How To Overcome Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD)

If you're experiencing RSD, the really important thing to remember, we cannot trust it. That is the difficult bit because it's giving us this really urgent message. You must do something about this, this is serious, you must take action on this. But actually it's completely disproportionate. So we have to learn to not trust that response. But it's a bit like an addiction. It's very difficult to separate the trigger from the reaction. Jessica Summers is a world-leading ADHD expert specializing in rejection sensitivity dysphoria. As a qualified psychotherapist, she can help you understand why you overthink. Struggle with shame. And why you're triggered by that one small comment. RSD is an experience that is a nervous system that's out of work. But there's nothing wrong with your threat assessor. You have a working threat assessor, so it should be telling you that. It just needs recalibrating. It is a healthy response, but it needs to island down. RSD sometimes manifests itself as aggressive behaviour, as a means of defence. This is the saddest part about it. Jessica, thank you so much for joining us. I'm thrilled to be here. It's amazing. We're going to be talking about a big topic today. RSD, rejection sensitive dysphoria, which when I ask people what the hardest part of ADHD is, time and time again, now people are saying rejection sensitive dysphoria. So what is RSD? And why does it hurt so much? Well, rather than saying what it is, we hear a lot about looking for a text message that hasn't come and getting stressed. We hear about the little things that go to making up what RSD is, but I just really want to give you the experience of what it feels like. So I'd just like you to imagine that you are sat in a vast auditorium right now. And around you is everybody that you've ever known in your life, the people that you've looked up to, the people who have looked down on you, maybe your family, maybe your children, maybe teachers, maybe university lecturers. And while you are sat in this auditorium, a screen begins to play at the front of the auditorium. And on that screen is every terrible thing that you've ever done in your life. Everything you're ashamed of, everything you've forgotten that you've done, and that now is coming up to stay you in the face. And the worst thing is, everybody can see it. Every single person in that auditorium can see it. And you see their eyes on you. Except that feeling can get triggered at any time of the day. You can be standing up in a meeting, and you can see somebody look at their watch while you're speaking, and that feeling is triggered in you. And the worst thing is you feel as if everybody can see those memories playing. They can't, but that is the feeling, the deepest shame you could ever imagine. And I think that explains why it hurts so much. Wow, what a visual. And I'm experiencing quite a lot of shame now just imagining that example, such a tsunami of emotional pain in response to a perceived or real criticism. I think it's genuinely brutal. Out of the people you've spoken to regarding RSD, how have they described the feeling? Well, some people have described it as like thousands of paper cuts all over their body, so it's very visceral physical language. Other people have described it as like a burning prison inside their body that they can't escape from. But I would say the more worrying thing is when people don't have the words to describe it. And I think that's what we both care about, is that we want to make sure people know that it exists, and they have the words to describe it. So I think it's important we hear what it feels like from people who experience it. And then other people watching can say, oh, I recognize that. Thousands of tiny cuts. And I want to talk about the potential cause of it a little later. There's 20,000 tiny cuts. There's extra criticisms. Children with ADHD experience in their early years. But when I hear someone like yourself talk so passionately about a subject such as RSD, I always wonder where their motivation comes from. So what is your mission in regards to ADHD, rejection sensitive dysphoria? OK, my mission is to make sure that as many people as possible are aware of it, to make sure that people who experience it a scene heard and understood and the reason for my work is that I experience RSD triggers and I have done all of my life. I remember being drunk in my GCSE exams because I could not bear the pain of failing. I remember nearly dropping out of university, which I didn't go to until my late 20s for the same reason. I nearly dropped out because I was so afraid that my essay mark would be a fail. And I queued up to get my essay mark very reluctantly. I thought I'll just sneak off. And I got 92% and I burst into tears and I ended up getting a first. But it was a very close-run thing that I wouldn't. And as time has gone on, I've developed in my work. I've become a hypnotherapist. I've worked with clients for 10 years. But the RSD triggers still did not stop. And my supervisor would have conversations with me like, "But when are you going to realise the work you do?" And I didn't know. And I've been on a journey of discovery really for the past four or five years solely focusing on this. When you mention ADHD to someone, you