Welcome, Katherine, and welcome, Lex. Wonderful to have you both here. Obviously, listening to some wonderful ADHD UK ambassadors doing just extraordinary things. So, yeah, just thrilled to have you both here. You're both extraordinary ADHD coaches. You're both extraordinary people. We've known each other for many years now, which is wonderful thing. And you're leaders in the ADHD community without any doubt, as you know, I hold you in extraordinary high regard. And we're here to do a conversation about RSD. Do you want to both introduce yourselves and what you're doing as a starter? Katherine, do you want to go first?

I'll go first. Well, we're as a pair. We're here as newer chicks.

So we have our own we met actually through coaching. Lex was coaching me. And and we we really hit it on. That was back to the point that Hester was making. Like, sometimes you really wanna find the person who's going to really work for you, and that was the case for me and Lex. And this has transformed me into a partnership, really, as well as a friendship. So as part of neurochicks, what we wanna do is offer we feel like sometimes in the in the ADHD community, there's a lot of very serious advice, and there's a lot of, like, the TikTok sort of quite jokey kind of thing. And where are we basically like, it always doesn't feel like we're we have some somewhere in the middle. We feel like we sort of provide something where which is quite straight talking, sometimes a little swarry. Apologies in advance.

But I'll actually also really deeply researched because, obviously, as we do in our in our community of ADHDers, we really care and we really hyper focus on stuff as well. So we really bring all of this passion that we have into this, but we try to make it very accessible as well. And so part of what we do is offer group coaching and courses, but really cheap as well. So we're talking like £15 for anything that we do. And that's the way that we can sort of make some of this provision available to people outside of regular coaching, which is fantastic but not always accessible financially.

Amazing. And Lex, I want say a quick obviously, that was an introduction for the both of you from Neurotech. Say a bit about you.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Good afternoon. Say that sorry. Say that again?

Just do want to say a bit about you? Was there a bit of a delay?

Absolutely. So I'm Lex Harvey-Bryn. I'm a ADHD coach and therapist. I've been working in this industry for many, years, and I'm very grateful for to be a strong advocate and supporter of ADHD UK. We're here today to talk about rejection sensitivity dysphoria, which is a subject that's that both Katherine and I are incredibly passionate about, and I'm really looking forward to sharing that with you today.

Fantastic. Thank you. And we for those watching on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, we've had to do that refresh that we have to do every four hours for Instagram and LinkedIn, every eight hours for Facebook. The world is not fully designed for our kind of like wonderful craziness of a twenty eight hour global conference. So we have to we have to renew our streams every now and again. That was what just happened. So if you dropped out and had to refresh, that is just what just happened. You always have to try and do it whilst we are doing something else. It is a big deal, RSD, and I think it is, you know, we did a section earlier in the conference talking around emotional response, which RSD affirmatively sits, and.

Emotional response, RSD, is wildly underestimated in its impact. It is the thing that has you leaving your job because of what's happened, even though you're great at it. Like, it's that it'll exit you from a friend group. Like, it it can cause your self worth huge costs, and it is a very, very big deal. Who wants, who's up for the challenge of describing what RSD is?

Go ahead. Do it, Katherine. Go for it. Okay. So the the one of the simplest way to explain rejection sensitivity dysphoria is it's the perception that we're failing to meet our own or other people's expectations like a rocket through chest. It's visceral. It's all body. It's a real trip into complete mind and body overwhelm. Now one of the key things, in that is to recognize that it's often born in the perception. So it's the not knowing, it's the ambiguity, and that is a space that neurodivergent minds can really struggle in. So quite often when we're looking at how to navigate rejection sensitivity, the first thing to do is recognize the space of ambiguity.

What do you mean by the can you expand on the space of ambiguity? Well, it's always in the unknown.

Oh, sorry, Henry. It's always in the unknown. So it's things like someone looked at you funny, but you're not sure if you've upset them, not knowing if you've got something right at work, being in a position where you think you've, someone's given you a funny look and you don't know if you've upset them. It's it's often when you look at the things that are behind rejection sensitivity, it's in the unknowns. It's the I'm not sures, I don't know if, that causes our essentially, our amygdala goes on high alert and sends our body into a central nervous system response. So we're either gonna sort of fight, flight, freeze, or form. So we're gonna fight. We're gonna our justice insensitivity will be raging.

