Episode 5: ADHD and RSD: When Rejection Sensitivity Meets Rejection Attunement

RSD is currently one of the most talked about parts of ADHD. But what if the conversation is missing something important?

In this solo episode, Jannine explores rejection sensitive dysphoria, emotional intensity, criticism, shame, boundaries, and the lifelong impact of being misunderstood. But rather than framing every painful interaction as “your RSD playing up,” she introduces a more neuroaffirming idea: rejection attunement.

Sometimes, you are not imagining it. Sometimes, you are accurately noticing that something feels off. The work is not to stop noticing. The work is learning how to discern what is yours, what belongs to someone else, and how to respond without losing yourself in the process.

This episode is for anyone with ADHD who has ever wondered why rejection hurts so much, why criticism can feel so unsafe, or why they are so quick to assume they are the problem.

Transcript

Jannine Perryman 0:01

Welcome to ADHD Wise Podcast. I'm Jannine Perryman, and this is a space for open conversations about ADHD and neurodiversity, bringing together lived experience, professional insights, and the questions that help us move forward. Wherever you are in your journey, you are welcome here.

Jannine Perryman 0:23

Hello everyone and welcome to ADHD Wise Podcast. My name is Jannine Perryman, and today I want to talk to you about rejection sensitivity dysphoria or RSD as it's commonly known. But I want to do it maybe differently and hopefully very carefully, because I think this is an area where people can end up being more vulnerable and internalising more things that are theirs to internalise. And so if we get the framing wrong, I think it can be quite problematic.

Jannine Perryman 0:51

And so when I was thinking about what I wanted to get to you from this podcast, it's the useful stuff, it's the stuff I wish I'd known sooner. So I want to talk to you about my my perception of rejection sensitivity, which is an area I have researched, so I'm not sort of like coming off from left field here with completely new stuff apart from in one potential area, but I'll flag that bit when I get to that bit so that you you know that is potentially my thinking versus what's in the literature and what's out there. Okay, so what I'm finding when I am coaching or supporting somebody in advocacy or whatever it happens to be, and they'll come to me and they'll say, Janine, I think I need to work on my RSD. And I'm like, okay. And then when we start working through the situation, there is way more to it. And there is the behaviour of the other person as well. So that's kind of like what we're going to be looking at. It's like, when is it yours and when is it not yours? Because there are emotional vulnerabilities to being ADHD anyway, and then you have the life experience that we have that that comes into play, and that's what creates the difficulties and issues for us.

Jannine Perryman 2:09

But if we slow things down and we really unpick the situation, we find something else too. We are not the only people who behave badly. We are not the only people who can be inconsistent, and we're not the only people who can have flaws. Actually, the rest of the population does too. I would argue that one of the problems with ADHD is that we have just as many strengths and challenges as other people. It's just that our strengths and challenges aren't socially acceptable. And I but I think that brings so much of a challenge when something goes wrong, we will be very quick to assume it's us, and I don't necessarily want you to do that.

Jannine Perryman 2:48

So what I want to look at is this. If the rejection is real, so when you unpick a situation and you're like, well, what happened there? If the rejection from the other person is real, is that still rejection sensitivity? Are you being sensitive to something or are you actually just noticing something? And this is the bit that is new, this is the bit that is potentially a geninism. As far as I am aware, I'm the first person to say this. But I could could be wrong because you we never really know who you're being influenced by. For me, though, the word rejection, well, the phrase rejection attunement can help in understanding what's going on here. So this is an accurate noticing that something in the interaction is not okay. If that is what is going on, and that is your instinct, is like, oh, this feels off. That's rejection attunement, particularly if rejection is genuinely there as well, because often actually it is. It is often genuinely there. Not all the time, definitely not all the time. But we it's that attunement to what is going on in the environment. So it's not easy to process necessarily, we might not get the emotional work around it quite right, but that's one of the things that we can work through with coaching, so that you can get the emotional aspect of things right. I'm not invalidating the experience even if it's perceived, even if it's real rejection versus just perceived rejection. The emotional impact can be the same, but the work that needs to be done is different work, isn't it?