often hear people assume it means hyperactive child or someone who interrupts a lot or can't keep still. They don't automatically jump to this horrible thing called RSD. Why do you think people are shocked to hear that this emotional sensitivity is part of ADHD? I think there's a real lack of understanding of what ADHD is. And I think just again, to go back to a personal note, if I tell people that I have ADHD, what I met with is disbelief because people assume that these are the characteristics that you're going to have. But in actual fact, there is a whole spectrum of symptoms and unwanted and difficult behaviours that we experience. And I think the key here is that people need to listen to each other more. Because there is an assumption that we are talking about these troublesome symptoms of ADHD, such as RSD and the emotional dysregulation. Because we want someone to listen to us. We want someone to understand us and sometimes that can be the case. But what we really want is just to be acknowledged for that person to say, "I hear that you're having these difficult symptoms that you're in pain." We're not doing it for recognition. We're doing it because we want to understand ourselves and we want other people to understand us. I think the worst thing is if you experience this horrible, crippling shame, this intense, emotional reaction to criticism or rejection, and then you tell someone about it and they just brush you off as crazy. And I don't use that word lightly. I've heard people report going to their doctors and explaining this manifestation, this intense shame that gets triggered in the face of a tiny sometimes criticism and the doctors brush them off as crazy or simply too sensitive. Do you think some people, because RSD potentially is a bit of a left-field trait of ADHD and still relatively unknown? Do you think there's a risk that people will tell somebody who is suffering with it that they're just making it up? Yeah, I definitely think that's a risk because everybody that you come across assumes that their experiences, everybody's experience, and that's not the case. And I think attached to RSD and we have the worst ones, those of us who suffer with it, there is this intense shame that we're weak or that we're failing in some way for responding the way we do and so sensitively. But we're all different. We all experience things differently. And I think over the past few years, we're seeing a lot more of that being acknowledged that we all have a different spectrum of experience. And I hope that people will see that this particular experience of RSD is horrendous and in no way should it be normalized or brushed off. RSD for me, it feels like everyone is continuously mad at you or you're always on the edge of letting someone down and you're about to find out about it. It's the tiniest triggers sometimes. I think you mentioned earlier, a reply to a text message with a full stop or a thumbs up emoji. The tiniest little thing like that can have such a drastic trigger, an emotional response from me. Why do you think such small triggers can have such a big impact on someone with ADHD? Well, the important thing to remember is that language is a code and when somebody puts a thumbs up on a message quite often, it does mean passive aggressive. You know, we're not always imagining it. But I think the important thing to realize here, it's the uncertainty that we cannot tolerate. We just, we can't cope with not knowing. We can't cope with knowing that we may have upset someone, we can't cope with not knowing how they may feel about us or that they're upset with us. And there's a really clear reason for this. RSD has come about to protect us, which, hey ho, I know sounds absolutely insane, but it is attempting to protect us. And so that thumbs up or the little full stop instead of a heart at the end that you're used to getting is you never system telling you there is something to worry about here. Hey, you maybe at risk of being ostracized and although it's incredibly maladapted in order to react like a physical emergency to a full stop. Or a thumbs up, that is what's happening. I guess in the absence of absolute clear positivity and approval, we can jump to the negative very quickly, we can catastrophize. If you don't explicitly invite someone with ADHD to a social event, if you say, oh, you can come, if you like, that's not explicitly saying they want you there. So you could easily take that uncertainty that you were saying and assume that, well, if I go to this social event, they haven't explicitly invited me. So I'm just going to be a nuisance and I'm probably going to annoy people and where does it come from because we spoke, spoken a lot on this podcast about ADHD children are exposed to so many more horrendous nasty little comments in their early years 20,000 extra little micro criticisms stop fidgeting why you so weird why you so lazy. Can't you just start the task be normal why you so loud it's not that loud in here and they're not not sound that damaging in their isolated form, but if you add them all together over a childhood, they could compound to create someone who truly believes that they're different and broken. Do you think the theory of the 20,000 comments is accurate and what if so, why do you think ADHD children are more susceptible to criticisms. Okay, and I