Overreactive to stress or traumatic events

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look up "rejection sensitive dysphoria" it is a lot to sort!

it is a "maladaptive" survival behavior we learn from even early childhood and can develop strongly over years of relying on it for coping.

We can learn new ways to cope given time and practice and insights we can learn from others.

Sending best wishes for a better future.

Thank you so much.
I am also very sorry that you are going through what you are experiencing because I understand how taxing it must be for you. Thank you so much for answering my questions. Yes, I do believe that what we have is different. But I also believe that they are both very difficult conditions to live with. I will always support you and be here whenever you need a friend.

RSD is fascinating. I had never heard of it until I read your post. Thank you for posting that. I can imagine that a lot of people struggle with this, perhaps many more people than we realize.

I am sorry to hear what you are going though. This must be awful.

Also, it sounds to me like a more extreme version of what my partner has experienced at times when he has allowed his Prozac prescription to lapse.

So I am wondering: Have any of your doctors experimented with prescribing Prozac or other anti-depressants for you?

Of course, everyone is different, and what works for one person might not work for someone else.

But it might be helpful to some folks here for me to mention that, in my partner's experience, Prozac (at the right dosage) does NOT lift his mood directly, but it does give him some emotional shielding that he would not otherwise have, and it does make it much easier for him to let go of negative emotions and focus on other things.

Anyhow, it's great that you've been able to do autism advocacy work despite your condition as you've described it here.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 23 Feb 2023, 11:07 am, edited 2 times in total.

Thank you!

I can't take meds at all, especially anything that would have to be swallowed because my esophagus doesn't work correctly. But the reason I don't take meds, other than the fact that I cannot swallow them, is for a couple of reasons. Because my particular neurological system is so delicate and so compromised, I cannot introduce these foreign chemical substances. I have had extreme adverse reactions to some "psychiatric" type meds in the past and I absolutely will not expose myself to anything like this in the future. I was also given some antibiotics a few years ago when I had pneumonia, and they destroyed my colon and now I am paying out of pocket to do holistic and natural remedies to repair it.

The other reason that I refuse to take meds of any kind is that it is extremely important for me to be able to feel intense pain in my body especially if it is emotional pain. My physical disability can also be incredibly physically painful, and it is a disability that cannot be cured, it can only be managed as best as we can manage it. We manage it through sports, physical therapy, stretching, fascia work, foam rolling, Osteopathic manipulation, and Chiropractic. I also need massage therapy but the insurance won't pay for that so I have home massagers. So, I can't pump myself with meds every time I feel intense pain. If I did, I would become a serious addict or I would cause so much damage to my liver and to the rest of my body from taking meds that that would probably kill me.

And it is very important for me to live authentically. I don't mask pain, I don't run from it. I experience it fully, whatever it is. That is what enables me to survive and that is what creates compassion and depth in me and that is what makes it possible for me to advocate for the disabled community so passionately.

I have no problem with other people taking meds for whatever they need if that is helpful to them. But for me, personally, I refuse. I have to be in touch with me body constantly. I have to feel everything that is going on in it and with it. That is the ONLY way that I can understand what is happening to it and do the things that I need to do to cope and survive.

But thank you for caring and for suggesting what you did.

I read a few descriptions of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, including one from the Cleveland Clinic. It's interesting, and some aspects of it ring true to myself, like "emotional dysregulation is when your emotions are too loud for you to manage, causing feelings of being overwhelmed, uncomfortable or even in pain."

However, I don't understand why this unusual and excessive reaction and feeling overwhelmed and in intense emotional pain would be limited to or specific to experiencing rejection, when there are so many possible causes of emotional pain. Like being bullied, experiencing a loss, betrayal, cruelty, being misled... I could go on and on. Why would one specific experience lead to emotional dysregulation and not so many others?

The descriptions of RSD also include some very specific characteristics that seem to me to be cognitive in nature and not emotional, like low self-esteem, fear of failure, perfectionism, which are incorrect self-image issues that could be dealt with through therapy. While I can identify with the emotional pain being described, and the painful experiences I mentioned in my post do come from rejection, at least in part (though they are more strongly from a feeling of bewilderment, injustice, and loss), I don't have low-self esteem, or perfectionism, nor am I a people-pleaser, at all.

Still, interesting, even if I don't really understand the narrowness of the parameters.

