RSD

[mobius171]

Are there good coping methods to help with RSD?

[HeyImNotCrazy]

With people I know well/am close to what I do is I sit them down and explain what RSD is like and how it can get triggered in me, a lot of my friends haven't even heard of RSD before and so I always feel like explaining what it is/how it happens to be the best first step with people you are close too.

Then we have a conversation, if they are amiable, about what I call the "vibes" system. Sometimes for me RSD feels like a "bad vibe" or an unshakable "feeling" that they hate me/don't want me around/find me annoying/aren't talking to me because I'm the worst etc. The "Vibes" system works like this: I message my friend one word "vibes?" and my friend knows I'm "feeling a bad vibe" and they know to reply back to me "good vibes" or if they aren't feeling so hot "bad vibes because (insert explanation here)". We call it "vibe checking" each other and it seems to work okay.

A lot of the time it seems to come down to just bluntly asking "do you hate me" and my friends going "no I do not". Some people hate it because I ask so often but to be honest people like that generally aren't worth keeping in your life, if a friend isn't willing to work with you or thinks your needs are a burden then GTFO they are bad news!

RSD's biggest and best opponent I think is blunt honesty and the realization you can KNOW one thing intellectually (I'm not bad, my friends don't hate me) but also FEEL a different way (oh but they totally do hate me! Despite all logic and reasoning and them also bluntly telling me they don't!) and just learning to live with that cognitive dissonance. A lot of the time my ADHD brain feels like an aggressively upset cat I'm trying to shove into a carrier, just slippery and also mean. But the cat (and the ADHD part of my brain) isn't going to stop being what it is, you just have to learn to work around or with it not against it.

For strangers or acquaintances the thing that helped me most was the realization that to most people in the world I'm just not important enough to feel strongly about. I think of it like this: How many people in my day to day life do I remember enough to feel anything strongly about; basically almost none. So if I follow that logic down too it's root its reasonable to assume other people (being also human) generally don't remember or care. To them you are just another human flesh thing interchangeable with other human flesh things.

Not sure if this helped but I hope it does!

[Stonesfan in reply to HeyImNotCrazy]

I need to learn some coping methods.

I have just learned and understood the term this last week or so. Big breakthrough for me.