Rejection sensitive dysphoria - AIBU

Surely this one is easy? Don’t bold or underline anything in your emails to this person.

have a chat with them - do they want you yo
communicate that to others?

deal with things has they happen - tell them to keep talking to you.

I actually had something on here the other day where a poster took a post I made and highlighted in bold my sentences then put her criticism underneath each. It did feel like she was in Court, trying to tear me to shreds. I was having what I thought was an open discussion about something and she tried to shred me, for no apparent reason other than she thought I should have got a better job after uni and the fact I hadn't seemed to be a personal affront to uni careers guidance. It is my fault I am on a low paid wage because I didn't "make an effort" with the career guidance at my Uni. I do have ADHD but I can definitely see how it feels like an attack if that is what you are doing OP.

This 100%
OP is saying she ‘essentially can’t mange them at all!’ About RAs for a line report doesn’t seem to be handling this with the required professional managerial neutrality of feelings. Rigidity of thinking isn’t a good part of any management style.
Nor does OP appear to have absorbed what’s been actually said (and what’s not been said) by Occupational Health.
Many people with Rejection Sensitivity are exploited by their managers who are really happy to have the employee’s eagerness to please other people and especially anyone with perceived authority over them.

Never heard of RSD do I looked it up. It seems that it is a descriptive term (rather than a diagnostic label)for a trait which some people who are diagnosed with autism or ADHD present with.

So to be fair, the person could be diagnosed with autism and being given accommodation for their diagnosis. I do think that requiring colleagues and anyone contacting the person to monitor their e mails is a step to far.

This is well put.
Also, there is a difference between bold and underline in generic emails to a wide audience (maybe to emphasise certain key points) and bold and underline to this individual (which could be construed as being shouty or critical in certain contexts).
You should talk it through with the member of staff and offer support if she does get triggering emails.

"Rejection-sensitive dysphoria" is just a medicalised re-description of "unhappy, especially when people seem not to like her".

This situation seems to be one in which labelling is a power move, designed (consciously or unconsciously) to boost the label-bearer's needs to a special status, over and above the ordinary need for understanding and respect that all of us have.

Why are we seeing this so much these days? Huge numbers of people claiming special statuses, competing with one another for the ordinary understanding and respect that all of us deserve? Like any kind of compassion was a finite resource and everyone has to try and muscle their way to the head of the queue - by beating back the people who haven't embraced a quasi-medical term for their human vulnerability.

This.

I think you could reasonably have a work place policy /style guide that emails shouldnt include bold or underlining as they can be misinterpreted as aggression but your style guide would need to ensure you could emphasise key dates or headings somehow and that it was clear for other readers.
My workplace has a no capitals or bold policy and I dont underline as it looks like a link. Im left with size and italics.

I dont think you can reasonablly control emails from outside the organisation and this would be covered by being impractical to implement.

I think this post is very insightful and spot on

I’m AuDHD, and RSD was identified as one facet of how this presents.

Trying to make everybody bend to accommodate that by never doing anything that might cause disproportionate upset for me wouldn’t be helpful, and isn’t workable. What did help was reframing and working to manage it myself. “This isn’t about me, it’s just how they communicate” or “this feedback feels brutal but it’s useful, and they wouldn’t push me to develop if they didn’t believe in my potential” is much more helpful in the long run than “everybody tiptoe around Lorrie because she’s overly sensitive to perceived criticism”. If something does slip through, and this person receives an email with some bold or underlining, they’re likely to be even more upset and derailed after being ‘protected’ from this for a while.

Personally, the only accommodation I need for RSD is an understanding that I’ve not taken offence if I’m slightly quieter than usual for a short while; I’m just processing and will be back to normal quickly. I don’t think an “it’s everybody else’s responsibility to change how they communicate to manage one person’s dysphoria” approach is helpful, or even particularly kind.

I think there's nuance here though - if you are constantly sending 1 person emails with bold underlined bits but no one else, it does come across as shouty. You might as well put things in CAPS LOCK.

If you are sending to the whole office a plan for set talks then yes, breaking it down is fine, as long as certain departments or groups aren't overly bolded/underlined as if they haven't ever got something completely right and need to be shouted it.

If you imagine your voice raising when you see it, I imagine that is how it is being perceived.

If the employee has a diagnosis of ADD, ADHD, ot autism, I would be likely to comply as RSD is a known factor in these (I am neurodivergent myself, and have RSD).

However, although I have several health conditions that affect my work, OH explained they would not request reasonable adjustments for one of them as I don't have a formal diagnosis yet.

In your shoes I would check with HR. The employee could also apply for an Access to Work assessment, which might enable them to access specialised counselling sessions to help them at work. This has been recommended for me. I am allowed 6 sessions, tailored to my needs, giving me strategies so I can cope better.