Yesterday I was reading studies about the hypersensitivity of the nervous system in ASD. It's a thing for sure. It definitely gets wrapped up into PTSD for some of us. I am the hyper-hypersensitive ASD type. I still have visceral memories of reading Where the Red Fern Grows, Watership Down and The Chronicle of Narnia in my childhood. My husband watches the news every night and last night I asked him: Why do NTs need to be reminded about death, injustice, murder and oppression every day. I can read about fictional characters 30 years ago once and that was sufficient for me. My therapist suggests self-EMDR for my 100s, er 1,000s of mini-PTSD moments... RE: social, I have an online FB group and recently got really upset when I couple of them stood me up IRL. It's sort of blew over. I don't know. They are friends but only to a certain extent. I guess the relationship is valuable in that way despite the slight. For my part, I wasn't as direct as I could have been. For they part, they aren't as attached to the relationship as I wish they might be. All or nothing? That's how I feel. (strong Nervous System Response). I'll go with part. (sympathetic other response - need to learn more) Sigh.

It feels like there is a gaping bleeding wound in my chest that has been there for nine months, ever since the person I love most in the world and who has been my soulmate and other half for 40 years shoved me out of his life, and since then he has had a girlfriend (at first a few girlfriends, it wasn't even that he left me for someone else, he just left me for no reason) and until he doesn't have a girlfriend we can't even communicate (because it's just so painful to me, and I can't) and he can't make up for what he did and be at least a friend to me, and be sorry, and be there for me, so to me it feels as if every day he is choosing to continue mauling me, every day he is stabbing me again and again, and I can't survive this, but I also don't have enough courage to end my life so I am stuck with this completely intolerable pain and I am screaming in agony and this is my life forever. There is no way I can get over having a bleeding wound that keeps on bleeding. I am in so much pain I don't know what to do.

Sorry.

I had a lot of this when I was younger. I could not see that I had alternatives to my choices in how to react to others in any situation. One thing that helped me a lot was to get trained in "healthy self assertive behavior". I was stuck in the sick behaviors I learned in my dysfunctional family growing up and my autistic rigid thinking did not let me see I could choose other ways to respond to any incident or ways others treated me.
One of the things that helped me was a book called "when I say NO I feel guilty" by Manuel J Smith. I read it through several times and cried the whole time re living painful incidents from my past. My therapist helped me learn how to use the "verbal self defense" techniques in the book to build coping skills. You can find the book on line as a pdf, or on youtube or any resale site on the internet such as thriftbooks.
Your complaint in your posts here( go back and read them) is that you are stuck and nothing can change. Just because this has been true in your past does not make it true for your future.

This is a tool that can be used to make things different . Ask your therapist!

(see also learned helplessness)

Learned helplessness is something that I have very recently started feeling. It's kind of devastating.

I am so sorry you are going through this. I went through something similar a few years ago. It took a very long time for the pain to subside. But it does.

I appreciate the support and your thoughtfulness, but this does not apply to me at all. I don't have dysfunctional learned behaviors and I did not grow up in any dysfunctional situation, be it family or otherwise. I have had to cope with significant tragedies and I have done so well and in a healthy way. Both of my parents died in recent years, at home, and we took care of them ourselves and were there for them through it, and my boyfriend of 15 years died, at home, of cancer at 51, and we knew his terminal diagnosis for a year and a half. We both knew that the only way to live through his death was acceptance and peace, and we did that.

I have no problem with saying no or with being assertive, at all. I have no problem seeing alternative ways to respond to bad situations. And I certainly don't feel guilty when I say no. I always say no, and I think that guilt is a selfish feeling that only serves to make people feel better about themselves when they know they have done something wrong (because "at least I feel guilty"). And I absolutely do not suffer from learned helplessness.

What I have is a brutal, unrelenting and unbearable pain that is like a severe toothache that never ends. There is no reacting to it in any way, there is only screaming in agony.

I really do appreciate your intention.

Thank you but the pain is not going to subside. That is something we tell ourselves, and for many things it does work, over time. But not this time.

I understand. I felt the same way in my situation. But I do know that some pain does not change. For me, when I have those kinds of pains that don't change, my body adapts to make that pain my new normal. Once I understand that this is my new normal, I am able to be ok living with the pain. That is what helps me to function and do well despite the pain. But whatever you need to do to live your life the best you can despite this, is exactly what you need and I completely honor and respect that.

The last thing I want to do is live my life. I just don't have the courage to end it so I have to keep on suffering. I live with unbearable pain and no way out. I have 30 years of screaming to look forward to.

Except that the person causing my pain could stop it at any time. In an instant. But he won't.

Thank you for your kind words.