And we might want to our response might be to to fight, to to get involved, to to defend yourself. That's one of the things that when our amygdala fires off, our logical brain shuts down and our central nervous system takes over. So you can be aware that your logic's there and you're desperately trying to get hold of it. But in these moments when we're triggered, as I say, it feels like a rocket to the chest. We essentially go onto autopilot, and then we have these reactions. So fight being one of those responses that or you can have a flight response. I'm gonna quit the job. I'm running away. I'm leaving the relationship. A real sort of need to get away from that from that situation. You might have a phone response where you'll be.

This is often where it can look like people pleasing or, sort of perfectionism wanting to get it absolutely right, but writing very long emails, justifying what you've done, having to be very, very apologetic, and, and doing all you can to because your brain's essentially sensing a danger and a threat. So it's trying to protect you from that. So it will be it will be so if people if, a phone response is is what your brain's instructing you or guiding you to do, it will be it will look very people pleasing, very very perfectiony, very, I'm gonna do everything I can to make you like me to not be a threat. I'm not a threat to you anymore. And then the other one is is a freeze response, which is where you just go blank. Your mind goes blank.

And you don't know what to do next. You can't access any sort of, logical or cognitive thoughts in your mind, and you just freeze, very unclear of what you're what you need to do next. Now when you're looking at your central nervous system responses, some of the, things that are going on in that moment is, is our insular system goes into overdrive. So we feel everything. We're flooded with emotions. We're flooded with all the feelings. Our interception, which, we're gonna have a chat on sensory stuff, but our interception can go wild. So how we're feeling it in our body, Esther mentioned earlier that about how we it's a brain and body connection, and it absolutely is.

And if you look at the way that our body responds when it's in, when our amygdala sets off, a fight response, there's lots of body movement. There's lots of breathing. And when we're in a a slight response again, there's lots of body movement. There's lots of breathing. If we have a foreign response or a freeze response, quite often our body shakes afterwards quite, because it's getting rid of all that adrenaline and that cortisol. But the challenge that we have is often when we are hit by this RSD, it's it's quite all consuming, and we can't you can't separate your thoughts from the feelings, from the emotions. It's just overwhelm of of mental and emotional of all of those feelings.

Katherine, why why does it hit ADHD and autistic ADHD? Are you so hard?

Well, I think that's the thing that's really interesting is that when we speak about RSV, what we often hear in coaching what I often hear in coaching is people say, oh, it's like it's like a curse. It's like the RSD thing is almost like this monster that this virus that's infecting you. And and really, I think it's really important to sort of understand that this is not what's happening, that RSD is something that is something that kind of develops with us over time from what we call the drip drip drip effect of having negative sort of feedback loops from our environment or even from our own selves, which is literally, you know, if you're constantly as a neurodivergent.

Person, which means that someone who doesn't really comply with expectations, you are always told that you are doing something that is not quite right. You're basically sort of getting this message, which is I am not fitting in, and that's a form of rejection. And so that drip drip drip effect can turn into this big sort of like lifelong habits. Our nervous system gets basically primed for rejection. And so so that's one of the things that one thing I often say I always say about ADHD brains is that we have really fundamental values in our things that we expect from the world. And this thing, which not many people seem to talk about, but to me, it's like we are so desperate for clarity, for efficiency, for logic.

These are things that are just so for us, it just feels like the world should be based like that. And when it's not, because actually the world is not based on these values, it's based on doing other things in a compliant way so that people can sort of find their way through in a way that is lot not logical in itself, but more easy to manage. So we tend to hit hit the wall the the wall quite a lot from, like, going, but this is neither logic nor efficient nor nor clear. This stuff can really also sort of really contribute to this feeling of.

