Rejection sensitive dysphoria - AIBU

I have ADHD and RSD. I have none of those issues whatsoever around emails. I embolden things in emails AND colour them in all by myself! I am not triggered by anything. Other than idiotic colleagues, and then I deal with that accordingly.

Well possibly, however I have had people miss deadline dates in very clear, two line emails. People have a lot on, especially senior people who may have several documents a day sent to them for review.

Is it possible you're putting too much waffle in your emails if multiple people are missing crucial information from it?

this kind of firm wide messaging?

I'd change that to "all in-house messages" for clarity. "Firm wide messaging" risks sounding like message practices that are strong and broad.

Also, occy health - agree with pps, it's wanky.

Thank you. Yeah, I know what you mean. Some people get into a right tizz. I feel I'm very seldom misconstrued in email nor do I take offence by those sent to me.

It's just either instructions or information I need to take in. If it's opinion then I've also got mine so let's just ignore that part! And get on with our work. I think some people just want to have a distraction and an excuse not to just get on with the task at hand? Or take things way too personally.

I did have a manager who was such an arse by email she eventually got demoted when she accidentally hit 'reply all' with a cuntish email to a blameless colleague, so the whole firm including MD saw it! But she never used all caps or underlined anything.

I had a senior manager once who emailed my group (but not me) in a way that could be seen as castigating me for something. It didn't bother me, because we'd had a conversation, we were in a bit of a high drama situation and managing it, and I was sort of taking the blame for something the union perceived as a problem to tidy things up.

Anyway, it didn't upset me but it upset the people who received it because they didn't want to see people called out by email like that - I think the reactions were quite a shock to the senior manager concerned. I thought that was quite a healthy sign for the group culture: even if the individual concerned doesn't mind, nobody wants to be coopted into judging and criticising other people with lazy or strategic mass e-mails.

It can be such a curse, e-mail.

Yes. There's a lot of sense in that post but then it jumps straight to managing out.

I don't get all the drama around this. OH aren't dictating a new company policy. It's for the manager to have a conversation with the employee, consider whether email culture is healthy, consider whether there's support in dealing with communications that might help the employee.

And if RSD is a symptom of ADHD and autism, no, OH and the manager can't hold out for an official diagnosis with these things taking multiple years by now. But the manager can say no to anything that undermines business needs.

There's simply no need for all this outrage and alarm - working out what's going on here and what's possible is a normal managerial function. Doing so in a humane and professional manner is not going to open the floodgates to everyone just inventing conditions and getting whatever they like. The person's line manager (who I understand is not OP) needs to do their job now.

I wouldn't be upset. That stuff doesn't bother me at all.

There’s a big gap between supporting someone’s particular needs and managing them out the door. I’d be taking a balanced approach so being aware of the way I communicate and avoiding things I know the other person finds difficult while also pointing them to the employee counselling service to support them developing strategies to deal with their feelings.

Its one thing to say “this would help me while I work out how to cope with X” and quite another to say “this is how I am and you need to make sure no one triggers me”. Triggers are something that need to be worked through and coping mechanisms found. The problem is we often don’t know we’ve been triggered because we all experience the world in our own way. Once we know we’re having a reaction there are lots of ways to minimise the reaction, which take effort initially but do work well.

Deciding what’s reasonable (eg I can adjust my communication style but we need to recognise you’ll still get emails with bold etc) and supporting the bits outside my control feels more fair than managing someone out the door.

I think it does make a difference to how an email is read, otherwise why would people bother bolding at all?

It is context we need here.

If someone is sending group emails praising @HundredMilesAnHour and @Catpiecefor working really well on XYZ and how much they saved yada yada. Excellent job!

Then they continue to say @BillieWiper needs to re read the opening paragraph for the project as this was clearly misconstrued throughout, which was disappointing. Once again sales let us down.

You can see why @BillieWiper might be upset, if this is happening regularly.

underlining and bold in emails is just a unprofessional anyway.

Who says? Is there some universal style guide that determines what is or isn't professional?

Has the person in question self diagnosed with adhd or autism of which RSD is a major component? Or do they have an actual diagnosis of one or the other, in which case RSD is not self diagnosed, just a recognised symptom of both conditions.

