#emotional dysregulation
Someone on reddit was asking if anyone else with borderline personality disorder sometimes liked the fact that they had it because of a certain mood they felt or whatever. Someone said yes and gave an example and some said no.
The only thing I like about me having this disorder is when I feel completely numb and unexpressive towards a lot of things/people. Im not really sad, my whole brain is just in a “i dont give a fuck” attitude and I tend to isolate myself from others and my own life for a while. It feels like a small break from all the mood swings and it’s easier to live life for a bit. It can make me feel somewhat happy, not caring about so much, and just living life while blasting alt metal/rock in my ears to drown everything else out and be consumed in only one thing that can’t hurt me. It’s a break away from myself. (& yeah the dissociation from myself can play a huge part in it) however, my empathy is lowered towards others.
I really wish people would react to Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria as largely a result of the way we treat ADHD people and especially ADHD children.
As someone with ADHD it’s super common for us to plain not realize how loud we are, to be told how quiet we are by one person while constantly being told we’re far too loud by others. We all experience not noticing something embarrassing about ourselves until we find out other people were making fun of said trait. We often experience being called stupid, the r slur, useless, lazy, often from an absurdly young age. We often will find out someone we thought we were cool with finds us obnoxious or annoying. We often have the experience of being treated like we’re dumb, like we’re basically children, like we can’t do anything right.
I feel like framing RSD as something purely inherent in ADHD and not something society feeds into allows neurotypical people off the hook, and we need to start addressing this.
I jsut want to add that the reason it is so prominent in people with adhd is emotional dysregulation. The mix of near constant negative feedback and an inability to regulate extreme emotion is highly likely the cause of rsd
The same symptoms in other contexts is/were(?) referred to as “atypical depression” traditionally IIRC, which is pretty telling.
And honestly as much as I like having the term “Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria” to describe those feelings in my own head, as a reminder that sometimes it’s just Anxiety out of proportion with reality (one of the best ways to address it when it pops up, in my experience, is to Question it)…it really is SO MUCH a byproduct of self esteem issues that “atypical depression” is a better labelIMO.
Also of note: the cluster of symptoms we call ADHD has a comorbidity rate of at least 80% last I checked (that is, at least 4 out of 5 people with an ADHD diagnosis ALSO have at least one other psychiatric diagnosis), with the MOST common being disorders involving anxiety and/or depression.
And I don’t think it’s JUST “emotional dysregulation” responsible for that.
I think it’s that AND the impact (read: stress) of living with all those symptoms,and living with the way people treat you in response to them.
Especially since ableism is so ingrained in our society that a LOT of the things that stem as side effects of mental illness, go unrecognized as such during the most fundamental parts of our development :\
(On that note: pro-tip, parents! If your kid’s room is perpetually messy - especially if it starts to look anything like the Hoarders on TV - SOMETHING is going on and it’s almost certainly NOT just “laziness”! Also a lot of “moody teen” behavior is, as it turns out, actually anxiety/depression/ADHD-type impulse control symptoms, just sayin’…)
I’m so happy to see Black people parenting differently from their own upbringing. Why subject your child(ren) to the trauma you endured and hated from your parents? I’m especially happy where little Black girls are concerned. When young, we were labeled “sassy”, we needed an “attitude” adjustment, ‘we thought we were grown’ and blah blah all because no one told us how to express ourselves. And even if we did know how, we were told to hold our tongues out of respect. And if we were allowed to speak, our feelings were immediately invalidated because the adults taking care of us had problems worse than ours and we didn’t pay bills.
Some of the kids are alright.
My little cousin was just diagnosed with ADHD and the doctor said in girls, anger is a symptom. Made me wonder how many Black girls were labeled with “bad attitude” when in reality they couldn’t focus on the task and just pissed at the adult in their face demanding and threatening them over something outside of their control
‘In girls’ anger is an issue? No, no, no. 50-70% of ALL ADHD people (to include me) have emotional dysregulation - gender aside. That includes anger and things like joy.
This video is a great example of how to talk to a kid with ADHD! Or how to talk to yourself when you’re mad - slow down, and assess. Take a deep breath and ask yourself why you feel that way. And do your research on ADHD, because those emotional 'outbursts’ aren’t because you’re a girl/afab… and it’s pretty upsetting to hear it phrased that way.
(I included a link to a site, up there, that has lots of info about ADHD, and they always cite their sources, so you can fact check. It’s helped me to learn lots of things about myself… like my insane clumsiness is probably also because of my ADHD! This specific link is about emotional dysregulation, however. )