We don't feel understood and we feel like a sense of we're already sort of fitting and why is nobody else sort of understanding what we're doing. So I think with ADHD, that's a massive thing for us that we we have this sort of feeling of never quite fitting in. And so anything that sort of we almost our brain our brain's job is partly to to help us identify threats, and we're very, very good at identifying identifying anything that feels like danger to our nervous system.

And so that's what I call meerkat syndrome. It's literally like we're like looking around going, where is where is the next thing to hit me? And so anything that comes our way that might sort of get us into RSD is literally because we are primed for it. We are ready to sort of really get something, and our assumption is always going to be that something's gonna go wrong. So if we are well regulated, we might be able to sort of let it slide. But But if we are dysregulated, and for me, one of the d's of ADHD should be dysregulation. So if we are dysregulated, it's also more likely to hit us harder and and sort of be amplified because this is what we're sort of expecting effectively.

Thanks, Katherine. And you talked about that sort of hyper vigilance, which is something we also see with trauma. Yes. And so to Lex, how can trauma and past experience make RSD worse?

Well, I'm actually gonna pass this to Katherine because Katherine is one of her special areas of specialism. But some of the things when you're looking at the difference with ADHD and rejection sensitivity and and when the ADHD presents is that the the it's the the the sort of quick to impulse. It's the it's that need to react straight away as well that that really links into what Katherine was saying is that we we feel this desperate need to resolve it now. We struggle with with the, not being able to sort of sit quietly and not resolve it. And that's often driven so much by, as Katherine said, years and years of negative messages, lots of times where we have had to have these really unbearable, feelings and experiences.

And one of the things about our brains is it's not designed to keep us happy. It's designed to keep us safe. It's designed to keep us alive, and it does it incredibly well, 99 times out of a 100. But that there is always that one time where it just switches into we're unsafe. And that's where things like trauma also come in as well as RSD. So I'll hand over to Katherine.

Thank you. So the reason why I'm so interested in in the place of trauma and ADHD is not that trauma causes ADHD or that ADHD causes trauma, but they do go hand in hand in the sense that it's that what I was describing earlier about, that experience of never fitting in. It's not so when we think of trauma, we tend to think that trauma is an event that happens to someone. Trauma is not the event itself. Trauma is the reaction we have to an event. And my simplest definition of trauma is something that happens to you over which you feel powerless, over which you feel trapped. And it's that sort of that's your lack of autonomy. It's when you feel like you literally have no options. And that feeling is something like it's it's the feeling of.

Basically, I'm I'm I'm stuck, and I'm going to I might die. This is sort of thing. So, basically, RSD is, like, really a massive way of doing that. But the way that when you were talking, Lex, earlier about all these reactions to RSD, so the fight, flight, phone, etcetera, these are all trauma responses. And so what happens when we are hit by something that triggers us? The thing that's triggered is not our brain. It's our nervous system. And our nervous system goes into that sort of like, oh, state of alert. The first thing that happens when your nervous system is triggered is that your prefrontal cortex, which is your calm reasoning brain, goes offline.

It because that's not what's needed right now when you're feeling like you're in danger, what's coming up is basically your survival brain, and it's all about how do I survive this. And so that's the Lex often said that it's like it's the cruel irony is that the moment where you need your calm reasoning brain is exactly the moment that it goes offline. And so this is why when we are when this sort of r s d attacks, it's it feels a bit like that, isn't it? It's like a monster attack kind of thing. The first thing that we need to do is not necessarily try to reason through, which is as ADHDers, we live in our heads. And the more we are into our state of survival.

The more we go into problem solving, into all of this sort of stuff because we're really good at it. The problem is that actually your brain is not working properly at that point. And the more we're trying to reason through it, the more we sort of getting us entangled in reasoning when actually we need to tend to is how we feel in our body. And once we do that, we're able to often sort of come back to it. We'll we'll sort of go through a look of a couple of things that we can do with that. But that's basically the link between the two. Isn't that the most frustrating thing?

Isn't that the most frustrating thing where you can when you're in an RSD trigger, it's all your logic there and you can feel it going problem solving problem solving, but you just can't connect with it because you're in your central nervous scream at you. And it can just feel like you say, you feel powerless. You're you're you're aware that there's this thinking part and thinking it's so reliable, but you just can't connect with it. You can't it's not there for you at that moment because you are.