Jannine Perryman 4:20

Because if your if your reaction to something is to blow up, regardless whether it's perceived or real, you are then in the wrong. In society's eyes, in the other person's eyes, you are the one in the wrong. And if you are also in the wrong in your own eyes, then that's quite problematic. And you do want to be in the right, and sometimes we're in the wrong even when we started off being in the right. And I think that's part of the problem for me. I see people they were in the right when they first had a feeling about something, and then maybe their behaviour, their reaction versus their response, because one of the things that we work on in in coaching is not reacting, but is responding, putting down boundaries, those sorts of things. So is that moving through things so that you're in control of your behaviour, then the microscope isn't on you, and the microscope can be on the situation, and potentially in that situation on the other person, because neurotypical people and other neurodivergent people can sometimes be less than well behaved, less than regulated themselves, etc.

Jannine Perryman 5:28

So not every situation that we face is our fault and is ours to own. So that's kind of like what I wanted to look at. That's called healthy attribution, by the way. That ability to be able to discern what is yours and what is not yours, what of somebody else's feedback is yours, what's not yours, what of a difficult situation is yours and what's not yours. So in children, in the school environment, we would be talking about this as being sort of like restorative practice, restorative justice, reflective or reflexive practice. That's a sort of like terminology we tend to use in schools when we're talking about a healthy attribution. It's being able to unpick what is yours of something that's gone wrong and what is not, what needs sorting out, and what needs boundaries putting down. Because as someone with ADHD, one of the things that it took me too long to learn, way, way too long to learn, is about how to put down boundaries and how to hold boundaries.

Jannine Perryman 6:28

And I'm very big on saying to people, if you put a boundary down for someone and they don't respect it, it's evidence the boundary was needed in the first place. If you put a boundary down for somebody and they just go, okay then, and they honour and respect your boundary, is it's it possibly wasn't needed as much as you thought it was. But when people really need the boundary, they will resist it and push against it. So there's your evidence there. I think there's a lot of work to be done and a lot to be said around the skill of putting down boundaries against other people's poor behaviour. But if when there is a difficult situation, your first instinct is to think, this is my rejection sensitivity, when are you analysing the other person's behaviour? So you take ownership of yours, and that's really important to own your stuff, and then to say, do you know what, that lot is not mine, that can just be let go of. And sometimes that is not mine. I need to help put some boundaries against that person in that situation. When there's been a disagreement, there is obviously a level of repair that needs to take place, potentially, and sometimes not, because sometimes we can decide it's time to walk away, but we need to name things for what they are, we need to understand things for what they are, because we need and deserve to know what is ours and what is not ours, and for the work that we do on ourselves to be the right work.

Jannine Perryman 7:45

And at the moment I'm feeling like RSD is used as a bit of a catch-all, and our first instinct is this is my rejection sensitivity playing up. What I want, I suppose, what I'd like to encourage you to do is to, when you're in that situation, is think rather than thinking, this is my RSD playing up, is this my RSD? So asking yourself that question versus giving yourself that message, this is you. That's really vulnerable.

Jannine Perryman 8:15

Can you understand how vulnerable it is to internalise something as yours when it potentially isn't? Because how do you protect yourself from the poor behaviour of other people if everything is internalized as being your fault? And this is problematic. It leaves you vulnerable to self-blame and it leaves you vulnerable against the poor behaviours of other people. And we do need to look at that. And it's painful to look at it, it's difficult to look at it, and as much as I'm going to say to you, if you're poor tour possible, get yourself some sort of coaching, not everybody can, because not everybody can afford that, and also not everybody is ready yet. But if you're listening to this and you're going, oh, okay, I need to work on that, then probably you're ready for a little bit of coaching, even if not full-on coaching. But you know, it depends on whether that's financially accessible to you or not, whether you can find anybody who understands this stuff deeply enough to be able to really support you with it. So rather than thinking this is my RSD, I want you to actually recognise is this RSD or am I being attuned to rejection?

Jannine Perryman 9:21

And there are lots of reasons why we might be attuned to rejection, as in paying attention to, noticing when things feel off. And that's kind of like what I'm talking about there. So, in terms of RSD, rejection sensitivity dysphoria, it is not a formal thing in the diagnostic and statistical manual, which is the rule book from which things are diagnosed. It is not a diagnosis. And it's talked about a lot though, because actually the DSM, which is the diagnostic and statistical manual, is always catching up with what's really going on in life and doesn't always reflect even what is really going on in life. Let's hope though, when it comes through next time around, and probably we lose the acronym ADHD, that it is more accurate and it contains some stuff around rejection sensitivity and rejection achievement or whatever it is they happen to call it.

