Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria

(Reposting from my Tumblr because this is more personal than I usually get over there.)

I'm not putting this on my fandom blog because ultimately it's not fandom specific… but since we're talking about mental health as fic writers and fandom people, I asked myself, should I insert myself into this conversation?

Because if I'm not on Tumblr, I would not have an excuse to avoid doing my accounting homework and while I do find figuring depreciation to be calming I don't want to do it before today.

• Backstory: I don't talk about it a whole lot aside from reblogging things but I do deal with a cattywampus brain. Some parts of it I consider just "the way I am" and I'd be perfectly fine if society wasn't built around assumptions of a certain type of neurotypicality. Some… less so, particularly the Anxiety/OCD/Depression cocktail. (Lexapro my beloved.)

I have a couple of different thoughts that have been percolating since your original post a couple of days ago, T, and the post I saw when I opened tumblr today definitely made me think about RSD, one of my least favorite ADHD side effects.

I've seen more discussion of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria in the last couple of years, maybe because we're staying determined to talk about mental health despite efforts to Bring Back Stigma from some corners, maybe just because it's more well-known as it gets talked about more and it's a spiraling effect.

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is why I don't allow guest comments on AO3. I love that some of y'all think that one troll is funny and don't take it personally and more power to you, I wish I could, but I know damn well that criticism fucks with my head. And I came up writing fic on LJ, I remember taking "Is your OC a Mary Sue" tests and tweaking the fuck out of my original Sailor Scouts because I wanted a good grade in fanfic. I want a good grade in friendship, something that is both reasonable to want and possible to achieve.

• Sidebar: I haven't actually watched more than one season of MLP:FIM but somehow I know that is the most Twilight Sparkle sentence that I have ever uttered.

I could get one thousand good comments and one person complaining that Xaden is supposed to be a selfish asshole and I'm not writing him as enough of one will ruin everything because my brain is a fucking liar.

(There was a whole thing here about scrupulosity and actually I'm going to make that its own post.)

Like you've heard of a complement sandwich, right? Good thing-crit-good thing, supposed to make it so you don't feel like shit?

RSD means you could give me a complement sandwich with every fucking topping in the Subway and all I'd be able to taste is the banana pepper of one tiny critique. It doesn't even have to be meant as a critique. It's just what the RSD hones in on.

And then I second guess all of my reactions to other people, too! Because of the RSD/social anxiety/scrupulosity combo, it's all one big mixing bowl mess of a salad… sandwich… can you tell I'm writing this on my lunch hour?

I try to comment on everything I read… but sometimes something already has like thirty comments, and I ask myself if I have anything to add or will people think I'm just commenting for… I don't even know. Attention? It doesn't make sense. I know it doesn't make sense.

Knowing it, and even being able to deal with it most of the time, doesn't mean it isn't still happening. And sometimes all I can do to make it stop is close all the tabs and feel like a bad friend.

Don't even get me started on responding to comments as an author… I know I should but I'm also hung up on, well, if I start now, how far back should I go/what if people are upset if I didn't reply to theirs/what if I don't reply correctly. It's ridiculous! My brain is broken! I know this for a fact! But I can't always work around it.

Sometimes all I can do, sometimes the very best thing I can do, is close the tabs and focus on what I can do. To borrow yet another metaphor, I can't stop the shitty venin sage in the back of my head from whispering at me, but I can tell him to fuck off and reinforce my shields and go do something else.

I don't have a point anymore, I don't have a clever ending. I'm just putting it out there in the hope that maybe it helps someone know where at least some of this anxiety comes from?