You are in your in autopilot essentially. Your brain has gone, don't worry. I'm gonna I'm gonna keep you safe. I'm gonna keep you alive. Whether it's a bear in the jungle or an email that's coming through from your manager, your brain doesn't understand that there's a difference. It just sees danger. It's triggered danger. But it's Okay. It's a it's a hard space to be in.

And there's I I just noticed a question on on the chat from Taz about is there a link between RSD and self sabotage? And I think it's a really good time to address that in the sense that, yes, there is a link. The link is it's all cope it's all coping mechanisms.

Not conscious one, but unconscious one. When we go through self sabotage, it's literally, I'm going to not try this thing because if I try that thing, it might actually it might feel like danger. So it's almost like I often describe the fact there's like a little dance that happens in our brain constantly between wanting to feel safe, but too much safety keeps us stuck and wanting to sort of grow and explore things, but that can feel unsafe as well. And so so self sabotage is definitely I'm going to retreat. I'm gonna just I'm gonna stop myself from doing the thing because if I do the thing, I could be in you know, I might expose myself. I might feel vulnerable. And RSD is also a coping mechanism. It's I need to figure out everything that could go really wrong, the worst thing possible that could happen so that I can sort of, like, remove myself from it as well.

Amazing. Like, to be honest, I've had some lovely comments come in. It slightly hurt me in the heart when he talks about your brain is to make you safe, not to make you happy. I think the idea that it's an important point that the original parts of our brain were exactly like, that a tiger run or more mundane equivalents. I think it's also a nice call to arms to say you need to work on happiness. You need to work on your changing yourself to get to that place. It's not just automatic. And it means that just doing nothing won't get you there. You've got to go out and do it and I think that's a positive to to think think to.

Also, the other thing Henry is that most are clues trying to tell you things as well. So sorry. I think there's a bit of a delay on my end. I Say you are. Don't know if I've just if I'm over cutting. Sorry, Henry.

You're okay. It's a I'm so sorry. Over cutting cuts sometimes comes with the territory. There is definitely a delay. Does RSD look like day to day, at work or school?

Oh my god. It's I mean, it can take as many forms as as you can imagine, but We're doing our usual.

No. It's this is a late gap. I'm I'm gonna say names first. So Katherine was answering that. So Katherine, go for it. So.

I think in in work, you mentioned that as well. It could be, like, literally, we're going to quit because someone sort of looked at us the wrong way or we got, a piece of feedback that we thought we are completely misunderstood. I can't be here. It sort of really escalates really quickly. It could be just avoid like, could be pure procrastination to the point of shutdown. It's like, I'm just not gonna do this task. We won't do the task because if we try to tackle it, it might actually get us in that zone of of feeling even more overwrought by things. At school, it might be also in.

Kids being quite feeling judged, like the sort of stormy behavior, like the tantrum kind of thing as well, or like complete shutdown as well. That could be the sort of thing. In in relationships, you know, it's like literally my friend didn't know. I asked them if it's good cinema and they said, no. I think they hate me. And that's sort of, like, when actually the friend might have had a very good reason and didn't have time to sort of send something more in detail with respect to that perception as well. So so it's it can take really all sorts of different different forms.

But it's really it's interesting to think that it used to be much more part of the the diagnosis process. There was something about emotional dysregulation, which this is. But actually and I think there's talk about it coming back actually as part of it because that's what you were saying. You're saying this thing, Henry, earlier about.

You know, working actively towards happiness. I think for me, it's less about happiness because happiness can be quite a lot of pressure. But I think it's really about self care and self kindness and really putting the stick down because we're really, really good at finding sticks to to beat ourselves up with. And that's the one thing we've got to learn to do because sometimes it feels easier to sort of go negative because in a way, we're we're confirming what we always sort of believe the worst of.

