The Strength In Sensitivity → Rise From Rejection

Hi everybody. I'm Dr. Sharon Saline. I'm so excited to be here and I am freaked out about the technology. So, um I'm just going to ask for your patience with me. I'd like to um talk today about the four ways that you can transform your rejection sensitivity into a strength and that plays a key role in your resilience every day. But I'm going to start with a story. And it's a story about a little girl. A little girl who was sensitive. A little girl who had a sense of humor and imagination and love to make up dramas with her Barbies.

That little girl went to high school and was Lucy in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. And then when she was in college, she took off a semester to be in a student-led production of Hair that was picked up by the original producers of hair and ran through the fall at the Hasty Pudding Theater in Cambridge. I love theater. And this is a quick tangent, but last weekend, which was my birthday, I'm happy to say, I went to a reunion of a very special reunion of the cast of Gypsy from high school when I played Baby Louise.

We got together. I hadn't seen people in 40 years. And then we went to see Gypsy. You might hear something from that show a little bit later. Now, the thing about being sensitive and loving the theater is that you have to be able to tolerate rejection. And I frankly am terrible at it. Just bad. In fact, when I was a girl, my family named me super sensitive Sharon. And it was not a badge of honor. So instead, I left the theater professionally and became a psychologist where feelings were okay.

Or so I thought. My family moved when I was in sixth grade and I was put in the gifted program. So, we had a gifted classroom once a week and then the rest of the time I was in a regular sixth grade classroom being tortured by this boy named Benji who was until I arrived the smartest person in the class. Not to be shamelessly self-congratulatory, but really I could beat him at his own game. And he did not like that. And so, he made sure no one else liked it either.

And I was bullied. I was spit on. People put worms in my little paper bag lunch on the playground. And thank God for my teacher, Mr. Telenoff, who sat me with four other smart girls and never moved my seat the entire year. I went on to a different uh middle school and moved on. So, the thing about living with rejection sensitivity is that the sting of rejection doesn't exactly go away. And over the years, even though I'm an extrovert, I have some social anxiety.

I get nervous. Am I going to do a good job? Are you going to like me? If I hold out my approval cup, will you put anything in it? I don't know. And that's hard for me. And I don't like it. So recently I read an article about Simone Ashley, you know, the actress best known for playing Kate in Bridgerton. And she said, "Anytime I got rejected or told I couldn't do something, it felt strongly external. I never let it inside." And here's the thing for people with rejection sensitivity.

She said, "It never hits my heart." It hits our hearts. It hits our hearts. Dr. William Dodson, a colleague and friend, he noticed rejection sensitivity dysphoria. [A sentence about the meaning of dysphoria is unclear in the captions.] And he saw it in his patients with ADHD. It's not a formal diagnostic category, but it goes along with ADHD and in my opinion falls under the social anxiety umbrella, which I'll be talking about tomorrow. People with ADHD struggle with letting go of past hurts and possible rejection and have heightened emotional sensitivity.

That's different from people who are highly sensitive people. It's a character trait, a personality trait, and a sensitivity to a number of different things. People with RSD are sensitive to one thing, rejection or feeling like you made a mistake and you'll never be forgiven and people will withdraw their love. Now there are four components of rejection sensitive dysphoria as we can see here. Anxious expectations, worries about whether people will like you or not or if you'll let someone down or if their disapproval will get to you.

I don't know. But do you know people who don't care if other people disapprove of them? I'm like, how do you do that? Right. Okay. Number two, misinterpretations. We might personalize and misinterpret something that isn't about us, right? Q-Tip. Quit taking it personally. How much of your perception is actually based in reality? And how much of it is based in past experiences of hurt or abuse or neglect or bullying that you're projecting into the current situation. Strong emotions. Okay. We know even though it's not in the DSM categories uh and description of ADHD that people with ADHD have difficulties regulating emotions.

One of my child clients says, "It's like this tidal wave, Dr. Sharon. Suddenly, I'm doing fine and then whoosh, I can't keep my head above water." Does anyone here ever have big feelings like that? Okay. Particularly if I sense a little bit like I might be too much or upsetting people. I'm in the land of rejection. Um, unhelpful behaviors. Okay. I don't know. If you might have noticed Sean and Chris, but I apologize a lot when I think I am being difficult and I'm being maybe moderately difficult, but my perception is that I'm being terribly difficult because I'm super sensitive, Sharon.

