Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) can feel debilitating when you’re living with AuDHD (autism and ADHD). In this episode, I share some of my personal journey with RSD – even at age 50! – and introduce some practical tools that help me and which can support you in stopping rejecting yourself.
CHAPTERS
0:00–2:22 Introduction to RSD and nervous system–informed support
2:22–5:23 Why RSD is so excruciating and how self-rejection develops
5:23–8:15 Early criticism, negative conditioning, and the ADHD/RSD cycle
8:15–11:47 RSD in creativity, work, relationships, and self-worth
11:47–13:45 Self-acceptance, self-love, and healing RSD in community
13:45–15:58 Expanding life again: stopping self-rejection and finding support
15:58–19:40 The Feel Love Heal framework and non-violent communication
19:40–24:52 Giraffe and jackal energy: compassion, blame, and nervous system responses
24:52–27:54 Fear of rejection, shame, and a very human yoga story
27:54–31:55 Integration, encouragement, and closing reflections
LINKS
Episode 71: Shadow Work with Black Cats and Sharks
Episode 72: The “Independent Woman” Trap
365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing https://solestosoul.ie/book/
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Episode 95 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast and it’s part one of on RSD, Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, which is so prevalent with AuDHD and that’s autism and ADHD. And it can feel debilitating.
Hi, I’m Eve Menezes Cunningham and you’re listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. You can find out more and access older episodes at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com and you can also access loads of free resources and find out more about the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, the column I write for Platinum every month, other titles I contribute to, my work, loads of free resources I’ve created over the years.
I really hope you enjoy this episode and if you haven’t already signed up for my free newsletter, it goes out on a Monday, Míle Buíochas Mondays. Míle buíochas means a thousand thank yous in Irish, which I’m very slowly learning and it’s polyvagal-informed journal prompts to help you each week. There’s the gratitude practice element, figuring out more of what brings you joy on a daily basis, what helps you feel in that ventral vagal (I call Purr!) when I use the rescue cats with the Polyvagal Purrs approach. And I also share some of my own gratitude, some of the things that have helped me feel more in ventral vagal that week. Some of those will be resources that might benefit you and I also share news about upcoming events, special offers, things like that.
The journal prompts also include encouragement to look at what is creating sympathetic survival responses (that Hiss! with the Polyvagal Purrs approach) and potentially the dorsal vagal (Freeze!) It’s really helping you learn to map your own nervous system, get to know yourself and get to support yourself and it’s all free. If you haven’t already you can sign up at selfcarecoaching.net and if you have any questions again let me know either in the comments or at selfcarecoaching.net
I hope you enjoy this episode. I’m not normally someone who re-records things, my style is quite natural and unpolished and sometimes haphazard, but this is possibly the latest, since I started doing the podcast, that I’ve left it in terms of getting the episodes to my amazing virtual assistant who then sorts transcription and all out for me in terms of getting it all scheduled and ready for going out on Tuesday.
But I just woke up this morning thinking what I’d recorded I couldn’t share, I rejected it and that wasn’t my first attempt. It’s really weird. This is part one of a series, an occasional series, I was going to say part two would follow in a couple of weeks but I’m not going to put that pressure on myself.
RSD, Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, Rejection Sensitivity Disorder, it is one of the most debilitating, excruciating elements of being alive with AuDHD, autism and ADHD. And I had no idea what it was until I began exploring ADHD however many years ago now and more so with the autism, with the ADHD medication treating so many of those symptoms.
But I’m 50 years old and I’ve spent much of the past nine months or so feeling like a teenager in terms of the RSD. I’m feeling it so, so strong and it always makes me laugh when people have other impressions of me because I know how excruciating life can feel from the inside out and also I’m aware that my bandwidth is lower with various things going on in life.
I thought I’d do this episode and I’m going to share some ways in which you can work with your own as well as giving you a bit more understanding around what it is. If you haven’t already come across, you probably have, Alex Partridge’s ADHD Chatterbox podcast, his gorgeous book Now It All Makes Sense has been out for a good while, been recommending that for a good while and he has a new book coming out Why Does Everybody Hate Me? which is specifically about RSD.
He’s doing amazing work in this area bringing together different experts and sharing his own experiences and I’m hoping that this, some of my own experiences as well as the ways in which you might choose to work with it will help you because ultimately we can’t control what happens around us but we can stop rejecting ourselves and I think this is where RSD is so enormous for so many of us with neurodivergence, with AuDHD, with autism, with ADHD where our parents potentially were undiagnosed, unknowing and they were projecting parts of themselves out onto Little Us’s and recognising, like I know when I look back, my parents, all the yelling, all the like criticism, they were trying to protect me. I then developed a very strong self-loathing inner critic but I understand they were both immigrants and they were not in the most welcoming part of the world for immigrants although I think it’s worse now.