Because if we can sort of put the stick down and go, actually, I'm okay, we can start tending to our nervous system. And that's the bit where we can start regulating ourselves. And when we regulate our nervous system, we can regulate our brain. And that's that's the big secret here in terms of how do we deal with that part of it. RSD is not a curse. It's something that we're not going to be able to necessarily get rid of completely, but we can learn to manage it so that this coping mechanism, it's something that we can bring it back to where it needs to be, not this sort of over amplified, over efficient way of working for our brain.

Where's the line between RSD and a panic attack? I'll go over to Lex. So for Lex.

But did you say the link between RSD and a panic attack?

I did. Yes.

So I'm so sorry. This line's so bad. I'm terribly sorry. I mean, the the key is is that with with all of these things, they're they're your central system detecting a threat or danger. It's so it's all it's all the same. It's in the same ballpark. Obviously, they're not they're not the same. They there's they're often triggered by a bank attack is often triggered by a past life experience or a trauma, whereas RSD is sort of sits in a different it's different space. But quite often, the re the reaction and the response that our brain have.

Has is is very, similar. So it's that, oh my gosh. There's a danger. There's a threat. And in that moment when, as we've mentioned before, your brain, the logic shuts down and your survival kicks in, and it's and it's your body's way of trying to keep you safe from a threat that it's detected. And a panic attack is, again, is very visceral. It's very much that your your your brain or body then responds to. So heart beating, and sort of a lack of awareness in those moments of of of what necessarily has triggered that, but it's because your brain has detected a micro event from your past that's sort of visiting you again because you've had a similar may have smelled a smell. You may have had an experience. You may have.

May have seen something that that's triggered that that sort of sends your your brain and your body into into this this central nervous system response. So when you're looking at the two, the two situations, they both can have, similar ways in which to manage them. Would you agree, Katherine? Is there anything you'd add? No. No. I think you've you've got it. You've got it.

I definitely had a moment panic just then. I thought we had moved into talking about past life regression and, you know, people thinking they're a clear patter. And it took me until the second time you said it to mean you just meant a past in your life of this life. Something's happened in your past. And I'd been happily scolding to myself how do I, in a really nice way, sort of try and say that's not our core message that we think everyone, which doesn't say that I'm saying something. Believe that and I'm not You'd make a fabulous chiropractor, Henry. Thank you. Well, and as we all know, if I was to get a diagnosis in Sheffield.

Where the current where the weight where we have last data was is what, two thousand years, I would need to know how to be a Cleopatra, get myself mummified and last the two hundred years to get to the end of the weight queue to be seen. So useful skills built up. Think we're going to be running out of time.

What maybe we could do is we'd love to share a couple of very small tricks in terms of the things that you can do to sort of help with dealing with RSD.

Perfect. I think you're starting.

Yes. I'm I am. Well, I think that the first thing to know is that I think we always feel we've got this compulsion to always sort of make sure we have the perfect answer in the perfect moment. You know? Like, if something happens, we want to sort of solve things. The first thing we've got to do is really take a pause and really take a moment to go, what is going on here and realize this is RSD. This is not necessarily the whole fact here. And I think that's such an important thing to do. But the other thing I wanted to show you is a really simple exercise because I've I've been making the link so much about.

Yes. We think that ADHD is all about our brain, but actually, we felt we tend to forget about our body. And I wanna show you a very simple exercise that you can do that is really about accessing your nervous system and really bringing it bringing it down from this sort of state of panic. And so I'm gonna show it to you. I'm gonna it's gonna take about a few seconds. And and then you're very welcome to try it if you want to, but it's something that I do in all my sort of sessions. So what you do is that it's what I call optic nerve flossing, which is not the most or period of time if I want to. But, basically, what you do is that you put your hand behind your head like this.

And already in this position, that's what you do if you're in a transect if you're, like, in the sun having a really lovely time. So you're signaling to your body that it's safe. Like, if you were not safe, you'd go like this. But if you're safe, you'll do this. And then you look up to the top right. And when you do this, we're going to stay like that for a few seconds until we find some form of release in the throat. It could be like a cough, a yawn, a swallow, a little scratch. Could even not happen at all. But but, basically, what we're trying to do is we're using the optic nerve connected to our brain stem to then also connect to the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the mesh of nerve that connects our brain to the entirety of our organs.

