt is key to healing, and how to develop healthier coping strategies.
- How journaling helps ADHDers clarify feelings, spot mental habits, and navigate anxiety with more awareness.
If you're looking for more insight on how to navigate RSD, check out Kate's recent webinar here to help you understand, manage, and ease the pain of RSD.
Links and Resources:
- Missed our ADHD Women’s Summer Series? Get the workshops on demand [here].
- Next ADHD Wellbeing Workshop: “Creating More Compassionate and Calmer ADHD Families, Parenting and Relationships” – June 24th @1.30pm. Book [here].
- Preorder my book: The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit [here].
- Join the Waitlist for my new ADHD community-first membership launching in September! Get exclusive founding offers [here].
- Find my popular ADHD webinars and resources on my website [here].
- Follow the podcast on Instagram: @adhd_womenswellbeing_pod
- Follow me on Instagram: @kate_moryoussef
Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity and clarity.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcript
Hi everyone.
Speaker A:So welcome back to another ADHD Women's well Being Wisdom episode.
Speaker A:And today I want to talk to you about rejection sensitive dysphoria.
Speaker A:It's something that I talk about a huge amount in my coaching, my community, and of course on this podcast.
Speaker A:And because it's so deeply ingrained in our lives with adhd and many of us have not even had the terminology or the understanding around it that I wanted to put this in the book.
Speaker A:I knew it was so important to have a chapter completely dedicated to rsd.
Speaker A:And that is because if we don't understand it and we don't see it for what it is and name it and see how it shows up with all the different triggers and how it impacts us from a physical and a mental perspective, we aren't then able to tame it and to calm it and soothe it when it does feel completely overwhelming.
Speaker A:So I wanted to share that.
Speaker A:I do have lots of information in the book, but also some really practical tools about how we can help ourselves day to day to spot the rsd, but also help lessen it, lessen the toll it takes on us.
Speaker A:So today's episode, we're going to be focusing on rsd.
Speaker A:And I really hope that when you get my new book and you read the RSD chapter, some of it relates and resonates deeply to you and you are able to pull out those tools and those strategies that work for you wherever you are in your ADHD journey, whether you're just at the beginning, you've had a diagnosis, or you're helping someone else to understand.
Speaker A:RSD can be so helpful and it can be one of the most compassionate ways we can start soothing ourselves.
Speaker A:Okay, so we have Grace Colmer on the podcast.
Speaker A:I love this episode with her.
Speaker A:She's known as Future ADHD and she was late diagnosed as well.
Speaker A:She's a writer, she's an educator, she's also a podcast host.
Speaker A:And she has decades of experiencing these amazing planners and she's now blending them together with her ADHD knowledge and a scientific research and helping so many people embrace their individuality and work, actually work so they can thrive with their neurodiverse brains.
Speaker A:We talk about sort of this explanation of what our thoughts are actually doing when we're experiencing RSD and gives us a way to identify and reframe these thoughts into more constructive and less dramatic ones.
Speaker A:And then we can blend our mental and our physical wellbeing strategies to help manage these very, very intense RSD emotions so we can help improve our productivity, our well being our balance, our stability, but also that internal narrative that we live with.
Speaker A:And you'll also hear from Kristin Carter, who was my guest right at the beginning of the podcast.
Speaker A:She was one of my first guests and one of the first people I spoke to.
Speaker A:And I absolutely love Kristin.
Speaker A:I love her podcast.
Speaker A:And she has some fantastic wisdom on how RSD can show up.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker A:But here is Grace's clip.
Speaker A:First, can I ask a little bit about.
Speaker B:Actually, I really love this, what you.
Speaker A:Described it with when talking about rsd, but you gave it this kind of like this terminology of clickbait, click bait thoughts, which I found really interesting because straight away I thought, oh my God, that's exactly what RSD is.
Speaker A:That is what happens.
Speaker A:Perhaps you can explain a little bit about this concept.
Speaker C:I developed this concept because I needed to explain it to my 9 year old.
Speaker C:And this is the teacher coming out of me.
Speaker C:But I think that when you're trying to explain things to kids, you're trying to find a really clear example that they understand.
Speaker C:And because he's a, he's a gen zer, giving him an example around the Internet worked.
Speaker C:So in the book, I explain that in a simple way based on science, but also so that anyone can understand it.
Speaker C:I just explain how the brain is based on feedback loops.
Speaker C:And when we're creating patterns in our brains, our neurons are all firing together and wiring together and creating these habits and these mental habits.
Speaker C:So I actually kind of lead into talking about RSD by talking about our emotions as habits.
Speaker C:We often don't realize that we don't have as much control as we think we do over our emotions.
Speaker C:As ADHD is, we get pulled a lot of the time by these emotional currents and on autopilot.