I think they were both undiagnosed, autism and ADHD and they both had their own trauma.
I am very very fortunate that I have a lovely relationship with both of them, challenging as well but that I’ve been able to heal so much and I think the Inner Child work I continue to do, the reparenting I continue to do, I think it’s helping them as well.
I like to think that because sometimes that’s excruciating as well but I can recognise as a 50 year old that an enormous amount of the criticism and an enormous amount of like me being told everything I did was wrong, like from my London Essex accent, so every time I opened my mouth my speech would be corrected, the way I tied my shoelaces or held my pen or all these things.
Additude magazine which is for ADHDers, it’s an American publication, had a study a while ago and it wasn’t a huge study but the number has kind of reverberated around the world that ADHDers typically get 20,000 more negative inputs by the age of 10 than their neurotypical peers.
If you think about how we then start to police ourselves and how we then, we might make a mistake, we might do something embarrassing, we might do something ridiculous and in order to try and not be yelled at or criticised or bullied or made fun of or shamed or any of the things that have happened a gazillion times to us, we tear ourselves down. The attempt is to try and protect ourselves from doing it again in the future but of course it just makes it worse.
If you haven’t already seen the film Penelope, I recommend you watch it. It stars Christina Ricci, Reece Witherspoon, James McAvoy, Catherine O’Hara and I can’t remember who else, I’ve seen it several times but the message is just glorious and it hugely applies around any kind of rejection, any kind of sensitivity. Being a writer, professional writer since 2004, that has forced me to confront my RSD long before I understood what RSD was. I thought everyone felt like that but you can’t afford to not put yourself out there, your ideas out there, your work out there, no matter how excruciating it may feel if you want to share your work.
Same could go for being an entrepreneur and being any kind of creative person.
I was single for 23 years because I made some terrible decisions which were bad for me when I was younger and also the more I understand about RSD, it’s like just the excruciatingness of being, attempting to be in relationship when I was so rejecting of myself.
And I know that when I began building my business in 2004, a lot of things that I had to overcome and learn and expand into as a business owner, as a freelance writer, as a coach, complimentary therapist, therapist, supervisor, all of it, it all continually comes up for healing and then by the age, by the year 2022, I had the realisation that in spite of all this work I was doing on myself and with clients and with groups and with readers and with audiences, all of it, I believed that I was unlovable and that was why I was single.
I thought Yikes! If a client came to me and had recognised that, I would be working with them to help them heal because of course everyone is lovable, my whole business, my whole practice is based around us all like the more we can imagine ourselves as a beloved rescue cat for example, it can really help with that reminder that everyone on the planet, no matter how awful we might think ourselves or think others, we’re all connected .
I gave myself, I think, a month to start online dating and I put up my first profile I think on Valentine’s Day 2022. And I had a lot of fun. And a lot of excruciating, mortifying horrors. And mostly enormous curiosity about something I’d shut myself off from in terms of other people.
And then I met my partner that autumn. I still struggle an enormous amount with RSD and I think especially as I mentioned with the medication, with the diagnoses coming to terms with a whole new identity and keeping, having the epiphany that the more I accept myself, the more I love myself, the more I befriend myself and my traits, my symptoms, whatever I’m calling them that day, the easier it all is. It doesn’t make it easy, it doesn’t make it in any way. I’m sharing this just to let you know it’s part of being alive, it’s part, I struggle to know with things like this.
I know how excruciating I have found life and often still find life unbearable at many times during my life but I got through it and I built an enormous toolkit, wrote a book with 365 of them. I depend on so many self-care practices daily and regularly just in order to help myself navigate humaning in this world where rejection can hurt so enormously and I’m all about working with the nervous system and moving towards what feels good, moving away from what doesn’t, supporting the vagus, that soothing self-talk, all of it.
And also recognising that with RSD, sometimes we can’t trust our own AuDHD brains even though so much of my work and my life and my recovery is about recognising we all know ourselves best, it’s about remembering we’re part of nature, we’re part of the divine and sometimes we can’t trust what we’re telling ourselves, we need to really question the stories and a trusted friend, a trusted partner, a trusted therapist or coach or group. We heal in community, we heal by co-regulating and we can help others as well as accepting that support for ourselves.
I was recently interviewed for a feature for The Journalist on helping writers deal with rejection and I will share a link in the show notes when that comes out but it won’t be for a good few months. But I thought this really is something that can have a big impact on lives, on making them smaller and I hope that this episode will help you expand and go easier on yourself and find reminders for yourself, just where are you rejecting yourself, what aspects of yourself are you projecting out?