Jannine Perryman 10:10

Okay, so there is a real intense pain when we feel rejected, and that's the case, whether it's true or whether it's imagined, perceived, or real, is there where they tend to sort of like look at that. We can feel criticized, we can feel excluded, we can feel it of disapproval, we can feel angry, we can feel resentment. But really, what's happening, I think, is the nervous system is feeling worried for us, and our anxiety rises because it's like interested in keeping you alive. Anxiety is there specifically for that purpose. Anxiety doesn't care about you thriving, it only cares about you surviving. It's it only worries about you being safe. So it would rather you stayed home and didn't sort of extend and thrive and have ambition and drive, etc. So you listen to your anxiety because it's telling you something, because it is in that situation, you're that bubbling feeling, you're supposed to listen to it. That doesn't mean you allow it to rule you, it just means you allow it to inform you that something feels off, and then discernment comes in and you're able to kind of like talk things through.

Jannine Perryman 11:17

Okay, so I wanted to talk about the biopsychosocial framing of rejection sensitivity dysphoria. So the biological aspect in this with regards to ADHD is we know that there is an emotional lability, an emotional excessiveness, or emotional dysregulation aspect to ADHD. Our feelings typically are very big, and sometimes they're so flipping big that they actually shut down. So by the way, that happens too. When it gets too big, when it hurts too much, we can literally just be like, don't care. And it doesn't mean we don't, it means we've gone past the point at which we can cope and then we kind of shut down on it. So that's dysregulated emotions in that situation. But let's look at the excessiveness, let's look at the libility, the bigness of our feelings. That is a biological vulnerability with regards to ADHD. And this is known, this has been in, this has historically been in what we've called ADHD in the past, even if it's not in the way we just the DSM currently describes ADHD.

Jannine Perryman 12:14

You also have the social reality of the 20,000 additional negative messages, the experiences of criticism, exclusion, feeling misunderstood, that's a huge factor. That's a huge factor to how we end up feeling about ourselves and why we are vulnerable to assuming it's us when it may or may not be, because it may be, but it may not be. So that whole thing around not assuming that it's you. So that's the that's the social aspect. And the psychological is that repeated negative messages, the shame, we make meaning from that. We make meaning from that, and psychologically, we will assume it's us before we will assume it's anybody else. And I don't want you to make that assumption. I want you to check in with yourself, but I don't want you to make that assumption.

Jannine Perryman 12:58

So this is me defining rejection attunement, accurately noticing that something is off. That's it, that's the most of it. It's it's it's quite adaptive, actually. It's there, it's there, your it's your warning signals, it's your gut instinct that something is wrong, it's you noticing the eye roll, that there was a breath holding as they kind of like walked away, and you wonder whether they kind of looked at the other person, and you pay attention to all those little signals, and that's adaptive. That is you threat scanning your environment because the environment taught you to do that in order to stay safe. That's really very rational. That is adaptive, that is your sense of self adapting to what's going on around you to keep you safe from the threat of other people and misunderstandings, etc. The fact that you notice it does not make you wrong, and that I think is important to note. You're not necessarily wrong. You might be, you might be quick to notice these things, but I think we're often noticing what's really there. So the right work depends on a few things happening. If the rejection is real, then there is a thing around supporting emotions, making sure that you regulate yourself, validate your emotions. If the rejection is real, and even if it isn't, actually, that whole thing of going that hurts, that felt shaming, that felt embarrassing, this feels dangerous, I feel scared.

Jannine Perryman 14:31

Whatever it is that you feel, absolutely validate your emotions because your emotions are there and they are always valid. How you feel about something is always valid. You can then challenge the output from that in terms of what I want to do with this, but always validate your emotion. I feel anxious, I feel afraid right now, I feel angry right now, I feel frustrated, I feel misunderstood again. And it's just like, okay, that's how I feel, and it's okay that I feel like that. And then you move through various things. So regulating your nervous system. So the first thing that happens when you say, and it's okay that I feel like that, you will find yourself calming down.

Jannine Perryman 15:11

But there is something else that needs to happen here in terms of being able to go, right, okay, I recognise this. And this is the work of this, it will take a long time. This is not something that you will fix in one coaching session or one week or one month, even. This is something that you're gonna have to learn over a period of time, is that whole thing around discernment and getting to the grips of what it really is, so that you can set boundaries with other people and you can say, Do you know what? I saw the eye roll and it wasn't okay. It's not okay to make me feel like that. And yes, people will go, you're just imagining it, and doesn't mean that you are. Does not mean that you are. And sometimes you will just go, I saw the eye roll and I'm going to ignore it, but I'm going to clock it. I am going to note that to myself. That person just gave me an indication that they are not a safe person to know my stuff. Because actually, that's useful information as well, because lots of us are really oversharers. For years and years and years and years and years, I was an oversharer. I still share a lot, but it's from I did some work, I did some some reading of Brene Brown, and she talks about vulnerability within boundaries, and I think that was a really good framing for me because it was like I didn't the the period of my life where I used to emotionally bleed everywhere and over everyone is is is gone and behind me.