So, I apologize a lot. That's not a super helpful behavior. So oftentimes people who live with rejection sensitive dysphoria, I'm just going to say RSD, see ourselves as failures. When we disappoint others and we quickly drop down into shame, we whoosh down that shame spiral into the pit of dejection. We feel humiliated and embarrassed, whether or not it's even reasonable in a given situation. One of the most frustrating things about having RSD is freaking out and knowing you're freaking out and knowing it's not okay to be freaking out because there's nothing to be freaking out about.

We tend to be people pleasers who want to avoid conflict or disapproval. For me, not so much the conflict, but maybe the disapproval. And we strive for perfection. And perfection is to compensate for our fear that we might mess up or we're not good enough inside. But here's the thing, the part of your brain that tells you you should be perfect isn't perfect either. Okay? There is no perfection. Now, worry tells you that you can't handle a situation. Okay? Worry says mah blah blah and you can't handle it.

Right? So, we're going to expect to worry when in situations where there might be a chance of hurt, of a little bit of rejection, of some social awkwardness that we perceive as a slight. Okay? So, instead, we're going to think about times in the past where we might have been a little afraid or uncomfortable and we did something anyway. How did it work out? What internal resources did we have that we applied? Because I'll tell you, anxiety erases memories of success. Gone. I don't know what I did.

I can't tell you. We need to identify what those are. Follow the STAR approach. I talk about this a lot in my work. It's on my website, but essentially it's stop, think, act, and recover. When you sense that you're becoming dysregulated through physical awareness, tightness in the chest, sweating, etc., call for a stop. Take a break. Soothe yourself. Then think what is the next right thing I want to do? And then do that and give yourself time to recover. Be honest about what do you say to yourself inside?

How many of you treat yourself way worse than you treat your worst enemy? What would your grandma or your beloved pet say to you? Right? What would you say to a third grader with a skinned knee? That's how we have to talk to ourselves. So, we have to change our dialogue. Focus on what lights you up. This is what builds self-confidence, but also self-esteem. When you do things that you love, and consider the source. When someone says something to you, it's not necessarily about you.

My father, who is still alive at 92 and was a car dealer, so that's a whole another set of stories. He says there are three sides to every story. Yours, mine, and the truth. When you live with rejection sensitive dysphoria, you think it's all your fault, and it's only your story. So, here are the five steps to build the resilience you need. One, change negative thought patterns. So, we're going to look at facts versus interpretations. Reframe rejection. The rejection doesn't define your self-worth. Manage your emotional regulation with mindfulness or other kinds of coping mechanisms.

For me, I like to take a walk. When I'm starting to get dysregulated or I can't stand being inside anymore, I take a walk. Some people make a cup of tea. It doesn't matter. Take small risks and build confidence. This is what we call a challenge ladder in cognitive behavioral therapy. You don't climb to the top of the mountain. You don't like magically beam yourself there. You take a step and then another step. What are your small steps? And lastly, cultivate that self-compassion. Not just what would grandma say, but how can you come up with some phrases that you can say to yourself?

Put them on in your phone, in your memo section or your notes section that you can say when you're feeling bad. And I will tell you that I have a happy playlist. Okay, it's actually called happyish playlist. And I have an angry playlist and depending on what's going on, I'll listen to either one of them. So, we have four strategies. We're going to change our thinking. We're going to take small risks. We're going to surround yourself with a community who loves you, who accepts you.

This is why we're here today. This is why we're here. And we're going to cultivate self-compassion. Now, resilience is an inner strength and we're going to navigate it with grace. And I have this timer and I can't tell if that's 11 minutes or 11 seconds because if it's 11 seconds, I'm in super big trouble. So, I'm just going to say the power of perspective, baby. And I'm going to tell you a story. When I was in graduate school, I was in a supervision group with three other women.

And one day, I went into the group was two women and the supervisor. And they said, "Sharon, we need to talk to you." And I was like, "Oh my god." And they said, "You're too much. You're too curious. You ask too many questions. You want to go too deep. We need you to back off a little." I started to cry, of course. Who wouldn't cry in that situation, right? So, I started to cry and I walked out and I was walking by the director's office and he heard me crying and he said, "Sharon, come on in." And I said, "I'm too much.

I'm too curious. I asked too many questions. I'm too intense." And he said, "You're smart and you're interested in a lot of things, and if you were a man, they wouldn't have said anything at all. [Applause] So, music is my friend, and I'm going to sing a part of a song for you that I want you to think about when you're getting a hard time. [Song introduction and lyrics omitted (14:59–16:15).] Thank you so much.