They might be positive parts of yourself, they might be things you consider negative, you might want to go back to the Own Your Shadow episode, I think it was for Black Cat Week, there’ll be a link in the show notes and yeah I hope you find this helpful and I would love to hear from you and you can email eve at selfcarecoaching.net or reply in the comments and I hope that you have community around you or are giving yourself permission to want community around you and beginning to build that.
I’ve started a monthly Westport Lunar Circle in Westport which is really lovely, a very small group, five maximum, it was six but I’m actually making it a bit more spacious with five of us and you can do that, you can join us if you’re local and want to and find out more through selfcarecoaching.net but you can find groups, you can create your own groups and know rejection is part of life and it can feel debilitating and it is worth reminding yourself that the RSD is not the truth.
We will start with the Feel part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework and because it’s so much about self-compassion and about accepting ourselves, loving ourselves, giving ourselves permission to want what we want, need what we need, a huge part for me that keeps coming up is when I feel needy.
I’m in a phase of life at the moment where my bandwidth is pretty low and I’m dealing with a lot and some of that is anticipatory grief and I feel again really needy sometimes and I hate that.
I like feeling strong, I like feeling competent and capable and able to support others and I still do all those things, I love doing all those things and also recognising I need support. I need people I can trust and lean into and it can feel really painful and I can sometimes find old ways of being, popping into my head around wanting to push people away because I’m scared that they might disappear or reject me and it’s easier for me to reject them and I do my best to not do that.
I do my best to have open conversations with them about what is coming up constantly for healing and one of the tools I wrote about in the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, which you can find out more about on the website and access lots of book bonus videos and there’ll be a link in the show notes, but one of the tools was Non-Violent Communication.
I have my giraffe from Kenya up there and Marshall Rosenberg developed this style of communication to work in conflict areas around the world, including families, so he worked, he was American, he worked in America, of course he did, but in the Middle East, in the North of Ireland, all around the world and he came up with the analogy of a giraffe and a jackal and there’ll be a link in the show notes to previous blog posts around this as well, but he felt that the giraffe had the largest heart of any mammal and the giraffe represents compassion, curiosity. It’s what we now would call Purr! That ventral vagal way of moving through life where it’s not conflict-free but if we can navigate it with an open heart, collaborating, recognising that there’s enough for everyone and we can heal together. It’s that science of safety and connection, it’s much easier to have empathy for our own needs and wants and to communicate them in a way that is clear and kind and that enables the other or the others to tune into how that lands with them and decide whether or not they can meet them or not and the clearer we are on what we know and what we need and what we want and the more clearly and openheartedly and lovingly we can ask for all of that, the better for all involved. There’s less resentment, there’s less confusion and so many of us have been conditioned out of allowing our needs and wants because we’ve grown up believing that it’s selfish to want what we want or need what we need.
Women have traditionally been raised, girls less so now, but for hundreds and hundreds of years there was such dependence on a husband because unable to earn a living in your own right, sometimes having to manipulate or having to be less clear about things. Kasia Urbaniak talks about good girl conditioning and I did a podcast episode, there’ll be a link in the show notes, around that and how we can come out of that by turning our attention outwards as well as inwards, but either way we want to do it with that open heart, with that compassion.
Giraffe Out is where we have compassion for others, so we’re able to see even when people might be expressing themselves clumsily, give them the benefit of the doubt, being curious, not putting ourselves in harm’s way in any way shape or form but just having that empathy, that curiosity, that compassion and harder for many of us is that Giraffe In where we have compassion for how we might have asked something clumsily or demanded it or withdrawn or gone into sympathetic survival or hiss.
I don’t know if you can hear Meadbh in the background here. So giraffe is what we’re aiming for in and out and in the feel part, that self-care, the hyphenated self-care, the regulatory, the things we can do for ourselves. I want you to think about people who illustrate that for you, demonstrate that for you, they may be people in your own life, you may talk to them, they may be people you’ve read about and like with ventral vagal, no one is in this the whole time.
If you haven’t come across Scilla Elworthy’s book Power and Sex, it’s how I heard about Non-Violent Communication decades ago and she gives a glorious example. She did amazing work dealing with nuclear decision makers. She was a peace activist but she knew that there’s no point just preaching to the choir and she was having challenging conversations and she found Non-Violent Communication really helpful.