Jannine Perryman 16:24

Generally speaking, I don't talk about the things I haven't processed. I'm not going to say that I never ever bleed that way because I certainly do. But learning how to deal with my emotions with people who have who have earned my trust is something that I do. So people who know my real staff are are people who I have had who have had to earn my trust. So that sort of aspect there, but you know, being able to talk from your scars and your bruises, but not from your open wounds is kind of useful. But setting boundaries with other people so that they're not in your space and everything else, it's like, you know, you've got to walk away from people sometimes, and you've got to walk towards people sometimes. And if you're if you've got no choice but to set keep this person in your life, or if you want to keep this person in your life, but you're aware that they just oversipped a boundary, are you gonna just allow that to just sort of skip under the radar, or are you gonna be like, hang on a second, that wasn't okay? And it will depend on the relationship. And sometimes we can just clock it and just be like, I see you. I saw what you just did. And that is evidence to me that you are not a safe person for me to lower my boundaries for, to lower my guard for, and you don't always have to pick the battle, sometimes you can just clock the situation. You seek repair if it's appropriate, and you step back if you need to, because sometimes we do need to close the door. Another thing that can happen quite quickly in those situations, though, is we can sort of burn the bridges as we're as we're leaving the situation, and we don't need to do that either.

Jannine Perryman 18:00

And again, that's something that coaching can really be helpful with, so that you can leave a situation, put down some boundaries with somebody, but not feel like you've got to burn all the bridges. I definitely did my share of doing all of those things as well. Okay, so when you're feeling it and you're thinking, I'm feeling rejected, I'm noticing these things, slow down, check the facts, check the reality, and find somebody who is safe for you to process that with. Which is why I talk about coaching, because it can be a good way of you. It's a one-way lean. Coaching is a one-way lean. You can go and you can say this is what I've got going on. And the same with counselling, you can absolutely take this sort of stuff to counselling as well, but they may not be able to do the same work because they're two different things, because and counselling is more therapeutic, is more about the deep work of things that have gone before, whereas coaching is where am I now? Where am I going? And in what way is this stuff, this RSD in this particular case, preventing me from living my my good life now and my future life later. To what extent is it doing that? So they're two different things. It's not the deep work, but it's it is still, it can still be deep work, but it's not the deep work of going through and churning up things. It is like what's happening for me now and how am I moving forward.

Jannine Perryman 19:18

So that whole thing around this stuff I'm talking about here could be done with a counsellor and it could be done with a coach, but it has two different functions. So asking for clarification is about that sounding off with somebody else. So this is about safe people. And it can be you actually. Sometimes it can be through journaling. There's coaching-based questions that you can ask yourself. So a bit of self-coaching here around what did I notice? How did I feel? What so that is mine? And that's kind of the thing that's kind of like the the nub of it is is just that.

Jannine Perryman 19:51

The thing about the rejection achievements, we're saying that you are attuned to it, we're saying that you're paying attention to it in your environment, you notice it, and it's adaptive, and that's why I'm calling it attunement, which, as far as I know, is a Jannine-ism, and you're welcome to it because ultimately this is about you understanding you. But that's the whole thing around achievement. It's adaptive, it is there to help you to stay safe and you then through journaling, through coaching, whatever it happens to be, work through it so it becomes even more adaptive, so that you're like, No, I did see what I think I saw. That did happen. I'm not going to doubt myself about what happened. I'm going to center myself now so that I can respond rather than reacting, because reacting is out of control, whereas responding is within control. You're not going to be teaching people, I don't want you to ignore what you notice. I don't think that's healthy. And I think that that a lot of that happens. I think a lot of people who go to automatically to this is rejection sensitivity, this is me internalizing something, and this is me making this problem bigger. I don't want you to do that. I want it's it's not healthy to do that. So it's that balance.

Jannine Perryman 21:07

Thing is, if we are constantly doing that, we can, and we're constantly scanning, and we haven't learnt attunement deliberately, as well as the attunement that has come just from noticing things in our environment, and we don't develop that skill so that we are able to tell what's real and what's not in that situation, what is ours and what is not in that situation. That's when things can move into the maladaptive.

