Everything I do. Every fucking second of my life. Is trying to feed the massive fucking black hole of RSD in me. Everything is begging for positive feedback. EVerything is people pleasing, but in ways that actually just put people off.
Noone loves me like I love them. Noone. Not one person. Im always the initiater. I send people memes, they dont send me shit. And oh ACTUALLY the WHOLE TIME I was actually ANNOYING THEM by sending them stuff.
It leads me into such awful, desperate, sometimes even fucking abusive behaviors. Manipulative. BEGGING for feedback. From everyone. All the fucking time. Taking advantage of nice patient people until I wear them out. I ping people too much. Sometimes I ping them again if they ignore the first one. I don’t take ignoring a message for a no. I always am like “maybe they missed it or maybe they were too busy at the time and forgot” and sometimes that IS the case so it gets confusing.
People leave me constantly. Not always because of this but I’ve had like, five noteable peopel leave me in the last couple years. I have no irl friends left. Sometimes because of me neglecting those friendships and distance. But also my ONE really close irl friend left me because of a stupid misunderstanding. And I officially confirmed that Ive lost someone else today, this time over EXACTLY what i’m talking about.
I’m fucking exausted y’all. And I dont know what to do. There’s no fucking medication for RSD. Coping mechanisms dont work. I cant fucking deal with this anymore. I’m fucking tired.
I’m sorry this keeps happening to you. If it makes you feel any better you taught me that RSD exists - it explains a lot about my experiences.
That does make me feel better because right now I’m looking for positive impacts Ive had in the weorld because i’m feeling pretty shitty about myself lol. I’m glad I could help you understand yourself better.
I had a similar response. I had heard the term mentioned vaguely, but never an explanation of the associated behavior. Your post resonated a lot with me.
RSD has led me to near-total social withdrawal. Human interaction is usually painful for me. I always do something wrong or act too weird.
I’m glad someone else understands what I mean and how hard it is to cope with. My main concern right now though is how RSD-driven desperation can lead me to hurt others. Idk if youve been there.
No it’s often just social obliviousness that does that. I once accidentally stalked a girl because I was too thick to understand what it meant when her roommates were screening her calls until one of them straight told me she wanted nothing to do with me. I was mortified and flooded with shame immediately.
Yeah I’ve talked about it before but within recent memory I’ve been an accidental sex pest. And theres even worse stuff with women a decade back.
Sorry you’re struggling, I feel you. Literally just had something similar happen to me as well, and your post resonates with me a lot. Have you felt like the more engaged you are, the more people seem to pull away? Forgive any ignorance, I had to look up RSD and it seems pretty emotionally agonizing. Hope your day gets better somehow.
Have you felt like the more engaged you are, the more people seem to pull away?
A lot of the time yes. Not with everyone. But I’ve definitly had people pull back from me after I get too intense. This friend who decided to break off with me literally said “I wanted to just go back to people who casually share a server but dont talk everyday, but I dont think thats an option with you”.
Oof. That sucks.
I have to say that (to me) it seems like a better thing for them to at least say that, and put it out there. Yeah, it’s a kind of rejection, and yes, it absolutely sucks, but at least you don’t have to waste your time pouring yourself into something you get no response from. You sound like someone who loves very intensely, and there’s nothing wrong or weird about that. Obviously, you’ve got the RSD that you’re fighting with, but if you have to constantly adjust how you interact and hide who you are and how you’re feeling, won’t that shit just drive you insane?
You’re worth the time and effort, and people who don’t see that, more than likely don’t deserve you and your attention. If they’re okay letting you go, what else can you do? It’s their decision.
…I’m kinda telling this to myself as well. To anyone reading, really. We matter, even if we’re different, even when people don’t seem to like us for whatever reason. There’s others out there who will take the time, talk boundaries, and be okay with how you operate.
Thank you so much for this it means a lot.
Thank you for sharing your struggles and letting us figure it out with you. Reading some of these replies makes my heart ache. I wish I could safely hug everyone and tell them we’re gonna be in a better place soon. <3
Dear Autismdragon: can you do me a favour and unwrite this post, so that it isn’t relatable anymore? Many thanks! /s
Except I never even considered that the shit I do would or could be abusive or manipulative… inadvertently offputting, yes, I am always the initater while always annoying the other person, yup that’s me. Basically having to force myself not to follow up to a message I’ve sent that somebdy ignored: that one is hard because people will leave me on read for months unironically and then just go “lol oops hi” or whatever. People leaving… I do seem to sort of move through different people groups, but only recently have people started really leaving me on read for eternity.
New discovery, right now, which I didn’t consider: I am a bad person! Fuck.
I have no idea what coping for this looks like, but ReadFanon put some excellent replies in a thread of mine about various medications meant to minimise the effects of rejection sensitivity, which was wild. Maybe it could be of help to you?
Even if not, thanks for making this thread.
Well I feel bad that I’ve made you feel like a bad person with my own feelings lol. I dont think either of us are intending to be abusive or manipulative. For me though, some of my behaviors end up being that even if i dont mean it. Idk about you and I dont think you should take that to heart for yourself.
Don’t, I don’t think it’s a terrible thing to keep in mind. I am very aware also that I can’t trust my perception of social matters, like at all lmao, positive or negative - I have no idea when or if I’m posting cringe or w/e. So sometimes I get the inkling that I am bugging people or doing a bad, but who knows if I actually am
I feel like we need an app or something for RSD people to make friends with each other.
It would either be great or terrible, don’t know which one.
Only one way to find out!
Two people who have developed the skill of noticing when their RSD is triggered in the present can be profoundly supportive of each other. In other cases, two rejection narratives can bounce off of each other violently, especially when one or both people are going through a patch where spoons are chronically low.
Thank you.
I’ve been looking at my own life and the potentially harmful behaviors I exhibit as a response to trauma and neurodiversity. I mirror and use a fawn response automatically at the first sign of fear or the possibility of rejection.
It took me until a few weeks ago to realize I didn’t need to laugh if I didn’t find what someone said funny, even if I know they expected a laugh.
I’ve felt a lot of shame about my behaviors and defense mechanisms. But I started to accept that I had to develop certain survival tools to navigate an allistic, capitalist world. Those tools don’t help me as much when I’m trying to genuinely connect, which makes it hard as a gay man who already has to do a level of code-switching while being aware of potential rejection/hostility.
You say you’re exhausted, and I believe you. It’s exhausting being in the world as part of a marginalized group. Even worse when the communication is so unnecessarily convoluted.
I wanted to thank you for making posts like these in the ND comm. It helps to know someone else is going through similar struggles, even though I’d prefer we didn’t struggle at all. We’re trying our best out here with less than optimal resources and training. In a better world, we’d be able to communicate and meet our needs without having to jump through hidden rhetorical hoops.
I know you’re tired, friend, but I hope you feel better soon.