It’s sometimes known as Compassionate Communication and she gives a beautiful example in the book where she has her dog at the training and the trainer’s dog who she gets on really well with, sorry the trainer, also has their dog and their dog is attacking her dog at a certain point in the proceedings and everything she’s learned just goes out the window as it’s just… it’s funny that Meadbh has come to join me because Meadbh has not been 100% lately and she’s been a bit more aggressive as well as more friendly with Rainbow and watching them navigate that and recognising my own patterns with other humans and trying to be more compassionate with myself when I go into sympathetic survival (Hiss!) and recognising no one’s in ventral vagal (Purr!) the whole time.
So jackal is the blame, jackal is the scarcity, jackal is that sympathetic survival, the adaptive survival response that so many of us have been conditioned into where it isn’t safe to make mistakes, it isn’t safe to ask for what you want or need and so we either blame ourselves, the Jackal In, or we blame others, Jackal Out, for not being psychic and meeting our needs.
For the Love part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework this week, I want you to send yourself, send your inner jackal an enormous amount of love and know it’s fine, it needs acceptance, it needs to be identified and not listened to and not allowed to run wild through your life, rejecting yourself and others, but give yourself a hug. Get curious about who feels a bit jackally with you, where you experience jackal from the outside as well as who you’re jackal out with, where you might be blaming them, they may be blaming you, how it might have turned into an unhelpful dynamic either mutually or one-sided, but ask yourself how you can bring more giraffe energy, more ventral vagal, more Purr! and more love, more compassion.
Recognising this is hard, this is not easy but it’s so worth it, it enables us to do so much more in the world because the fear of rejection, the fear of jackal, the fear of being yelled at or blamed or shamed or exiled or embarrassed or any of the things that keep us small, it’s stopping you living your fullest life.
Let me know how you get on with all of them and as we move into Heal, find some support for yourself. Next week, for Brigid, we’re looking at some sensory soothers but think about your life as it is, think about online communities, think about people you know in real life. Who are you able to be your whole self with? Who are you able to connect with, with the RSD? Who are you able to bring your whole self to?
I’d love to hear from you, I’m gonna tell you an embarrassing story that I am using to demonstrate how I did things differently.
I’ve overshared my whole life but I do it more consciously now partly because of my work the last nearly two decades but increasingly, I think, understanding more about AuDHD, it’s like, “Oh OK, it’s another symptom, it’s another trait.”
I was in a gorgeous yoga class a few days ago and we were doing a lot of Three Part Breath work and it got to the point where it just became very natural because we’d done so much of it.
Went to the loo after yoga and there was someone outside waiting. And I felt a fart coming on and it was like oh my god. My partner’s quite farty and he really makes me laugh and I will open windows and all sorts but since I think he’s so accepting of his fartiness it’s really helped me like the last, I’ve just accidentally developed this habit of announcing, “I just farted!”
I have to not say that in public because it’s a bit embarrassing so I’m in the loo in the public toilet at the yoga studio and I feel a fart coming on and it’s like, there is a pose in yoga called Wind Releasing Pose. Farting is a very normal natural part of being alive, it’s how we release energy and it’s just nothing to worry about. When I’m teaching yoga or when I’m working somatically with people I’m very much about that.
When it’s me it’s… like… I did a three-part fart. I came out of the toilet giggling to myself but hiding it and said to the stranger outside, “Hello” and didn’t say I just farted so I was really proud of myself. Then I got out to the main area and saw the instructor and accidentally told her that I did a Three Part Fart in the loo and managed to not tell the stranger.
Morto.
I then had a conversation with my partner on the phone about how I’d done this. He’s like, “Why are you telling me? Only joking!” Because we both find it funny, I don’t know why.
This is possibly (you think, Evei??????) way too much information but I’m using as an example because a fart is a very simple but obvious way in which we can fear rejection.
Having been raised female it was far less socially acceptable for me to fart than for my partner who’s male. Having been raised, like I remember my little brother he’d delight in farting around the place when we were teenagers and children and it would just be like I’d be the annoyed older sister.
There’s something in that as an adult, as an intersectional feminist, recognising it’s that freedom to express yourself, that freedom to be your whole self without fear of rejection.
It’s the more powerful groups that don’t have to hold it in and be uncomfortable and all of that.
I’m not suggesting that you go around telling everyone about your farts unless that’s how you want to play this. Feel free to email me, tell me about your farts, actually it is funny.
I find it funny, not everyone will and I don’t want you to actively court rejection unless you’re wanting to. But I hope you’ll find it a helpful analogy to think about your existing community, to think about the people in your life, the people you maybe read about or hear about or read or watch and who helps you accept your inner Farty McFartface, who helps you not reject any part of yourself, the most gifted, talented, exuberant, joyful, loving, wholehearted parts, as well as the most embarrassed, mortified, shamed, all of it.