Jannine Perryman 21:31

That's when you perceive a rejection before it's happened, you're expecting it, you anticipate it, and you become this self-fulfilling prophecy because you're expecting it and you actually kind of like bring it on. It's often actually, I think, when you there was something that happened, you did notice something and you were quick to react. And then the people in the environment sort of judged you for it, and then you were like, Well, I don't know what to do now, because I've just blown up everywhere, and now I've got a problem, and therefore the finger. Always going to go at you in that situation. So what we're trying to do here is encourage you to not do that. All right, because that doesn't mean that it was you in the first place. Even if you've lost control of yourself, it doesn't mean it wasn't you in the first place. But sometimes it is. Sometimes we perceive rejection before it really happens. And we can never know whether it was going to happen or not going to happen. But being able to sort of sit back and allow things to unfold without reacting can be healthy.

Jannine Perryman 22:24

Alright, speaking of healthy, healthy attribution. This is core, I think, to what we want to talk about here. This is about owning what's yours. So attribution theory and ADHD actually comes mostly from the youth justice system and interviews with young people who are who have found themselves the in that side of the justice system. And the what we what they found is there was a high percentage of these young people who attributed the blame for everything externally to themselves. So when something went wrong, they'd say, It's not my fault, he did this, she said that, so I did this, and they pushed the blame outward, completely outward. Now that's unhealthy attribution, that's external attribution. There is another type of attribution, though, that I think is talked about way less and has been researched way less, and that is internal attribution. And that is when you internalize the blame and the shame for a particular situation, and you do believe it's all you.

Jannine Perryman 23:43

And being as we've just spoken about the justice system, the amount of people that I have that I know and love, whether that is personally or professionally, who have fallen the wrong side, the other side of the justice system, so fallen into the victim side of the justice system, because they haven't known what was theirs and what wasn't, and they've internalized it too much. So it goes both blooming ways. And so it has to be talked about way more than it's talked about at the moment.

Jannine Perryman 24:11

Because if you internalize the blame and the shame for everything and you assume that it is all you, that creates a vulnerability. If you push all the blame and the shame and the the reasons for everything externally, that's really bad as well, because that means that life is just happening to you and not for you, and that's unhealthy as well. So that balance in the middle, and it's like we all hate it when we receive feedback, adult or child, we hate it when we receive feedback, or most of us do anyway, but nobody really teaches us how to take from that what is ours and push away the rest. And I wish we did, and I'm so grateful actually.

Jannine Perryman 24:53

I worked with because I've done some work with Warwick Medical School, myself and my daughter Becca, we created neurodiversity content and did some other work with Warwick Medical School, and we had the beautiful opportunity to spend time with them and receive some training, etc., from them on empathy and all sorts of other things, and so a lot of what I'm kind of giving you here, it kind of like comes from that as well. It's like looking at being able to take feedback because we used to have to give feedback to the medical students, and we had to give it really carefully, and we had to give it neuron neuroinclusively, and we had to trauma-informed feedback as well.

Jannine Perryman 25:30

So I'm so grateful for having had that input because I think it really kind of helps when you're thinking about what feedback is and how you give it, means that you get really good at being able to receive it and owning what is yours and letting go of the rest. Because not everything that everybody says about you is yours to own, they have their own perspective. You have to look at it and you go, This is mine. I can do something about this bit. This is also mine. I don't know what to do about that. I might have to accept these things about myself and make a commitment to work around around those things, and then there's another aspect where it's just like that's not mine at all. That's about the person giving the feedback, or that's about the parameters under which this session was run and has got nothing to do with me. And you can let that stuff go, and that is so liberating in terms of being able to have healthy attribution, to be able to see what is yours, what is not yours. And that means that when you've when you've achieved that, it it is so protective.

Jannine Perryman 26:36

I mean, as a result of kind of getting really to grips with that stuff, my perfection paralysis went away. I still get some rejection sensitivity, but it isn't, I think I've got it within balance, so it's like it kicks in and I go, oh, and then I'm able to go, I've got no evidence to that, and I'm able to move through it. And that's kind of what I want for you. It's what we work, I work through with my with my clients, what my team works through with their clients, because this is the work that we do. But you know, in terms of coaching for yourself in those situations,