I will hold the door for you! I am reminded of an ex colleague with a vaguely bad back that didn’t have a defined diagnosis but really really hurt some days, who demanded , and got, a very expensive ( think well over £1000 ) orthopaedic office chair to sit on on the very rare occasions she came into work. When she left a few months later she offered to buy the chair for about £50 and was very put out when her offer was refused.

Thank you. I feel the same way. It's what you say not the font size or whatever! Though one manager would do emails in all caps in red when he was angry. Silly bugger. I just imagined steam pouring out of his ears and his face as red as his font colour. And laughed. 🤣

Exactly! If this person has RSD, the ‘damage’ will be done by the content of the email rather than the bold/underlining. Unless they don’t bother reading the emails of course but that brings with it a different issue. 😜

I have (diagnosed) ADHD and I’m pretty sure that I have RSD (I only say ‘pretty sure’ because RSD isn’t actually a medically recognised condition) and whilst I appreciate that we’re all different and have different triggers but the issue is the content/messaging rather than the typeface format.

Public sector I’m guessing?

But if he does something wrong or hasn't completed something on time, does that mean they just don't use underlining or caps, but they still have to say 'the deadline for this has now passed, please can you prioritise this and finish it today.'? Is that rejection of his attempts to do the work but not fast enough?!

It sounds really weird tbh.

Me too! I deal with a couple of hundred emails a day. I like to be able to quickly look at an email and see what action is required of who and by when.

I hate long ramble emails when you have to scroll down and open attachments just to understand what the hell it’s about.

Same.

I love underlined, blood and highlighted emails

It’s not considered in the slightest bit unprofessional where I work. It’s actually quite useful when there is a lot of information to be absorbed and/or there are key points (such as deadlines) that require additional attention.

I’m ex-Big Four and work for one of the world’s leading banks (bulge bracket) so we are a long long way from being considered unprofessional. In fact we generally blow most organisations out of the water when it comes to being professional. Trust me, if we weren’t our clients would tell us (and then some!)

I voted YABU because underlining and bold in emails is just a unprofessional anyway.

This is what I was thinking. As RSD is often in the context of ADHD. I think it’s about being open to understanding and supporting individuals but individuals need to then also do the work to manage themselves through accessing support. If the emails are passive aggressive that needs to stop. If they are being clear on priorities then the person needs help to manage the and understand that a bold line may be there for more emphasis. It’s hard to know without the emails and context. Blanket advice from OH without context also isn’t helpful and may actually limit the person more.

I do it because where you are responding to lots of people about various stuff it's easy.

I don't find it rude. I also get feedback that it's much easier for everyone to scan read the email.

Rejection sensitive dysphoria is not a formally recognised standalone medical or psychiatric diagnosis in the UK, nor is it listed in diagnostic manuals like the DSM-5 or the ICD-10/11. It is considered as a possible symptom of wider neurological conditions including ADHD and some mental health disorders. However, a diagnosis is not required in order for any employee to ask for reasonable adjustments at work but the key word is reasonable. If this colleague's mental landscape is such that the normal communication between professionals makes her ill then the appropriate action is not to totally change the modes of normal communication between professionals, which goes far beyond a reasonable adjustment, but to instigate the process of capability assessments which will allow for her employment to be terminated on the grounds that she cannot do the job. This has to be managed incredibly carefully to ensure that it doesn't amount to an unfair dismissal but that it HR's actual job and they are trying to pass this impossible situation to you in order to avoid doing that job. It is important that the process is followed to terminate her employment without her resigning because of she resigns she will be considered as voluntarily unemployed and not entitled to the same benefits. Terminating her employment on capacity grounds will help her to get the help she needs.

Oh come on!
Responsibilty has to be taken at some point.

The thing is, people all deal with their own ‘thing(s)’ everyday. Most people take their own responsibility for that. This move towards pushing for a diagnosis or self-diagnosing and then expecting everyone to amend perfectly normal working behaviour to accommodate one individual (and then multiple individuals ALL with different “needs”) has to stop.

No wonder our nation’s productivity is in a pit. Companies and their employees are wasting too much time on crap like whether they’re allowed to underline something in an e-mail.

What about their ADHD suffering colleague who needs important information underlining? What about the dyslexic colleague who can read better in bold?
Stop wasting the time and energy of many, and allow each individual to find their own way through their issues. That may mean changing job if a particular print or font can trigger you.