I would love to hear how you’re getting on and again next week we’re going to be honouring the goddess Brigid with some sensory soothers to help you heal your nervous system and heal your trauma and befriend your AuDHD brain.
Thank you for listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. This episode, like all of them, was produced by me, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham, and if you haven’t already and would like to, your subscribing or sharing or leaving a five star review or comment, engaging in whatever way feels good for you, feels right for you, it helps me reach as many people with AuDHD and trauma histories as possible. I want to be able to help as many people as possible with this free resource, so please do, if you think of someone, share it or leave a comment, leave a rating and of course reach out, get in touch with me direct if you’ve got any questions, either in the comments or email eve at selfcarecoaching.net. You can also access loads of free resources at the site selfcarecoaching.net, older episodes of the podcast at thefeelbethereverydaypodcast.com and you can book a free telephone consultation, you can find out more about all the other elements of my work, lots of free resources, lots of ways in which we might work together and most of all, I hope you’ll come back next week.
Thank you for listening and I hope that you’ll put some of what you’ve heard into action and go easy on yourself as you heal your trauma and befriend your ADHD brain. Thanks again for listening.
Transcript
Welcome to Episode 95 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast and it’s part one of on RSD, Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, which is so prevalent with AuDHD and that’s autism and ADHD. And it can feel debilitating.
Hi, I’m Eve Menezes Cunningham and you’re listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. You can find out more and access older episodes at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com and you can also access loads of free resources and find out more about the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, the column I write for Platinum every month, other titles I contribute to, my work, loads of free resources I’ve created over the years.
I really hope you enjoy this episode and if you haven’t already signed up for my free newsletter, it goes out on a Monday, Míle Buíochas Mondays. Míle buíochas means a thousand thank yous in Irish, which I’m very slowly learning and it’s polyvagal-informed journal prompts to help you each week. There’s the gratitude practice element, figuring out more of what brings you joy on a daily basis, what helps you feel in that ventral vagal (I call Purr!) when I use the rescue cats with the Polyvagal Purrs approach. And I also share some of my own gratitude, some of the things that have helped me feel more in ventral vagal that week. Some of those will be resources that might benefit you and I also share news about upcoming events, special offers, things like that.
The journal prompts also include encouragement to look at what is creating sympathetic survival responses (that Hiss! with the Polyvagal Purrs approach) and potentially the dorsal vagal (Freeze!) It’s really helping you learn to map your own nervous system, get to know yourself and get to support yourself and it’s all free. If you haven’t already you can sign up at selfcarecoaching.net and if you have any questions again let me know either in the comments or at selfcarecoaching.net
I hope you enjoy this episode. I’m not normally someone who re-records things, my style is quite natural and unpolished and sometimes haphazard, but this is possibly the latest, since I started doing the podcast, that I’ve left it in terms of getting the episodes to my amazing virtual assistant who then sorts transcription and all out for me in terms of getting it all scheduled and ready for going out on Tuesday.
But I just woke up this morning thinking what I’d recorded I couldn’t share, I rejected it and that wasn’t my first attempt. It’s really weird. This is part one of a series, an occasional series, I was going to say part two would follow in a couple of weeks but I’m not going to put that pressure on myself.
RSD, Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, Rejection Sensitivity Disorder, it is one of the most debilitating, excruciating elements of being alive with AuDHD, autism and ADHD. And I had no idea what it was until I began exploring ADHD however many years ago now and more so with the autism, with the ADHD medication treating so many of those symptoms.
But I’m 50 years old and I’ve spent much of the past nine months or so feeling like a teenager in terms of the RSD. I’m feeling it so, so strong and it always makes me laugh when people have other impressions of me because I know how excruciating life can feel from the inside out and also I’m aware that my bandwidth is lower with various things going on in life.
I thought I’d do this episode and I’m going to share some ways in which you can work with your own as well as giving you a bit more understanding around what it is. If you haven’t already come across, you probably have, Alex Partridge’s ADHD Chatterbox podcast, his gorgeous book Now It All Makes Sense has been out for a good while, been recommending that for a good while and he has a new book coming out Why Does Everybody Hate Me? which is specifically about RSD.
He’s doing amazing work in this area bringing together different experts and sharing his own experiences and I’m hoping that this, some of my own experiences as well as the ways in which you might choose to work with it will help you because ultimately we can’t control what happens around us but we can stop rejecting ourselves and I think this is where RSD is so enormous for so many of us with neurodivergence, with AuDHD, with autism, with ADHD where our parents potentially were undiagnosed, unknowing and they were projecting parts of themselves out onto Little Us’s and recognising, like I know when I look back, my parents, all the yelling, all the like criticism, they were trying to protect me. I then developed a very strong self-loathing inner critic but I understand they were both immigrants and they were not in the most welcoming part of the world for immigrants although I think it’s worse now.