Speaker C:And so explaining how our thought processes work, I use the example of an algorithm like the Google algorithm, where when you put a search topic in, it'll give you a list of things that it thinks you're going to click on.
Speaker C:And it always puts the clickbait thought at the very top because it wants you to click on that.
Speaker C:And so the clickbait result is usually very emotional.
Speaker C:If it's an emotional topic, it's usually very controversial and it could be something that probably is unverifiable.
Speaker C:And so when we're experiencing things in our life, maybe our friend cancels on us at the last minute, or maybe our boss sends us a text saying, I need to have a meeting with you.
Speaker C:Our brains will try and give us the thought that it thinks will protect us the most.
Speaker C:That clickbait thought.
Speaker C:And it's usually the most RSD fueled one, the most unverifiable, the most dramatic and the most emotionally intense thought.
Speaker C:And so in the book, I kind of explain how to identify a clickbait thought and how to actually kind of pull it apart in slow motion and say, okay, that RSD thought, that dramatic thought, that was my brain's algorithm working.
Speaker C:And just like on Google, I can choose to scroll past it and go down and find something five, six, seven spots down that might be more suitable to this scenario.
Speaker C:So, for example, in the book, the clickbait thought, for one scenario, you perform really well in a job interview, but you don't get the job.
Speaker C:We've all been there.
Speaker C:We thought we did really well.
Speaker C:We were expecting that call saying, you've got it.
Speaker C:And they say, thanks so much for your time, but we've gone another direction.
Speaker C:I don't know about you, Kate, but my first thought is, usually they hated me.
Speaker C:I'm a terrible human being.
Speaker C:Clearly, they exposed me for the fraud that I am.
Speaker C:I don't know why I ever thought I should apply for that job.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And that if we kind of go for the clickbait thought, we kind of feel weirdly, not good.
Speaker C:But it's just like, ah, yeah, that feels right.
Speaker C:It's like a puzzle piece clicking into place.
Speaker C:Because our brain's an algorithm and our thoughts are patterns, and so it goes.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker C:That's the thought that we've had before.
Speaker C:That feels right.
Speaker C:If you asked your brain to keep on thinking of other thoughts and what other things could be further down the list, you might find, and I'm just reading from the book here, I thought I made a good impression, so that's really disappointing.
Speaker C:That could be the second thought, third thought.
Speaker C:Maybe someone higher up made the decision.
Speaker C:Maybe it wasn't the person that interviewed me for the job.
Speaker C:Maybe they hired internally.
Speaker C:Maybe they hired someone who was happier with a lower salary.
Speaker C:Maybe they hired someone who could work more flexible hours.
Speaker C:And that's just that one scenario.
Speaker C:But straight away, by the end, you're left feeling a little bit more curious.
Speaker C:And if there's one thing I've learned about the ADHD nervous system, number one, it doesn't really age in the sense that things that work for kids work for us.
Speaker C:And something I've used a lot in my teaching experience and with my kids is curiosity.
Speaker C:So if they don't, if they can't move through something, I'll usually try and activate their curiosity because that's activating their interest.
Speaker C:Based nervous system, which is one of the strongest systems in the ADHD body.
Speaker C:So by kind of working further down that RSD clickbait list and getting to the point where we say maybe they hired someone who could work more flexible hours or had a lower salary, we start thinking, oh, I wonder if I could work more flexible hours.
Speaker C:I wonder if in the next job interview if I mentioned that, whether that might make me a better candidate.
Speaker C:And so then we feel a bit more empowered instead of focusing on that, I'm the worst, no one likes me, I'm gonna never get a job kind of energy.
Speaker A:Yeah, Yeah, I think I love this analogy and I love everything that you've just explained and you can really see how this educator side of you comes out, because we just need.
Speaker A:We need analogies.
Speaker A:We need to be able to understand it.
Speaker A:Because when we understand our behavior, then we can choo.
Speaker A:Choose different thoughts and we can choose, you know, to think exactly what you said with these different perspectives, which feel more compassionate, they feel more gentle.
Speaker A:And it's kind of like having that wiser person speak to us and say to us, well, have you thought about this?
Speaker A:And obviously, because our sort of propensity to catastrophize and this all or nothing thinking that many of us do have, we go straight for that very negative bias.
Speaker A:But actually, there's always other options and there's always other reasons.
Speaker A:And to have the these other reasons presented to us always kind of calms everything down.
Speaker A:So I think straight away, when you said about the clickbait, I was like, it's kind of like the Daily Mail of our brain, you know, straight.
Speaker A:The Daily Mail just loves to just dramatize and make everything dreadful.
Speaker A:And you'll, you know, forever read the worst things in the world in the Daily Mail.
Speaker A:And so I actively never read it.
Speaker A:But if we then choose our media streams, the accounts that we follow, everything is a bit more intentional, then it's the same with our thought process.