Jannine Perryman 27:07

I hope that's really kind of like helpful to sort of like thinking, hang on, what is mine of this and what is not mine of this? And the first few times that you question it and you're sitting there and you're going, is this me? Is this me? And you don't know, you probably do need somebody else to bounce it off of. But they must be a safe person, they must be a trauma-informed person, and they must understand neurodiversity. And I don't just mean they're also the same neurotype as you, and therefore they're gonna get it, because that's not necessarily the case, but it's it's again it kind of comes down to finding a safe person. It's just like this happened, I don't know what of this is me and what of this is somebody else. Gotta find that person. Whoever that happens to be, you've got to find that person who you can process that with. That is a lot of what coaching is. Because one of the beautiful things about coaching and counselling, actually, but coaching in this in my particular context, is it isn't me that does the work, it's me who brings the questions that helps you to do the work. And that is that is so liberating. If the penny drops from you rather than me giving you the penny, it will stick longer and more firmly. And then as we move through into other coaching sessions, it's like, right, what are that? It might be rejection sensitivity because once we've done that work, you then have that language and that framework to be able to ask yourself that question, whether I'm there or somebody else is there or not. And of course, journaling, etc., becomes way more effective after that fact. And a good coach will never be encouraging you to be dependent on them, they'll always be helping you to develop your dependence on yourself.

Jannine Perryman 28:38

So attribution, being able to appropriately and accurately attribute what is yours and what's not. I do a lot of work with acceptance and commitment, which is a theory and a therapy, which is about accepting what is and then making a commitment to the workarounds. Because we never say, Oh, well, I'm ADHD and therefore I'm never going to be able to do that. We might say, I'm ADHD and I'm time blind and I'm always going to be time blind, and therefore I need to make a commitment to planning things, putting things in place, strategies in place that means I can cope with my time blindness, and it doesn't trip me up all the time. Note, it will always trip you up sometimes. So you're going to need to have compassion for yourself and you're going to need other people to have compassion for you in those moments. But you know, the reality is this acceptance and commitment really kicks in there and helps with that sort of stuff. Okay, so when something goes wrong, what actually happened? Is the rejection real? Did I see something? What did I see? What did I feel? What's my evidence in this situation? Did I take responsibility too quickly? What belongs to them? What belongs to me? What is this bringing up from older experiences, you know, younger versions of myself, previous versions of myself, adult or child? What's it bringing up for me? And that's kind of like leaning a little bit.

Jannine Perryman 30:04

If you go much further down that road, you'd be leaning into more therapeutic stuff. But if it's just there, then it's okay. Do I need to sort something here? Do I need to put down a boundary here? Or both? And it's going to be messy the first time you do this, which is why I'm suggesting you have someone with you to do it with you the first few times. But my goodness, once you've mastered it, you've mastered it. And it makes a huge difference. It changes your life because it gives you power over you. It gives you discernment over what is somebody else's behavior and what's not. It means you're way less likely to fall the wrong side of someone who is behaving badly. Blaming ourselves for things that are other people doesn't help. Blaming other people for things that are our own does not help. So healthy attribution is that bit in the middle where you've got an idea of all of it in intact in a healthy way. You're like, this is mine, that's not mine.

Jannine Perryman 31:00

So wrapping this up a little bit here, rejection happens, genuinely happens. And yes, you might be attuned to it. So rejection attunement, being hyper-vigilant of it if you like, which I think is the way other people might explain it. I think other scholars might explain it as that. But I think that's the attunement kind of like helps, I think, because it's like I I feel like I am attuned to noticing what's going on in my environment. I pick up on signals, I notice if someone rolls their eyes and they walk and they turn away from me, and somebody else looks at them, catches their eye briefly, and then looks away. I notice those things because I am attuned to those things, which I learned to do to protect myself from situations, to read the room. I learned to do those things, and since then I have had further attunement in terms of being able to decipher whether I react to that, which I don't, whether I respond to that, which I do sometimes, or whether I just notice it. And that's full-on intentional achievement when you've kind of gone, right, I'm going here with this. So then you've got something that is adaptive, which is the natural achievement where you're attuned to it, you're you just you you notice it in the environment, you're tuned into it, and then you've got the extension of that as a strength where you're like discernment, I'm going to hold this, I'm going to decide what I'm going to do about this. And that can be powerful. If you don't do that, what you tend to find is that you're in a situation where something happens and you react and then you bring on the narrative that you're the one in the wrong because you reacted, where it was really what you want to do is respond. Probably in almost all situations that I have been in, almost all, not actually all, there has been some sort of signal in the environment that the person picked up on where they reacted to it.