can't give a definitive answer here. I think it's definitely a theory that's worth considering, but I think you've said it when you said, although the criticisms may be small. They go in very deep play and I can remember similar situations and I often wonder whether ADHD children are just born more sensitive, they're more highly sensitive because I know that I've heard people who would not necessarily feel that they've been overly criticised but they still have RSD and what I think is those voices are inside a lot of the time and particularly with women that you'll find they're not speaking out about it and they internalise a lot of that. And I think we have so many internal voices all performing the same function, so I think whether it's out loud, which I know lots of ADHD young people have experienced because we're more intense and it can be unsettling for people, let's put it that way. But also, let's not forget, it's an internal experience as well and every little comment, we've internalised it and saved it for later. Our brains are pattern recognition tool and it recognises that pattern of negativity and looks for more of it. It's a bit addicted to it actually. So what are some examples of some nasty things that women will internalise and tell themselves? Well, I've seen some really startling examples of very high powered women who inside are waiting to be fired. They are waiting to hear that every time when they get a message to go see somebody who's superior to them in the company that they're going to get the sack. They also tell themselves that they're a failure and there's no point trying and that it's no good. So I would say with women who come to me, what I see more than with guys is that they experience pre-failure. So they just are unable to try because they already feel that whatever they do, they're just going to fail. And so that's the most common. Do you think generally men and women experience RSD differently? Yes, I would. I was really interested to hear that a lot of guys will experience a short episode of RSD and it will be quite explosive and then move on. With women, I find there is no, I do have women who have outbursts but I would say they're the healthy ones. Although you might get criticised for having an outburst of sensitivity, I would say the really damaging cases that I've seen amongst women are that they don't explode, they internalise everything and they swallow it all. And I think this is very damaging for your health in the nervous system. And if you internalise that intense emotions, can that cause problems in romantic relationships? I think definitely and I think romantic relationships can be difficult for men and women with RSD. The thing that you have to remember about RSD is that it's essentially a protector. It is a part of you, a not a conscious part of you that has to be said that's trying to protect you from harm. And the way it can show up is that we become defensive, so there might be a question from a partner. Oh, did you get the bread? Oh, I'm always messing up, aren't I? You're always telling that I'm messing up because we just cannot take to be any more wrong. The pain is too great. And I'm not excusing it. It's very, very difficult to live with RSD. I think partners feel that they're walking on eggshells and that it doesn't matter what they say I do, they're not going to be able to get it right. So it's difficult always round. I think it can be devastating, not necessarily just the pain of RSD. We're very acutely aware of just how painful it feels to be criticised, but because of that pain. Do you notice that people put up blockades around themselves? Sometimes certain behaviours as a defence against to protect themselves from that pain? I think it's really important to remember that RSD, what we're talking about, might initially look like a trigger. And maybe someone observing what's happening inside them at the trigger, or someone outside of them observing how they behave at the trigger, but that really is the tip of the iceberg. As far as I can see it, that pain of RSD and avoiding it can completely warp a life. It can warp us from true. You could start off as a beautiful sapling, as a tree, and then by the time you've been through enough of this stuff and enough of the pain of RSD, you've walked completely out of your natural shape in order to avoid feeling this way, so we don't apply for the jobs that we should be applying to. We do work that maybe is not as satisfying to us, but that we're not going to be criticised for. Maybe we don't end up with the right people as well, even worse. Maybe we end up with people who are matching those voices in our heads that say that we're no good. It's a serious issue. Could it go as far as somebody, they're so scared of being criticised or rejected by their partner, that they actually take the drastic step of ending the relationship first as a defensive mechanism? Absolutely, that can happen, but I want to say, even the way you're talking about it, as if it's some conscious event, there's very little that's direct about RSD. I always like to describe RSD as like a sheep dog that's nipping at your heels and you'll see the sheep moving here and there, but none of it looks very direct, and I think what I see more often is that people repeatedly choose partners who they have no chance of