Speaker A:We can just be more intentional.
Speaker A:But it does take time.
Speaker A:So I just wanted to say thank you for that because I actually think that's incredibly helpful because RSD is one of those things that I hear about so much.
Speaker A:You know, it's something that I experience same with my children as well.
Speaker A:You know, constantly talking to them about it and helping them understand.
Speaker A:And also, you know, a lot of my clients, my community, say it's so hard because, you know, whether it's relationships, it's career, it's friendships, you know, it doesn't matter how old we are.
Speaker A:We're navigating, we're navigating this.
Speaker A:So it's a great part of your book.
Speaker A:So thank you.
Speaker C:No, you're welcome.
Speaker C:And I want to just quickly add because I can't talk about these top down approaches when we're, when we're talking.
Speaker C:As you know, Kate, you're a coach as well and an NLP practitioner.
Speaker C:I think I read on your website and I know that you're so invested in the nervous system as well.
Speaker C:And you'll agree with this that we, when we talk about things like here's a thought process or a thought experiment that might help you, these work in tandem with our nervous system.
Speaker C:And that's why I've written the book in the way that I have where I've talked about emotional dysregulation in one chapter, which is color coded in red, and I've talked about the nervous system in the yellow chapter and then talked about productivity in the green chapter because they all tie together.
Speaker C:And if you're trying to do a thought process that's sort of like more of a cognitive behavioral therapy style thing or a dialectical behavior style thinking exercise where there's two things that can be true if you're dysregulated in your nervous system, if there are bottom up, we call them bottom up processes that are dysregulating us or stimuli, then that's not going to work.
Speaker C:So if you're overtired, if the lights are too bright, if you're uncomfortable, if your clothes are too tight, if you haven't eaten those interoceptive hormones, yeah, all of those things going on inside our bodies also affect obviously what's going on in our brains.
Speaker C:And so we have that top down approach of trying to come with our thoughts and use our thoughts to affect our bodies and then also using our bodies to affect our thoughts.
Speaker C:And so using those two things together is so important in understanding how ADHD is, can be more productive, but also rest and work in those natural cycles that we've got because it's not only about, it's not all about being productive at all.
Speaker C:And yeah, I think we need to start to think about more holistically, how am I functioning as a human rather than how much work am I squeezing out of myself, you know?
Speaker A:So I hope you found that explanation with Grace helpful.
Speaker A:And now here is my conversation from quite a few years ago with Kristin Carder.
Speaker A:So a little bit of info about Kristin Carder.
Speaker A:She's a fantastic ADHD expert, she's a podcast host and she has an amazing community of coaching adults with ADHD.
Speaker A:And after 15 years of research and experience, she's also helping so many neurodivergent adults to finally thrive and live with their brains.
Speaker A:And some of the themes that Kristen and I talk about is this fear of rejection criticism that shows up so pervasively with rsd and also the social element of it as well, the social media anxiety and all this perfectionism and, and how we can work with ourselves, work with our brains, using things like journaling and accepting that RSD is going to be a part of us.
Speaker A:But how can we soothe it and lessen it and start building a more supportive mindset to help ourselves without being so hard on ourselves, without this education before of rsd?
Speaker A:So here is my clip with Kristin Carter.
Speaker B:You don't have to be ADHD to feel that sensitivity.
Speaker B:But I think what is very often with adhd, which is why people talk about rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria so much, is that we do feel very, very deeply.
Speaker B:So something that it can be perceived as small, that someone else may just brush off and just forget about, we.
Speaker A:Hold on to that and we ruminate.
Speaker B:And we overthink it and it goes on sort of on a loop in a thought cycle and we lie in bed and we're wide awake and we keep thinking about that one comment.
Speaker B:But you know, I had a client the other day and she's been newly diagnosed with adhd.
Speaker B:And she was talking to me and explained all this stuff very similar to what we're talking about, perfectionism and not wanting to put anything out there and not quite believing in herself and all of this.
Speaker B:And I said to her, have you heard of rsd?
Speaker B:And she's like, no, I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker B:So during our session, I pulled up article after article and I told her about, you know, experts working in this field and podcasts and webinars.
Speaker B:And she was just like, her head was just blown away because all of a sudden there was an explanation, there was a reason, there was a neurological reason why this sensitivity has been there all her life and why she fears criticism and why the perfectionism is such a big part.
Speaker B:So I think what I want to explain is that it can, we can dissipate it, we can make it kind of a bit of a smaller voice, but we are probably going to have this propensity for it most of our lives.
Speaker B:But that awareness that we talked about before and that acknowledgement and then the self compassion of it rearing its head, showing up when we don't want it, when we're just about to push ourselves out of our comfort zone.
Speaker B:So perhaps we're going to have to just accept this is going to be a partner in life and we can have a good relationship with that partner and have a bit of fun and laugh and smile and maybe have a bit of, you know, cry.
