Rejection sensitive dysphoria - AIBU

OP keeps on dodging context questions. I want to know if someone is sending emails just to this lady with bolded underlined text, or it is is actually ones sent to the whole office that are triggering her. If whole office, is it her role highlighted in bold underlined in those messages being criticised? We don't know what the situation is.

TBH surely it would be better to help them develop coping strategies to understand that people highlight or bold text in emails to signify to the reader its importance or make it easier for busy or distracted readers to locate the key points, rather than a criticism of individual staff members.

Yes definitely, and this person has tried to get help in dealing with it. This is what the powers that be have come up with. Their decision isn't her fault.

As a project manager I always bold date and time deadlines. Mainly to avoid 12345321 people messaging me on Teams saying - "so this document, when do I have to review it by" and sending me mad. I can just say "I have highlighted tbe relevant deadlines in bold in the email I sent you all".

I can’t believe self diagnosed conditions that don’t actually exist. I would make a complaint to my union

RSD is awful to live with, it was a key part in my social deficits criteria for my autism diagnosis.

Basically, it's a fight/flight/freeze/fawn response to the extreme when there is either valid or perceived criticism, so yes, the criticism can be valid, but it can also just be how I have interpreted the information being given to me, but my neurological response swings to immense and extreme distress, to the point I can get shouty, teary, scream, or just completely shut down.

Obviously not everybody knows what RSD is, or that I struggle with it and so it causes social rifts when I have these reactions.

To be honest with you, I didn't know this was RSD until I was almost 30.

When I could finally name the beast, it helped so much with managing it, because I could explain to the people around me that when they offer me criticism, before they expect a response I need to take time to pause and process the information they have given me, and put in place techniques I have learnt in order to prevent catastophising, and instead of focusing on the worst possible interpretation, I can start from the best possible interpretation and work my way back from there, but as this goes directly against the uncontrollable neurological distress it causes me, I will be quiet, withdrawn, and may even need to refer to my notebook to write down my thoughts before we can put any action in place.

This has meant small interactions like my family member picking up a spoon from the cutlery drawer that still has a bit of a smudge on it and saying "ugh, this one is still dirty" and me curling up, thinking I can never do anything right, and they just said that to get to me because they just want to get under my skin because they've always hated me and they just set me up to fail, to realising yeah that spoon has a smudge on it, it was wet, I thought I'd done a good enough job wiping it, but do you know what, I'm only human and how many times have I been to restaurants and been given a smudged spoon, realised that the person who put them in the wash was also human, and just gone back and got another one that didn't have a big smudge on it, and that I owe myself that same grace.

In the case of the OPs member of staff, if group, company wide emails, or community access data had bold and underlining on it, it probably wouldn't trigger me personally because I know it would be being sent to everybody, but if my direct line manager was sending emails specifically to me, and it had a lot of bold, capitals, and underlining then I would probably feel a little bit attacked. I don't think it's unreasonable where possible to ask that this is taken into consideration, but sometimes key elements do need highlighting in bold, or underlining, because I am also autistic, and find processing a lot of visual data at once to be overwhelming, and a big part is recognising that the text changes are for my benefit, and not for my detriment.

I had some OT sessions through the NHS where I brought up RSD, and my OT was wonderful about it, and wrote recommendations down, as well as advocacy service details if I ever get a job where I need mediation to discuss ways of working with my strengths and not against my weaknesses. I would only ask for my boss to consider these things, but I also would be able to forgive is they forgot about these things, because like me, they are human, they have a lot to manage, they are no more perfect than I am, and learning about people isn't linear.

Recently retired, but when I was working we'd regularly get "all staff" emails that had sections in bold or underlined, presumably to make sure that people read the important bits.

I wonder what the comms team's response to a request for this adjustment would have been?

My husband is autistic and prefers things in bold and underlined as it helps his brain process the most important tasks.

I’m sure everyone has preferences that work best for them but realistically how are you supposed to police that. This could become a minefield.

Everyone experiences some anxiety and can feel uncomfortable with criticism, that's different to having RSD. Just like everyone gets sad/low mood sometimes but that doesn't compare to clinical depression. Most people will get headaches but not everyone will get debilitating migraines. What you go through is a typical experience that most of us can just get through and get on with things. For some people it's a lot more extreme and they can't just get a grip and carry on.

