Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria
Sooner or later, everyone gets rejected.
The sting of rejection is upsetting, even disturbing, and sometimes gut-wrenching. Such moments feel like they will be neverending. Alongside being excluded and devalued, rejection is one of life’s worst experiences. Moments of rejection are responsible for unfavorably shaping one's self-concept. How you deal with rejection explains whether you continue to grow and flourish or stall out and plummet.
Some people respond to rejection with equanimity. They have a knack for putting unkind social experiences in perspective and refrain from over-focusing on their impact. The proverbial phrase “letting it go like water off a duck’s back” comes to mind. While it never feels good to be rejected, people who don’t get stuck in the mud of rejection are good at not landsliding into darkness. For others, it’s quite the reverse.
Some people don’t handle rejection well and overreact, letting it become deep-seated. For these more rejection-sensitive people, the intensity of such unwanted private experiences is overwhelming and over-powering and rapidly leads to deterioration of how they feel about themself and the world around them.
How you respond to moments of social dismissal is linked to a concept called rejection sensitivity (RS). Rejection sensitivity is the disposition to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and intensely react to rejection.
When socially injured by the words or actions of others, the pain can be internalized, externalized, or both. When internalized, the person becomes susceptible to developing symptoms reflective of depression - lousy mood, markedly diminished interest in engaging in activities, disrupted sleep, fatigue, loss of energy, feelings of worthlessness, and possible thoughts of self-harm. Internalizers are also susceptible to experiencing disturbing anxiety – restlessness, feeling on edge, unrelenting worry, being easily annoyed, feeling afraid something awful might happen, and having trouble relaxing.
When rejection is externalized, it is expressed in the form of out-of-the-blue anger or rapid rage. The person experiences and describes sudden, short bursts of intense energy in the form of complaining, yelling, and feeling victimized by circumstances. The challenge of this type of explosive reactivity is the sudden-to-anger person gets over it quickly while leaving a wake of relational debris.
Now that rejection sensitivity has been explained, what is dysphoria? The term dysphoria is Greek for “difficult to bear or unbearable.” The term rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RSD) is an older psychiatric term that reflects how moments of rejection, real or perceived, can markedly alter the way a person feels, thinks, and behaves. Becoming acquainted with the RSD term may help explain and contain what you or someone you know experiences.
You’ll know RSD may be in play for you or someone you know when maintaining relational connections is more complicated than it needs to be. When a negative interaction routinely becomes bigger than it needs to be, and when mountains continue to be made from molehills, RSD might explain why the same conflict repeats itself.
Quick Rejection Sensitivity Test
Your answers to this quick test suggest whether you’re vulnerable to rejection sensitivity. Answer each question on a scale of 1 to 5. Assigning a “1” means the situation doesn’t resonate with you. A 5 means this sounds like a bullseye.
For as long as you can remember, have you been more sensitive to rejection, teasing, and criticism than other people you know?
Do you frequently perceive yourself as having failed or fallen short readily?
Have there been experiences when you were rejected, excluded, or devalued, and from which you’ve never fully recovered?
Are you overwhelmed and overpowered by criticism, complaints, and unfavorable comparisons? Are you the type of duck for whom water sticks to your back?
Recalling your answer to question 4, do you experience rapidly surging and intense emotions when someone puts you down or lets you down?
Do other people accuse you of overreacting and being easily triggered by situations that don’t bother other people quite as much?
Do you engage in non-stop negative self-talk that feels unbearable at times?
Do you find relationships draining, often going off-track, and causing you to feel misunderstood or mistreated?
Now, total the above eight questions. The lowest possible score is 8, and the highest is 40. The higher your score, the more likely you will experience a rejection sensitivity that deserves your time and attention.
Press the button below to learn more about how your mind works as described in Dr. Zierk’s book, Mind Rules: Who’s in Control, You or Your Mind?