I think they were both undiagnosed, autism and ADHD and they both had their own trauma.
I am very very fortunate that I have a lovely relationship with both of them, challenging as well but that I’ve been able to heal so much and I think the Inner Child work I continue to do, the reparenting I continue to do, I think it’s helping them as well.
I like to think that because sometimes that’s excruciating as well but I can recognise as a 50 year old that an enormous amount of the criticism and an enormous amount of like me being told everything I did was wrong, like from my London Essex accent, so every time I opened my mouth my speech would be corrected, the way I tied my shoelaces or held my pen or all these things.
Additude magazine which is for ADHDers, it’s an American publication, had a study a while ago and it wasn’t a huge study but the number has kind of reverberated around the world that ADHDers typically get 20,000 more negative inputs by the age of 10 than their neurotypical peers.
If you think about how we then start to police ourselves and how we then, we might make a mistake, we might do something embarrassing, we might do something ridiculous and in order to try and not be yelled at or criticised or bullied or made fun of or shamed or any of the things that have happened a gazillion times to us, we tear ourselves down. The attempt is to try and protect ourselves from doing it again in the future but of course it just makes it worse.
er, professional writer since:Same could go for being an entrepreneur and being any kind of creative person.
I was single for 23 years because I made some terrible decisions which were bad for me when I was younger and also the more I understand about RSD, it’s like just the excruciatingness of being, attempting to be in relationship when I was so rejecting of myself.
began building my business in:I thought Yikes! If a client came to me and had recognised that, I would be working with them to help them heal because of course everyone is lovable, my whole business, my whole practice is based around us all like the more we can imagine ourselves as a beloved rescue cat for example, it can really help with that reminder that everyone on the planet, no matter how awful we might think ourselves or think others, we’re all connected .
I think on Valentine’s Day:And then I met my partner that autumn. I still struggle an enormous amount with RSD and I think especially as I mentioned with the medication, with the diagnoses coming to terms with a whole new identity and keeping, having the epiphany that the more I accept myself, the more I love myself, the more I befriend myself and my traits, my symptoms, whatever I’m calling them that day, the easier it all is. It doesn’t make it easy, it doesn’t make it in any way. I’m sharing this just to let you know it’s part of being alive, it’s part, I struggle to know with things like this.
I know how excruciating I have found life and often still find life unbearable at many times during my life but I got through it and I built an enormous toolkit, wrote a book with 365 of them. I depend on so many self-care practices daily and regularly just in order to help myself navigate humaning in this world where rejection can hurt so enormously and I’m all about working with the nervous system and moving towards what feels good, moving away from what doesn’t, supporting the vagus, that soothing self-talk, all of it.
And also recognising that with RSD, sometimes we can’t trust our own AuDHD brains even though so much of my work and my life and my recovery is about recognising we all know ourselves best, it’s about remembering we’re part of nature, we’re part of the divine and sometimes we can’t trust what we’re telling ourselves, we need to really question the stories and a trusted friend, a trusted partner, a trusted therapist or coach or group. We heal in community, we heal by co-regulating and we can help others as well as accepting that support for ourselves.
I was recently interviewed for a feature for The Journalist on helping writers deal with rejection and I will share a link in the show notes when that comes out but it won’t be for a good few months. But I thought this really is something that can have a big impact on lives, on making them smaller and I hope that this episode will help you expand and go easier on yourself and find reminders for yourself, just where are you rejecting yourself, what aspects of yourself are you projecting out?
They might be positive parts of yourself, they might be things you consider negative, you might want to go back to the Own Your Shadow episode, I think it was for Black Cat Week, there’ll be a link in the show notes and yeah I hope you find this helpful and I would love to hear from you and you can email eve at selfcarecoaching.net or reply in the comments and I hope that you have community around you or are giving yourself permission to want community around you and beginning to build that.
I’ve started a monthly Westport Lunar Circle in Westport which is really lovely, a very small group, five maximum, it was six but I’m actually making it a bit more spacious with five of us and you can do that, you can join us if you’re local and want to and find out more through selfcarecoaching.net but you can find groups, you can create your own groups and know rejection is part of life and it can feel debilitating and it is worth reminding yourself that the RSD is not the truth.
We will start with the Feel part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework and because it’s so much about self-compassion and about accepting ourselves, loving ourselves, giving ourselves permission to want what we want, need what we need, a huge part for me that keeps coming up is when I feel needy.