success with, and who are going to hurt them. So it's like a terrible, self-fulfilling prophecy, but also infidelities because that intimacy and the uncertainty that happens after the chemistries warn off. We just don't know, will we be rejected? We don't know what's expected of us, and that is the time when we come back away and finish a relationship, but not consciously. It can cause perfectionism as well, right? Like this blockade, this defensive, you don't want to be criticised, so how can I possibly be rejected if everything is done to such a high standard, but what are the costs of perfectionism? I was smiling them because that's my particular forte. This podcast was perfect in my head, but this is the thing. We have these ideas in our heads, and they're always perfect when they're in our heads. They're always perfect until they've been done, and I think this is the real danger. I think this is a big part of my mission that there are people out there who have something really valuable to offer the world that we need to hear from. We're not hearing from them because it has to be perfect, or they will not come out and speak, and they won't do it. I recently spoke to somebody on the podcast called Pete Wombie, and he was sharing new evidence that suggests that actually neurodivergent people are innately different. Because of that, we can be quite unlikable to neurotypicals, certain behaviours we put out in the world are met with an unlikability because people don't know how to react to us, and therefore sometimes the perception of being criticised or not liked isn't imagined. It is true because we are picking up on genuine metrics and markers of unlikability from our neurotypical peers. Can you see that being true? I think I want to come at this from a nervous system, Angle. I think that neurodivergent people are really very often at war with their own nervous systems because we don't live in a world that's designed for us. We repeatedly have to put ourselves under stress, and if you are highly stressed, it can come out in different ways. It can come out as a certain level of intensity, but also our laughter is louder. We are left for longer, for example, and I think that that underlying stress can possibly through mirror neurons trigger other people around us to feel stressed also. So that's maybe an angle with that. And in the acronym RSD, rejection sensitive dysphoria, how important is that word dysphoria? I think it's incredibly important for anyone who suffers from it, and so it should be the minute I say to clients dysphoria literally means unbearable. They relax some people have cried on a call with me because just to have that pain recognised is incredibly important. But also it's been a source of controversy because many people feel that it medicalises what is a normal human range of emotions. For me, I see the dysphoria as absolutely vital because this is what gives us an indication that this is a nervous system event. Yeah, basically our nervous system is being set off to such a degree like a maladaptive stress response that what is an emotional pain is being flagged as a serious physical emergency by our nervous system. A quick word from our sponsor. We've all had that nightmare. You're on that final warning from that friend. 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Give it a go and use the link in my bio for 30% off. Just a note there, this code is only applicable on the web browser, not on the smartphone. Back to the show. Fascinating. And you have written a book talking about coping strategies and hacks to deal with this horrible think-all rejection sensitive dysphoria. How does someone start to ease the pain that comes with RSD? So the most important thing for easing the pain with RSD is something that's been sadly lacking in a lot of our lives is installing a sense of safety. Because until you begin to feel safe in yourself, you can't take any new learning on you can't challenge old patterns. It's just too difficult. So that's the very first place that we begin. I use different hypnotic tools. I love personification. So that basically I give different areas of the psyche a persona which makes it much more easy to handle rather than doing inner child work. Do you think if you are triggered, your nervous system has been snapped back to those 20,000 horrible comments you had as a child. And therefore, if you respond in the moment now to something someone said today, it probably isn't going to be a proportionate response to the comment that has triggered you? Yeah, I think that's true to say that our brain, as I've said, is a patent recognition tool. It's always looking for our nervous system in particular is always looking for previous events to match whatever's happening to. But the really important thing to remember if you're experiencing RSD is that we cannot trust it. So that is the difficult bit because it's giving us this really urgent message. You must do something about this. This is serious. You must take action on this. But actually, as you say, it's completely disproportionate. So we have to learn to not trust that response, but it's a bit like an addiction. And it's very difficult to separate the trigger from the reaction, but that's what we must do. So if someone says something, you find out there's a social event and you haven't been