Personally I've not requested any adjustments for my RSD, as when I began working, any visible difference would make one unemployed/able. As someone who has multiple disabilities (some visible) and as a single parent, I have to keep employed. So I mask. All the time. And have taken lots of shit that I shouldn't. My MH is worse as a result.

The one adjustment for my RSD that would really help is wording about meetings. Being told we need to meet means I am convinced I must have done something catastrophic and I'm going to be fired. I have to keep telling myself to give my head a wobble. If I am told we're meeting and told what it's for/about, eg 'a brief KIT meeting so you can show me where the project is at' would stop me tipping down the doom spiral and mean I can prepare.

I would find the instructions re email a bit irksome, I often write emails using underlining or bold for different headings and would struggle to make the information clear otherwise.

It’s not just the workplace. My daughter runs a dance group at university. The end of term dance is with them all in black. One girl has said this needs for be changed as she is triggered by black as it reminds her of death and they all cannot wear this.

It’s all too much.

So this is why it’s causing an issue:

Organisations work on processes. Once they get modified for individuals then you are more likely for mistakes to happen.

However, Individuals want personalisation.

At its foundation personalisation and process are at cross purposes. So there is initial friction. ( Sometimes this is good because the process needed a nudge to change). But it’s there.

It only works imo when the inclusive accommodation is something the person does themselves to help them join in with the process. Or when the process is changed across the whole organisation so it’s a functional, foundational change.

So in this case - a directive to the whole organisation that no bold/underline be used in email (I think this would be unreasonable really but is an example of process change).

IT finds some way to screen persons emails and remove bold and italic before they read them.

Or team member, has therapy to deal with the part of their brain that gets overstimulated by a message - this could be something like cbt.

The important thing about about accommodations is that is to help the person to join in with what is hard for them.

Somewhere that has been lost when professionals are recommending things that just facilitate avoidance which is ultimately unhelpful.

So, you think you are qualified and able to diagnose conditions remotely, from a single forum post, without having assessed the individual, in person?

What are your qualifications? Which professional body regulates your profession?

Following

Ah.... RSD is NOT a diagnosis, it is a collection of symptoms which can have different causes, most likely based on previous experiences, exacerbated by ND if it is present. In the same manner I could request adjustments based on difficult childhood experiences, which are more likely to lead to a clinical diagnosis btw.

My question would be what is the organisational culture - and perhaps what triggered workplace stress for this person - and adjusting that on their return. Is there a lot of absence sickness? Are others complaining about the tone of emails?

I use bold all the time in my emails - especially if they’re long and I’m asking people to do something. I also use a tl;dr sentence at the top sometimes. And to be honest, I don’t think I would stop doing this on generic team/unit wide emails because the type of job I do means that this way of communicating is more effective. One person’s need in this case doesn’t weigh up against the whole business need. That’s said, I think I would almost never use bold or underlining with an individual so if that’s happened or you are doing that then I’d stop quickly.

I do actually have RSD, and it plays out more in individual interactions. Eg if my boss sends a message asking for a quick chat, then if I’m not given any context I’ll spend the time between now and the meeting assuming I’m being sacked. I also don’t respond well to messages that appear to be demanding or negative and I interpret any vaguely non positive comment as horrifically negative. I’m working on this. This week I’m a bit put out because I’ve had a minor medical procedure and have stated that I will wfh next week because of a combination of wound care and high strength abx making me feel ill, and he’s left me on ‘read’.

I think maybe you need to work with this person gently to understand the actual problem.

Err this. They need to get back in their lane

Personally I hate endless text in emails and ideally want them all in bullet points. Funnily enough due to an actual formally diagnosed thing. But l appreciate it's not all about me and other people feel differently

Its exactly this sort of utter nonsense that makes me so glad Im retired 😉

Didn’t you read the OP? It is self-diagnosed. And hence the point of this thread and the issue being debated.

FWIW - Its not a ‘race to the bottom’. I do know a teensy bit about this, having an actual diagnosed severe mental health disability, and also working in a senior position in mental health services, and also being a Senior Occupational Therapist myself.

But sure, discount my contribution as a race to the bottom. 😒

Me too the poor attitude is glaringly obvious

🙄 We once had a trainee announce that she would not be receiving feedback on her course exams or be sitting in when the answers were given out as that would be too upsetting for her. Since the job was a law enforcement adjacent role that got very swiftly refused.

As a manager I'd feel I was underperforming sending an email like that.

Yes, we can make adjustments for self-diagnosis - they are supposed to be used where there is a possibility of impairment. But OH don't call the shots. They suggest the adjustment, and it's part of the manager's role to determine whether it's reasonable. So she can now do that - there's no need for all the criticism of OH once she is performing her own role. HR in my place would not be pleased to be cc-ed on an e-mail like that either. They wouldn't appreciate a paper trail suggesting I was acting on anything other than business needs. And it's perfectly possible to refuse adjustments on business needs.