I’m in a phase of life at the moment where my bandwidth is pretty low and I’m dealing with a lot and some of that is anticipatory grief and I feel again really needy sometimes and I hate that.
I like feeling strong, I like feeling competent and capable and able to support others and I still do all those things, I love doing all those things and also recognising I need support. I need people I can trust and lean into and it can feel really painful and I can sometimes find old ways of being, popping into my head around wanting to push people away because I’m scared that they might disappear or reject me and it’s easier for me to reject them and I do my best to not do that.
I do my best to have open conversations with them about what is coming up constantly for healing and one of the tools I wrote about in the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, which you can find out more about on the website and access lots of book bonus videos and there’ll be a link in the show notes, but one of the tools was Non-Violent Communication.
I have my giraffe from Kenya up there and Marshall Rosenberg developed this style of communication to work in conflict areas around the world, including families, so he worked, he was American, he worked in America, of course he did, but in the Middle East, in the North of Ireland, all around the world and he came up with the analogy of a giraffe and a jackal and there’ll be a link in the show notes to previous blog posts around this as well, but he felt that the giraffe had the largest heart of any mammal and the giraffe represents compassion, curiosity. It’s what we now would call Purr! That ventral vagal way of moving through life where it’s not conflict-free but if we can navigate it with an open heart, collaborating, recognising that there’s enough for everyone and we can heal together. It’s that science of safety and connection, it’s much easier to have empathy for our own needs and wants and to communicate them in a way that is clear and kind and that enables the other or the others to tune into how that lands with them and decide whether or not they can meet them or not and the clearer we are on what we know and what we need and what we want and the more clearly and openheartedly and lovingly we can ask for all of that, the better for all involved. There’s less resentment, there’s less confusion and so many of us have been conditioned out of allowing our needs and wants because we’ve grown up believing that it’s selfish to want what we want or need what we need.
Women have traditionally been raised, girls less so now, but for hundreds and hundreds of years there was such dependence on a husband because unable to earn a living in your own right, sometimes having to manipulate or having to be less clear about things. Kasia Urbaniak talks about good girl conditioning and I did a podcast episode, there’ll be a link in the show notes, around that and how we can come out of that by turning our attention outwards as well as inwards, but either way we want to do it with that open heart, with that compassion.
Giraffe Out is where we have compassion for others, so we’re able to see even when people might be expressing themselves clumsily, give them the benefit of the doubt, being curious, not putting ourselves in harm’s way in any way shape or form but just having that empathy, that curiosity, that compassion and harder for many of us is that Giraffe In where we have compassion for how we might have asked something clumsily or demanded it or withdrawn or gone into sympathetic survival or hiss.
I don’t know if you can hear Meadbh in the background here. So giraffe is what we’re aiming for in and out and in the feel part, that self-care, the hyphenated self-care, the regulatory, the things we can do for ourselves. I want you to think about people who illustrate that for you, demonstrate that for you, they may be people in your own life, you may talk to them, they may be people you’ve read about and like with ventral vagal, no one is in this the whole time.
If you haven’t come across Scilla Elworthy’s book Power and Sex, it’s how I heard about Non-Violent Communication decades ago and she gives a glorious example. She did amazing work dealing with nuclear decision makers. She was a peace activist but she knew that there’s no point just preaching to the choir and she was having challenging conversations and she found Non-Violent Communication really helpful.
It’s sometimes known as Compassionate Communication and she gives a beautiful example in the book where she has her dog at the training and the trainer’s dog who she gets on really well with, sorry the trainer, also has their dog and their dog is attacking her dog at a certain point in the proceedings and everything she’s learned just goes out the window as it’s just… it’s funny that Meadbh has come to join me because Meadbh has not been 100% lately and she’s been a bit more aggressive as well as more friendly with Rainbow and watching them navigate that and recognising my own patterns with other humans and trying to be more compassionate with myself when I go into sympathetic survival (Hiss!) and recognising no one’s in ventral vagal (Purr!) the whole time.
So jackal is the blame, jackal is the scarcity, jackal is that sympathetic survival, the adaptive survival response that so many of us have been conditioned into where it isn’t safe to make mistakes, it isn’t safe to ask for what you want or need and so we either blame ourselves, the Jackal In, or we blame others, Jackal Out, for not being psychic and meeting our needs.
For the Love part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework this week, I want you to send yourself, send your inner jackal an enormous amount of love and know it’s fine, it needs acceptance, it needs to be identified and not listened to and not allowed to run wild through your life, rejecting yourself and others, but give yourself a hug. Get curious about who feels a bit jackally with you, where you experience jackal from the outside as well as who you’re jackal out with, where you might be blaming them, they may be blaming you, how it might have turned into an unhelpful dynamic either mutually or one-sided, but ask yourself how you can bring more giraffe energy, more ventral vagal, more Purr! and more love, more compassion.