invited or your boss says, can we have a quick chat or your partner wants to talk to you later? And you feel that intense fear like the world's about to end. How do you pull yourself out of that? Because that can be really derailing towards someone's day. Yeah, and I just have to hold my hands up and say that until recently I found that almost impossible myself. I could certainly surrender a lot more easily to the sensation, but I didn't have any way of dealing with the sensation. It was only when I became ill with a post viral syndrome. And I began to retrain my brain to overcome this terrible illness that kept me in bed for months that I realized my RSD began to get better. And that comes from when the trigger arises, you experience it fully. And that's really difficult. You experience the trigger fully, and then you do a series of different steps that are different from what we've done before. They're completely counterintuitive. But unfortunately, that's really difficult if you don't have a sense of safety first. When you say experience the trigger, do you mean you let the bigger motions happen? Yes. And I couldn't do that before. And lots of people with RSD will realize that it's very, very difficult to do that. It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Can RSD sometimes manifest itself as aggressive behavior or impulsive actions as a means of defense? Absolutely, yeah. And I think this is the saddest part about it. It's not conscious, but it can just happen. And I think this leaves us feeling ashamed, you know. A lot of the people who find me around RSD, it's because they've worked on themselves so much. They've developed through their lives. And this is the thing that remains. And it's so shaming to snap at your partner or snap at people at work. In situations where it's really not acceptable to do that. So yeah, it does happen. I've heard examples of people rage quitting jobs sometimes. Like someone has said something to them. Their boss has corrected a piece of work that they've done and they've taken it completely personal when they've stormed out. And then they've had so much shame that they've never been able to go back. Like if you are in your home or your workplace and someone says something to you and your knee jack reaction is to impulsively rage, start an argument or storm out, which will have real world consequences. You could lose your job. You could do serious damage to your relationship, because you might say something that is really nasty and not proportionate to what's just happened. In those moments, are you meant to ride out that rage and embrace it or can you put something there to stop that from happening? Yeah, well, the thing is it's not easy to fix our RSD. I'm just going to have to hold my hands up. The thing that we need to work on is doing physical things in that moment, which is to breathe, take deep breaths and to know absolutely that the longer we leave between the trigger and the action that we take. And the more relaxed we make sure we are in that window, the better the consequences are going to be. It doesn't help that we live in a permanent now when you have ADHD. There isn't any other time, but now is there. So that doesn't help us, right? But we have to have a very strong part of us that is willing to stand by us and say, OK, look, you don't want to do this now. Yeah, just take a breath. Even if you wait five minutes, it's better than nothing. We have to really manufacture that voice for ourselves because it's not naturally there. Do you think masking is a direct consequence of RSD? If people are, it's almost like you want to put a perfect version of yourself out into the world to minimise the chance of you facing a criticism? I'm not sure whether it's direct, and I think this is the thing that I'm saying about RSD. It's very difficult to look at anything as a direct consequence because it just spreads its fingers into every area of your life. But I think it's probable that people mask in order to be accepted as they are and to avoid getting a response that they don't like. So it's all about controlling everything and it feels I feel almost disloyal to myself, my earlier self saying this, but that is true. We want to control our environment. So we want to make people happy in that moment in order not to get a nasty face back. Even if we're cutting off our own arms and legs in the process, as long as we get that smiley face. So I think people pleasing may be the words that I'd use, but that's also masking. Do you have any tips for the people pleases who are listening? Because I feel like it can be so damaging. You might say yes to that piece of work, yes to a social event, yes to something that you really don't want to do. And it's going to potentially perpetuate the cycle of burnout because obviously our energy is finite, finite. And it can't be good for your self-esteem right, continuously saying yes to things you don't want to do, putting yourself in uncomfortable situations. In that very acute moment where you've been asked to do something, you've been asked to go to an event, you've been asked to take on this new project at work, and really you don't want to do it. How do you stop yourself saying yes in that moment? Okay, so I'm all about the long game. I'll say that again, what I would say is start practicing now on