Speaker B:Or this can be like the partner that we're always bickering with and we're always shouting at.
Speaker B:And I think it's a choice.
Speaker B:We see ourselves because we're here.
Speaker B:This is it.
Speaker B:This is our brain.
Speaker D:That's so insightful because I think part of accepting who we are as adhders is accepting that perfectionism is a part of this and rejection sensitivity as well.
Speaker D:And so being able again going back to self judgment, self blame, shame if we can instead of all of that, just accept like of course I'm being a perfectionist.
Speaker D:Not a problem.
Speaker D:I almost.
Speaker D:Okay, so I within my program teaching a course in relationships right now.
Speaker D:And I'm telling you the truth when I say three days before I launched this course within my membership, I almost burned the whole thing down.
Speaker D:I went to my OBM and I was like, listen, I think I need to rewrite the workbook.
Speaker D:Please pull it from the printer.
Speaker D:Like let's not have them print it.
Speaker D:Like I was just like in self sabotage mode.
Speaker D:And it was perfectionism.
Speaker D:I was afraid, like, what if I do it wrong?
Speaker D:What if I mess up?
Speaker D:What if I mess them up?
Speaker D:What if, what if they hate it?
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker D:Like these are clients that I love that I want to help.
Speaker D:It took me speaking with my online business manager who also happens to be a life coach, which is so convenient.
Speaker D:And she was like, is it possible that you're being a perfectionist here?
Speaker D:And it was like I had no idea because when it's you, it's so hard to have that awareness.
Speaker D:I was like.
Speaker D:I told her, I was like, let me go have a think and I will come back and let you know.
Speaker D:And I did.
Speaker D:I like did some journaling and some self coaching and I was like, yeah, that's what's going on.
Speaker D:This is just fear in a tuxedo.
Speaker D:I'm just trying to be dazzle.
Speaker D:This course, it's good as it is and guess what?
Speaker D:I taught the first two classes and it is darn good.
Speaker D:But like I was ready to shut it all down because I was so afraid.
Speaker D:Honestly, I think that's so important.
Speaker D:And then like as we wrap up, I just want to say that like with rejection, you know, we could talk for hours about rejection, but one of the things that we do when we allow rejection to dictate our actions, when we feel that rejection so deeply and then we spiral, we hold ourselves back, we don't put ourselves out there anymore, is we end up rejecting ourselves.
Speaker D:So someone else's rejection, when we take that on and we're using it against ourselves and we're ruminating on it and we're allowing it to dictate the actions that we have, and we're making ourselves even more perfectionistic because of this rejection, we end up rejecting ourselves.
Speaker D:And that is just so painful.
Speaker D:Right?
Speaker D:Because then we're not creating a safe place within our mind and body.
Speaker D:We're not creating an open, accepting place within our mind and body.
Speaker D:We're telling ourselves, I shouldn't have done that.
Speaker D:I should have done it differently.
Speaker D:I did it wrong.
Speaker D:I'm the worst.
Speaker D:Whatever, you fill in the blanks, whatever your inner critic says.
Speaker D:And so if we can just decide, other people might reject me, but I'm not going to reject myself, that can be a really solid place to start to unravel perfectionism.
Speaker D:So, like, I'm going to create safety within me no matter what happens out there, where I put my.
Speaker D:My product or my offering or even just like, myself.
Speaker D:Like, I'm going to go to the grocery store and I'm going to just, like, wear clothes, right?
Speaker D:And.
Speaker D:And other people might reject me, but I'm not going to reject me.
Speaker D:I'm going to create safety within me.
Speaker D:That can be a really beautiful foundation for unraveling perfectionism.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's just tapping into learning our.
Speaker B:Who our authentic self is and knowing who we really are.
Speaker B:And I know you just touched on.
Speaker B:Listen, we've kind of just talked about perfectionism in work, but like you say, it could be going out the house with no makeup on.
Speaker B:It could be going out with your hair scrunched up and not wearing, you know, nice clothes or different ways.
Speaker B:If you're listening to this, it can show up in so many different ways, and it's just challenging yourself in those ways to just try things out.
Speaker B:And like you say, just as long as you're happy with who you are and what you're putting out there and what you said about writing, journaling.
Speaker B:I think this is such a great tip to leave everyone on.
Speaker A:So I hope you enjoyed listening to this shorter episode of the ADHD Women's Wellbeing podcast podcast.
Speaker A:I've called it the ADHD Women's Wellbeing wisdom because I believe there's so much wisdom in the guests that I have on and their insights.
Speaker A:So sometimes we just need that little bit of a reminder.
Speaker A:And I hope that has helped you today and look forward to seeing you back on the brand new episode on Thursday.
Speaker A:Have a good rest of your week.