Recognising this is hard, this is not easy but it’s so worth it, it enables us to do so much more in the world because the fear of rejection, the fear of jackal, the fear of being yelled at or blamed or shamed or exiled or embarrassed or any of the things that keep us small, it’s stopping you living your fullest life.
Let me know how you get on with all of them and as we move into Heal, find some support for yourself. Next week, for Brigid, we’re looking at some sensory soothers but think about your life as it is, think about online communities, think about people you know in real life. Who are you able to be your whole self with? Who are you able to connect with, with the RSD? Who are you able to bring your whole self to?
I’d love to hear from you, I’m gonna tell you an embarrassing story that I am using to demonstrate how I did things differently.
I’ve overshared my whole life but I do it more consciously now partly because of my work the last nearly two decades but increasingly, I think, understanding more about AuDHD, it’s like, “Oh OK, it’s another symptom, it’s another trait.”
I was in a gorgeous yoga class a few days ago and we were doing a lot of Three Part Breath work and it got to the point where it just became very natural because we’d done so much of it.
Went to the loo after yoga and there was someone outside waiting. And I felt a fart coming on and it was like oh my god. My partner’s quite farty and he really makes me laugh and I will open windows and all sorts but since I think he’s so accepting of his fartiness it’s really helped me like the last, I’ve just accidentally developed this habit of announcing, “I just farted!”
I have to not say that in public because it’s a bit embarrassing so I’m in the loo in the public toilet at the yoga studio and I feel a fart coming on and it’s like, there is a pose in yoga called Wind Releasing Pose. Farting is a very normal natural part of being alive, it’s how we release energy and it’s just nothing to worry about. When I’m teaching yoga or when I’m working somatically with people I’m very much about that.
When it’s me it’s… like… I did a three-part fart. I came out of the toilet giggling to myself but hiding it and said to the stranger outside, “Hello” and didn’t say I just farted so I was really proud of myself. Then I got out to the main area and saw the instructor and accidentally told her that I did a Three Part Fart in the loo and managed to not tell the stranger.
Morto.
I then had a conversation with my partner on the phone about how I’d done this. He’s like, “Why are you telling me? Only joking!” Because we both find it funny, I don’t know why.
This is possibly (you think, Evei??????) way too much information but I’m using as an example because a fart is a very simple but obvious way in which we can fear rejection.
Having been raised female it was far less socially acceptable for me to fart than for my partner who’s male. Having been raised, like I remember my little brother he’d delight in farting around the place when we were teenagers and children and it would just be like I’d be the annoyed older sister.
There’s something in that as an adult, as an intersectional feminist, recognising it’s that freedom to express yourself, that freedom to be your whole self without fear of rejection.
It’s the more powerful groups that don’t have to hold it in and be uncomfortable and all of that.
I’m not suggesting that you go around telling everyone about your farts unless that’s how you want to play this. Feel free to email me, tell me about your farts, actually it is funny.
I find it funny, not everyone will and I don’t want you to actively court rejection unless you’re wanting to. But I hope you’ll find it a helpful analogy to think about your existing community, to think about the people in your life, the people you maybe read about or hear about or read or watch and who helps you accept your inner Farty McFartface, who helps you not reject any part of yourself, the most gifted, talented, exuberant, joyful, loving, wholehearted parts, as well as the most embarrassed, mortified, shamed, all of it.
I would love to hear how you’re getting on and again next week we’re going to be honouring the goddess Brigid with some sensory soothers to help you heal your nervous system and heal your trauma and befriend your AuDHD brain.
Thank you for listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. This episode, like all of them, was produced by me, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham, and if you haven’t already and would like to, your subscribing or sharing or leaving a five star review or comment, engaging in whatever way feels good for you, feels right for you, it helps me reach as many people with AuDHD and trauma histories as possible. I want to be able to help as many people as possible with this free resource, so please do, if you think of someone, share it or leave a comment, leave a rating and of course reach out, get in touch with me direct if you’ve got any questions, either in the comments or email eve at selfcarecoaching.net. You can also access loads of free resources at the site selfcarecoaching.net, older episodes of the podcast at thefeelbethereverydaypodcast.com and you can book a free telephone consultation, you can find out more about all the other elements of my work, lots of free resources, lots of ways in which we might work together and most of all, I hope you’ll come back next week.
Thank you for listening and I hope that you’ll put some of what you’ve heard into action and go easy on yourself as you heal your trauma and befriend your ADHD brain. Thanks again for listening.