Jannine Perryman 33:08

But I'm going to give you an example of one where this person was completely wrong. And I can think of some for myself where I was completely wrong and there was no rejection. But it was rejection sensitivity. So I'm going to give you the example of I'm going to call her Marie. That's not her name. I'm going to call her Marie for this particular example. So this is back when I was teaching, and Marie would come into my classroom and she would bounce around everywhere first thing in the morning and basically disrupt everybody. So on this particular morning, I'd made a decision and I it was I had a teaching assistant in the room. So I just she came in and I was like, Marie, you and I are going for a walk. So we go off for a walk outside the classroom.

Jannine Perryman 33:52

Now Marie is absolutely justifiably assuming she's about to be in trouble. Assuming I'm going to reject her and probably send her off to somewhere else in the school to regulate herself and be in trouble. And I didn't. We were walking around and I said to her, Marie, you're not in trouble. Still bubbling away, still bubbling away. And eventually she calms down and she's just looking at me and I'm like, you're not in trouble. On the same hand, clearly, I can't have you coming into my classroom like that every morning. We've got to do something about this together, we've got to work on this together.

Jannine Perryman 34:30

But her rejection sensitivity, her expectation of rejection came from her history, didn't it? It came from so many examples where society told her rejection is all you're going to get. And no one had ever taught her how to be in control of herself either. But because I didn't do that, because I gave her that safe space, she was able to kind of like unwind, and we had a better year that year than we would have had, because she trusted me as a safe adult to help her to regulate herself and to not reject her, to to respect her anyway, to work with her. And we've I've got so many examples for how I helped her to regulate herself. She's in the literature, even if I don't name her, because I can't, because she's an ex-student, but we'll call her Marie. And yeah, so her rejection sensitivity in that is completely justified, and that's my point, but by history, not by what I did. And so therefore it's still valid, and therefore, you know, if she was having to coach herself as an adult in that situation, it's just like the history is valid, the present, it's not it's not valid. The evidence was in the history, not in the present.

Jannine Perryman 35:36

And so that discernment there can be helpful. The example I wanted to give of myself was very, very recent, and I did talk about it when I was launching the podcast, and that was that I lost sleepover and almost at least, at least briefly considered not releasing this podcast. I don't mean this episode, I mean the whole podcast that I've invested heavily in, both in terms of time, money and effort, and oh my goodness, you know, it's a big, big undertaking. Because I was afraid that you wouldn't like it. I was afraid that I would get something wrong. And I I'm I'm I've listened to myself on this and I'm like, there's a good job I've got over my perfection paralysis because I I know that I've said things in this that I wish I'd put in a different order. I've said the right stuff, but maybe in a different order. And so what? You know, at the end of the day, it's a podcast, it's not a polished presentation. That's a different thing. If I was doing a polished presentation, I'd have slides in front of me. On this particular occasion, I've got notes in front of me to make sure I cover everything. And sometimes that's actually worse for me because sometimes I'm better when I'm off piste and I'm just talking about what I'm talking about. But you know, we having a bit of a crib sheet can be helpful, otherwise, this was just going to go on forever. And to be honest, I've got no idea how long it has gone on for.

Jannine Perryman 36:49

Podcast Paolo will be looking at it going, Jannine, that was way too long. What am I cutting out? We love Podcast Paolo, by the way. He's the person who behind the scenes turns my stuff into useful stuff for you. So all hail Podcast Paolo, he's a good human who who gets to sit in the background going, tweak this, get rid of that. Put this front cover on that, and and Jannine, you need to be more concise, that sort of stuff. So, yeah, this is the thing. So, rejection sensitivity in that context was I had no evidence. What was I basing the idea that you would reject my podcast on? That doesn't mean you'll love it. You don't have to love it, and I I totally get that some people will not love it, and I totally get that some people won't be forgiving of me having made mistakes. But me understanding the rejection, this this the difference between perceived rejection and real rejection means I can take a risk. Which means I can and do get the chance to thrive, take a risk, fail, fail forward, fail fast, fail hard, go again and not worry myself about having to be perfect and worrying about everybody's criticism.

Jannine Perryman 38:02

Because I am I am going to be criticized, it's going to happen, and that has to be okay, and I have to be able to take a situation, look at it, and think, what is mine there? What do I need to get better at there? And what do I need to let go of? Because not everything that everybody says about me is mine to own. And that's the same with you. So if you're finding your feeling rejection sensitive, okay, that's biopsychosocial, that is the biological disposition to emotional excess.