If you are having to put things in bold, you are probably waffling too much.

Bold/underlining/caps/red text can come across as quite aggressive. A bit like you are shouting those words. I personally don’t care but I know quite a few people do, so I don’t use them myself.

I think it’s very easy to avoid using bold or underlining in emails so this by itself isn’t an issue, or shouldn’t be. I have a personal policy of immediately deleting internal emails which include red ink. It’s rude and unnecessary.

Should add. That calmly dealing with it doesn’t mean it has no emotional impact on me

Yesterday 22:52

** reaction sensitive dysphoria is not a recognised condition its made up bs.

I don’t think so - I’m still triggered by things that happened 60 years ago- fortunately I was diagnosed with adhd a few years ago and now understand why I am triggered and can calmly deal with it

I often use bold for sub headings in emails to denote the start of a new section - it helps to break up technical analysis into manageable chunks. It’s much harder to read if it’s all plain text.

Where do you stop? What about bullet points, or highlighted sections?

ND here. This is still on you to learn how to deal with.

The point is not her emails but all emails. The OP cannot control what other people in the organisation put in their emails or how they style them.

From where I’m standing that’s not a reasonable adjustment to make. (And what if this request clashes with a request from someone else? Each person in a workplace doesn’t exist in a vacuum.)

@Lipido you need to go back to OH, copying in HR, to make the point that it’s not a reasonable adjustment.

Far better than this employee is coached in how to deal with perfectly standard things that cause her undue upset.

Otherwise it all just come across as being incredibly narcissist and expecting the world to revolve around this employee (but not any other employee who requires adjustments).

It is a ridiculous suggestion for them to expect you to ensure no emails have that formatting. You can control your own, sure. But not every other employee or outside body, supplier contractor etc.

Best to speak to IT to see if, as someone suggested, they can tweak so the emails are all text format. If not or that doesn't work then you can go back to OH and answer- sorry not possible to screen an employees emails (lack of privacy, not your job or responsibility) and no IT can't help. Then it's in OHs hands.

You were quick to respond though and I think in 100 posts or so you’ve only replied to about 4 so it must have resonated ?

Obviously I can't speak for everyone but for me the feeling I get which I would assume is RSD is far more than anxiety (I have GAD and am on beta blockers to stop panic attacks). It's a huge lump in the throat and chest, feeling I might burst into tears, rehashing what has been said and even visualising their face as they say it, imagining how bad I must have been at XYZ for them to have taken the drastic step of highlighting my work. It took me a while to get over a post on here because I felt singled out and found wanting by someone who never even met me, let alone knew what I was dealing with while at Uni. It isn't just a "god, let me get this over and done with" thing, it's a "this is what they truly think of me and why I am a waste of space - how do I prove myself after this?!" on and on for hours, as if everyone is watching you waiting for you to mess up.

And when this person can no longer work you’ll be posting about taxpayers funding their benefits ..

If she had said “due to having diagnosed ADHD/ASD/PTSD/etc I experience RSD and therefore would require adjustments” then yes, fair enough. But that doesn’t seem to be the case

The thing is, surely lots of people have an element of RSD? If I get an email from someone senior, asking me to give them a call, it makes me nervous. Because we normally communicate by email, the request for a call is unusual. So I automatically think something has gone wrong. I have noticed that my heart starts racing and I feel very anxious and desperate to get the call done as soon as possible.

I can also give myself a talking to, tell myself to get a grip and that it hopefully isn’t that serious. But unfortunately, I still worry until the call is done.

However, not a soul knows that is how I react to those messages, because I recognise it as my own anxiety and insecurity and it is my issue, not anybody else’s. And I am not giving it a name. I would not dream of asking somebody to phrase it differently. Ideally in the email, I would like to know the reason for requesting the call, but I’m not going to stipulate that everybody does this.

I am not ND.

RSD is not a clinical diagnosis in itself. It’s more of a symptom or something associated with other conditions that are clinically diagnosed. No reasonable adjustments need to be made as there isn’t even anything diagnosable discussed.

You can’t self diagnose for something that isn’t even in itself a diagnosis.

RSD is not even an evidence based diagnosis, so I cannot understand why a nurse is making recommendations on it. We all have triggers, we have to learn to manage them to function.