things that don't matter. Because even the things that don't matter are going to cause you to feel that same RSD feeling, it just won't be as intense. So we want to choose things that you know are not the end of the world if you say no to, but you're going to practice saying no, experiencing the feelings that come up as they inevitably will when you say no, and keep doing that repeatedly on things that don't matter as much. Then when something comes along that's really important to you and you think no, I can't do this, it wouldn't be right. You know what it feels like, you're used to it. Most of us have no experience having difficult conversations, we've avoided them. Yes, fascinating. It's easy isn't it? It's soothing to be the people please are in the moment because it protects you from that pain, but yeah, it's a great tip to hopefully avoid some of the longer term consequences. Is there a way we can reframe the way we think about RSD to help us deal with it better? 100% there is, I can tell you one thing right away that will change things for you for everybody who has RSD, it's not your fault. It is not your fault and everything that you've been trying to do to make it better and trying and probably failing to have an impact on it, that's not your fault either, that's not your fault either. The reason why you can't change it yourself in that way is because it's not psychological, it's a nervous system that after years and years of being forced through things as we do, it's now tired, it's not springing back to a rest day. So you're never going to fix it by working on your thought processes alone. Can RSD ever be useful in some ways? The really interesting thing that I found through working with clients is that when they start to recover from RSD, the RSD feeling or what feels like it begins to come up in response to when they're doing things that are not in line with their greater good. So it's their nervous system letting them know, if you go down this route, it's not for your greater happiness, have a boundary here, so it can be good. Remember RSD is an experience that is a nervous system that's out of whack, but there's nothing wrong with your threat assessor, you have a working threat assessor, so it should be telling you that it just needs recalibrating retraining a bit. So I think it's important to hang on to that, it is a healthy response, but it needs to dialing down. So interesting, I feel like having an awareness of RSD and having that validation that these strong feelings and emotions that you experience are valid and have an explanation. Aside from that, do you have any closing tips, closing advice for the many listeners, viewers who do struggle with RSD, probably on the daily? I think the most important thing we can do for ourselves, I talked about safety, you don't need an expert to make you safe, you need a decision, you need to make that decision that you're going to put yourself first, that you're going to do what it takes to understand what it's like to have ADHD, what your limitations are, what your strengths are, and to say kind things to yourself and to begin today, and that is the beginning of the road to recovery. Jessica, I want to move on to my favourite part of the show, which is the ADHD item section. All of the guests bring in an item that most represent ADHD, they all end up on the shelves behind us, but yours has been patiently waiting underneath the cloth, a very thin item. You wouldn't know if there was anything under there this week. I'm excited. I'm going to reveal it now. Right, that is a picture of a sailing boat. Wow, great. We did order a real sailing boat, but we couldn't get it through the door. Why does a sailing boat represent ADHD? Well, it represents myself and all the people that I work with. Usually when they come to me, they very much want to change the weather. Please can I have better weather? Please can I have sunshine? Please can this person be nicer to me? Please can I have a job, you know, where I get to be myself? But there's a really great African proverb, and it is smooth that seas do not make for skillful sailors. And I just really want to leave people with this feeling that although we feel like we're broken, we have so many different times in our lives where we've overcome things and when we've learned better to sail the seas of life. And the thing is, when we decide to choose to live our lives that way, I'm going to choose to be a better sailor of life. I'm going to choose to pay attention to all the different things that happen in my life, however challenging and learn from them. That's when we start to grow. That's when we become skillful sailors. And I think we could be a lot more skillful than a lot of other people when we decide to make that choice. I mean, it's amazing, because I suppose like neurotypical people perhaps they're swimming in calm swimming pools and ADHD people are perhaps swimming in their choppy rough seas, but because of that we're much more resilient. Yeah, totally agree. So interesting Jessica, I want to move on to the audience questions, which is called the washing machine of woes because my ADHD item is a washing machine because it represents memory loss. And for me, that's because I always forget to empty the washing machine after the cycle has ended. And I ask to make myself feel less