(All this was written a couple of weeks back, when my mental health was in a bit of a daze. I am feeling a lot better now, and I have gotten over what I was going through.)
For quite a long time, I have been experiencing something called Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD). I wasn’t aware of this term until a couple of months back, when I came across a Reddit thread. Before that, I used vague and repetitive descriptions to express what I was going through. It felt nice to know that there is a specific term for my affliction.
By the way, RSD is not a mental disorder on its own. It’s not like say depression or BPD, which ideally require clinical diagnosis before you can say you have depression or BPD. It is usually observed in people with ADHD. Basically, it’s a big deal but probably not that big a deal. So it’s pretty fine if you say you have RSD, without any clinical consultation. So don’t jump on me and call me out for trivialising a mental condition. I know what I’m talking about.I had originally planned to write this article in third person. There’s a certain relief in depersonalisation and distancing yourself from talking about your problems. But all this has been hovering in my mind for so long that I was like- “Fuck it. Let’s write this using ‘I’ and ‘me’ and ‘myself’. Let’s keep this raw and personal, the way it’s supposed to.”
***
There is a certain priceless joy that comes with “feeling everything.” Feeling for things. Feeling for people. Feeling happy when I know they are happy. Feeling sad when I know they are sad. Sometimes, these feelings go even beyond what they themselves feel. Conversations with people hover around in my head for a long time after they end, either because they make me smile with joy from one end of my face to the other, or they make me feel for someone more than ever before.
I have always thought of this part of my nature as something to be cherished. I feel this trait of “feeling everything” that comes my way is a beautiful thing. At the very least, it makes me receptive to emotions.
As you might have guessed, there is a “but”. “Feeling everything” comes at a cost. I begin to expect that the people I feel for, feel just as much about me as well.
***
Rejection sensitivity makes me react strongly to perceived exclusion. Adding to that is the fact that I’m not someone who lashes out on people. So all my reaction is directed to eating myself from the inside.
Every time the thought of “I don’t matter” comes to me, I cry. And it is still okay if I cry in private. But when the impulse of crying doesn’t wait for people to go away, I am trapped in the shame spiral that ensues from crying in public. I apologise excessively for my behaviour and needlessly so. I begin to be afraid of being a burden on the people around by projecting myself as someone who needs reassurance.
I hate the reassurance that people give. “I understand.” “I can relate to you.” “I want you to know it’s okay.”
You don’t understand.
You cannot relate to me.
It’s not fucking okay.
Crying around people also means people want to console me. This makes me feel like I am “high maintenance”. That I am being the centre of attention for all the wrong reasons. That I am being needy.
***
I get very excited and enthusiastic about making a new friend, and in that process, my enthusiasm is very likely to come across as intense and weird, which may scare them away. My level of energy in any conversation or activity is sometimes misinterpreted as me being “unhinged” or “overboard”.
I become vigilant and observant when it comes to others’ emotions because I always feel the need to let them realise they aren’t alone. And a part of all this also stems from the fact that sometimes I feel I’m alone, and I do not want the people I love to feel the same.
Adding on to this is the burst of gratitude I have for a friend, which is coupled with unnecessarily excessive generosity. I believe in emotional transparency, which often results in me investing way more energy into friendships that is rarely ever reciprocated.
And the reason this hurts even more is because I realise that romance or love or breakups isn’t the only thing that breaks me from the inside.
I deal with the loss of touch with a friend the same way I’d probably deal with a break up.
Not poetic enough? How about this -
There is an English word called ‘absquatulate’ which means ‘to leave without saying goodbye’.
To those who have already passed my life, and to those who eventually will - I want you to know that I miss you. My back door will always be open if you ever feel like coming home.
The number of hours we have together is probably not so large. Please linger around near my door instead of just leaving without a proper goodbye.
Please don’t absquatulate.
Please forget your scarf in my life, and come back later for it.
Better?
I have been “feeling everything” ever since my childhood, which is why, I have always whined about how most of the people I’ve grown close to in school and college, are probably close to me more in my head than in reality. My threshold of calling someone an “amazing friend” is so, so low that it makes me feel embarrassed when I think about all the people I’ve thought of being “amazing friends” with at a certain time in my life, who in retrospect were just situational acquaintances that I had to bear with before life went on.
***
Another manifestation of “feeling everything” is the perception of extremes. In everything I do, I’m either euphoric or extremely dissatisfied. It is as if my emotions run on a Boolean code of an HTML file, the only two outputs of which are “impulse being fulfilled” and “impulse not being fulfilled”. Even a small shot of adrenaline makes my heart pump with disproportionate joy and excitement, while at the same time, I get bored of things way too easily so as to be severely disappointed with life every time it enters into some set routine.