Jannine Perryman 38:39

Okay, that is well documented with regards to ADHD. That is the social aspect of the 20,000 additional negative messages, and that's the psychology. And you having learned from that, you having adapted to that, to you scanning your environment for threat. And that is what, in my opinion, rejection sensitivity dysphoria is. It's completely valid. Even though it isn't something that can be diagnosed, you can certainly be identified. And I just dropped my earpiece, so sorry, podcast Paolo, because that probably made a clunk. Yeah, so it doesn't, it's real. Sometimes we are genuinely experiencing rejection. We have to learn how to respond rather than react. And we have to be able to discern what is ours and what is not.

Jannine Perryman 39:28

And I just encourage you to find a coach who can work through that with you if you possibly can, or some way of going through that, because you deserve to have the liberty to be able to live free of, or at least freer of, because it doesn't ever really go away. The automatic assumption that it's you because it probably isn't, it's probably a little bit of both, because we are because most disagreements are, most points of disconnect with somebody else do have aspects of bits that are you, the bits of the other person, and that's discernment is being able to look at that and go, This is mine, this is not mine, I need to apologize for this, and see whether they apologise for that. They probably won't, because people tend not to, unless they've also done the work, which a lot of people haven't, and a lot of people end up in coaching because other people around them who need coaching haven't had coaching. Same with counselling. Lots of people go into counselling, really deal with issues that are resolved with the person who didn't do the counselling.

Jannine Perryman 40:32

But you can only do your work, you aren't there to to correct other people unless they are your people, unless it is your child, or it's a member of your staff team, or to some extent if it's your partner, to some extent, but ultimately let people be who they are and let them show you who they are and let them show their poor behaviour up and don't feel like you have to correct everything because you don't.

Jannine Perryman 40:55

That's another bit of the work is is around being able to say I'm not going to correct them because if I try, I'm going to put myself in the wrong. And then it doesn't matter how right I was to start with, all anyone will remember is that I reacted, and that's the truth of the situation. So that was probably a long way around of saying lots and lots of stuff, but I hope it was kind of imperfect as it is, podcasty it definitely is, you know, in terms of just being able to chat to you about what I wanted to talk to you about.

Jannine Perryman 41:29

Yeah, so this is not about blaming ourselves. It is not about blaming other people, it's about owning what is ours and letting the rest go, not assuming that when something happens that we are at fault, and not assuming when something goes wrong that the other person is at fault. Recognising there is nuance to this and that probably there are aspects to this that are ours and aspects that are not.

Jannine Perryman 41:53

And if you notice someone roll their eyes as they walk away or mutter under their breath, or whatever else it is that you feel you notice that most people wouldn't, it's okay to just notice. You don't have to jump to it. You can just notice it and have a think about what you want to do about that. Take the cues. This person just gave me a signal that they may not be a safe person. And they may be, you know, because I think about I think about my uh my oldest daughter who I spent some time with earlier on today. And sometimes she'll just jiber jabber along and I'll take a breath and I'll hold my breath because she deserves to have me available to her. But that doesn't necessarily mean I can hear every word, because Vicki can jabber on for my eldest daughter Vicky, by the way, can jab her on for hours about things that are not interesting to me, but she's entitled to jabber on. So as a parent, she might catch me holding my breath because I am taking a deep breath to regulate myself so I can stay available to her. Vicki is attuned, so Vicky would pick up on that sometimes, but not others. Sometimes she's completely oblivious, which is, you know, also part of the mix in all of this, you know. So it isn't necessarily that somebody who takes a deep breath has bad intentions or is rejecting you, but it can feel like that. And that's the aspect where the rejection sensitivity can just be a sensitivity and isn't real rejection, so it's perceived rejection. It might just be that person regulating themselves.

Jannine Perryman 43:32

And actually, while I'm here, just because tangent, why not? Yawning. Yawning has a biological process. We condemn yawning. If someone yawns, that does not mean they think what you're saying is boring. That's a social construct. Yawning actually has a function. But that's one for another day with another guest, I suppose. Anyway, thank you very much for listening. I hope it hasn't been too long. If you've got questions, feel free to ask them. I do tend to try to respond to messages that are put on socials, and if you want to, you can always email info at adhdwise.uk. Don't put a co in it, and one of the team will likely respond if I don't manage to myself. Anyway, thank you for listening, and I'll see you on another episode.

Jannine Perryman 44:28

Thank you for listening to ADHDwise Podcast. ADHDWISE exists to help bridge understanding and support for people exploring ADHD and broader neurodiversity. If you would like to know more about us and our services, please visit www.adhdwise.uk. Follow ADHDwiseuk on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Take care and we'll see you next time.