less broken. Do you do the same? I just I smiled when you said that because my biggest source of shame, actually, which I'm still working on is that my memory loss that I my memory is terrible and I lost the load when I got ill. So I just really happy to be in the room with you Alex at this moment. It's very therapeutic actually to share to the listeners that I need the smell of damp to remind myself to the machine, but I've been using the TMO app, which has been helping me to remember. This week, Jessica, someone has written in and asked, my RSD gets triggered really easily and quickly, but I can also move on from it really quickly too. Does this make me a psychopath being able to forget something so fast that was so painful for a short while? Okay, no, it's the short answer. It doesn't it doesn't make the listener a psychopath because that's actually showing that your nervous system is still able to recover. It can return to a resting state and RSD state dependent, like one of the steps that I use in recovering from a trigger is to distract yourself, but in a certain way, you put yourself into an altered state, think of another time when you felt happy. The RSD will go away if you can think about it for long enough. So it's a good sign, but also a sign to say that I do believe RSD is damaging for the health. I think it knocks years off the life just from the repeated bursts of cortisol. So we need to take it seriously. Do you think on the flip side of the conversation, we've spoken a lot about RSD and being sensitive and having emotional pain, tsunamis when criticised. If someone's able to take a criticism and it doesn't affect them whatsoever, if they're just balanced off them, is that person got a personality disorder? So the thing is it's an internal experience. Letting things bounce off them, that's healthy. I'm sure many of us would like to be able to do that more easily. Not caring at all what anybody thinks, yeah, you may be sort of verging into narcissistic qualities. What we want is to feel that although people may disagree with us, our sense of self is more important to us and remains intact, and you see that's a slightly different thing. That's interesting. So you're potentially saying that narcissists are immune from RSD. Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that. So I said narcissistic tendencies. I wouldn't say that necessarily about narcissists, but what I'm saying is that if you don't have any care about what the people around you think, then you may have a problem. But the important thing to remember here is that if you care about what people think, but you don't let it upset or unbalance your sense of self and what's really important to you, that's healthy. Could someone be so good at masking and internalizing their RSD triggers? That rage just doesn't come out. That sadness doesn't come out. At least not from the perception of other people, the somebody might think somebody doesn't have RSD. They might think they are totally resilient. When, in fact, they're just so good at hiding it. Absolutely. I think there's tons of people like that, and that's why it's so important to remember it's an internal experience, and you can't judge from the outside how terrible somebody is feeling. Most people think I'm fine most of the time. It'll be an eye-opener. I guess lots of people with ADHD or experts are pretending they're happy and fine. Absolutely. It's how we get on in the world. I was talking about RSD and I sat in the book about something you'd rather hide under the bed. It's not very sexy to talk about it, but we're changing that, right? Yeah. It's one step at a time, one episode at a time. We'll have to have you back again for one more, too. I'd love to. Jessica, just finally, I'm going to deliver you a letter that was written by the previous guest, and they wrote a letter to their younger self. There we go, Jessica. Dear younger self, I just wanted you to know something very cool about your future. Right now, you are very passionate about being a peacemaker. It's important for you to live in a world that promotes peaceful interactions between people so that every person can find their place and a sense of belonging. You'll be excited to know that when you grow up, you'll actually turn around one day and realize that you have become a peacemaker, perhaps not in the way that you imagined. You'll become a passionate advocate for the neurodivergent, particularly those amazing people you lovingly refer to as ADHDers. And with each moment of advocacy, you will be empowering individuals to become self-aware, self-sufficient, and connected in meaningful relationships, bringing them peace of mind about their abilities and their place in the world. Along the way, you'll meet incredible people who either live with this diagnosis or who are working to advocate for them. Colleges, psychiatrists, medical professionals, even social media influencers and podcasters will be among the warriors you will fight along in the trenches on your quest to create a world where everybody belongs. You go, girl. Amazing. That's wonderful. What a wonderful letter. It was more like a novel, but it was very nice. Been on a journey. Incredible. Jessica and we'll kindly ask you to write your letter after this, which the next guest will read out. Thank you so much. Thank you, Alex.