This dichotomy makes me feel as if the brakes of my car have gone into berserker mode and someone has planted a bomb which will burst if the speed drops below 100. I can only survive if I keep getting hits of adrenaline. Mundane life makes me… disillusioned.
The perception of extremes also applies to how I think about myself among a group of people. When I am quiet in a group conversation, a part of me says, “You’re boring. You’re not good company. You don’t know how to talk.” And when I open my mouth, another part of me says, “You’re being annoying. No one’s interested in what you say because you don’t matter, and they don’t care. You should just stop.”
So more often than not, I tend to zone out when I’m sitting together in a group.
***
There is a great deal of attention bias that comes with rejection sensitivity. Every time I wish to talk about my relationships, I keep going back to how I felt when I lost a friend. Not only is it difficult for me to understand that someone isn’t as close to me as I think they are, but it is also worth realising that I pay far more attention to how the lack of mutualism in my relationships affect me, rather than all the good things that happened when I was in touch with that person.
One of the worst emotional breakdowns that I had in the recent times was when I began interpreting RSD as if everything I thought was only my problem.
“It’s not that people take me for granted. It’s me who is the problem. I waste myself.”
“It’s not that I didn’t get what I deserved in a relationship. It’s me who is the problem. I expect more than I should.”
“It’s not that they didn’t care enough to check on me when I expected them to. It’s me who is the problem. I have been nothing but a pebble in people’s shoes, and I deserve to be thrown away.”
A huge downside to such terminologies like RSD is that you begin to feel there is nothing wrong with the people around you -
I have been “feeling everything” ever since my childhood, which is why, I have always whined about how most of the people I’ve grown close to in school and college, are probably close to me more in my head than in reality. My threshold of calling someone an “amazing friend” is so, so low that it makes me feel embarrassed when I think about all the people I’ve thought of being “amazing friends” with at a certain time in my life, who in retrospect were just situational acquaintances that I had to bear with before life went on.
***
Another manifestation of “feeling everything” is the perception of extremes. In everything I do, I’m either euphoric or extremely dissatisfied. It is as if my emotions run on a Boolean code of an HTML file, the only two outputs of which are “impulse being fulfilled” and “impulse not being fulfilled”. Even a small shot of adrenaline makes my heart pump with disproportionate joy and excitement, while at the same time, I get bored of things way too easily so as to be severely disappointed with life every time it enters into some set routine.
This dichotomy makes me feel as if the brakes of my car have gone into berserker mode and someone has planted a bomb which will burst if the speed drops below 100. I can only survive if I keep getting hits of adrenaline. Mundane life makes me… disillusioned.
The perception of extremes also applies to how I think about myself among a group of people. When I am quiet in a group conversation, a part of me says, “You’re boring. You’re not good company. You don’t know how to talk.” And when I open my mouth, another part of me says, “You’re being annoying. No one’s interested in what you say because you don’t matter, and they don’t care. You should just stop.”
So more often than not, I tend to zone out when I’m sitting together in a group.
***
There is a great deal of attention bias that comes with rejection sensitivity. Every time I wish to talk about my relationships, I keep going back to how I felt when I lost a friend. Not only is it difficult for me to understand that someone isn’t as close to me as I think they are, but it is also worth realising that I pay far more attention to how the lack of mutualism in my relationships affect me, rather than all the good things that happened when I was in touch with that person.
One of the worst emotional breakdowns that I had in the recent times was when I began interpreting RSD as if everything I thought was only my problem.
“It’s not that people take me for granted. It’s me who is the problem. I waste myself.”
“It’s not that I didn’t get what I deserved in a relationship. It’s me who is the problem. I expect more than I should.”
“It’s not that they didn’t care enough to check on me when I expected them to. It’s me who is the problem. I have been nothing but a pebble in people’s shoes, and I deserve to be thrown away.”
A huge downside to such terminologies like RSD is that you begin to feel there is nothing wrong with the people around you -
"Because I have this condition, the problem lies within me."
And this thought relapses you back into a downward spiral from an otherwise uphill healing process. It takes a long time then to understand that there is more to the problem than you alone.
I don’t experience rejection sensitivity because there is something wrong in me. I experience it because of my experiences with people. Those people, and those experiences, are just as responsible as I am for whatever I’m going through.
***
I don’t experience rejection sensitivity because there is something wrong in me. I experience it because of my experiences with people. Those people, and those experiences, are just as responsible as I am for whatever I’m going through.
***
For me, the realisation that humans fade in and out of each others’ lives has been - to say the least - bitter. No matter how I think about it, there is no way I can make it sound… poetic.
Sometimes, you need not use strong words or deep analogies or beautiful imagery to describe what you are going through.
Nothing about all this is poetic. There is no pattern in the clouds, or music in the waves, or beauty in the imperfections.
There is nothing poetic about my breakdowns. There is nothing metaphorical about hurting myself.
It is what it is.
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