And what it does when we're doing this, this very simple thing, is that we're literally signaling to the we're we're doing a little tug on the vagus nerve, and we're saying, hello. Can you get into in into play here? And the vagus nerve only does one thing. It's put your body in rest and digest. So when we do this, we're literally saying do that. And then we move the eyes to the right, and we stay like that until we have the same response. And something as simple as this, I've seen it time and time again.

When people come out of it, they might feel a bit heavier or a bit lighter or just but a little bit sort of the the shoulders drop a bit, the breath drops a little bit, and we almost sort of, like, feel like we're able to do things a little bit better. So it's a very, very simple exercise, which is all about reminding us we don't have to live in our heads. We are also grounded in the body. It's a tool of regulation. So I wanted to share that one. And there's a there's a there's a YouTube video link as well that you can find on that one. Lex?

Another one that's really helpful, Henry, if you don't mind me just adding in before we finish, is something to help sort of replicate. When we were talking earlier about our central nervous system responses, when you have a fight or a flight response, what you can guarantee is that your body's moving lots and you're breathing lots, which is expelling and and processing all of that adrenaline adrenaline and that some of the things that can be really helpful when you're in that, and you get that sort of punch to the chest and you really feel that visceral response to your RSD is kind of give yourself a bit of a reset. As Katherine just mentioned, the first thing is going recognizing that this is rejection sensitivity that you're.

Triggered by your rejection sensitivity. And then it's about sort of getting yourself into that state where you you can replicate some of the ways that we would process adrenaline and cortisol hitting your body like a train, to try and help with that getting yourself out of your amygdala response, so your central nervous system response and trying to logical brain back on it. So things like breathing. Simple box breathing to begin with is is a great start. There's some really great breath work specialist, Jack's, who's on the marketplace, does phenomenal breath work as well. But to start with, you can just do simple box breathing just to help start to calm calm down your central nervous system.

So sometimes it's also helpful to move. So if you're if you're feeling really full of it and you're feeling that, that sort of fight or flight response, sometimes matching that with body movement as well in those moments can really help you. But just saying to yourself, right, this is this is an RSD reaction, taking the breaths, focusing on the fact that you're what you're trying to do in that moment is calm calm down that central nervous system response. So breathing, either box breathing or and and moving your body just to help process all of that, melanin that you that your brains punch you full of to get you ready to fight or fly or run away.

Is a really good way. And also in that moment as well, saying to yourself, I'm not gonna respond immediately. I'm going to whatever works for you as far as sort of time frames, but just saying I'm not gonna react now. I'm gonna give myself twenty minutes or give myself twenty four hours. Whatever works for you and give yourself, it's I mean, this is a great thing to work with if you're if you're receiving coaching or therapy. It's things that help you in that moment to remind your brain and your body that you're safe.

Even if it is just simple as getting outside, putting your feet in the ground, saying to yourself, I am safe. I have everything that I need right now. Because what you need to do in that moment is calm down that central nervous system response so that you can access that beautifully wonderful logical thinking brain with all that problem solving skills that we have in that moment. Because when we're in that space, we're on autopilot. You aren't you aren't thinking with your logical mind. So it's so another really helpful tool is to breathe, body movement.

And remind yourself that you're safe and get your central nervous system calmed down. I would add one last thing to this, which is that it will pass. That's what you can know is that this RSD is like literally it's a moment. Even if it lasts five hours, it will stop. You're not gonna be stuck in it. And often because we are now or not now, and if it's not now, it's never, we forget that this feeling we have is not gonna be forever. You're not gonna feel like that forever. It's going to pass. And that's that's what we've got to we've got to sort of hold on to.

You Lex, Katherine, you're amazing. You're both amazing people, amazing coaches, doing wonderful things. Obviously, I've known you for many years. Also know people who've benefited from your coaching and how much positive impact that's had. I can't thank you enough. Thank you so much for doing this segment, talking on an important topic. Sadly, time is running away from us, so I have to say goodbye. Thank you very, very much. You're both amazing. Thank you. Bye, Katherine. And bye, Lex. Thank you so much.