Rejection sensitive dysphoria - AIBU

[Lipido]

name changed and will have to leave this a bit vague

A member of staff has returned from sick leave (workplace stress, extended 6 months - came back the day before flipping to half pay).

Occy health have sent a recommendation that based on the self diagnosed rejection sensitive dysphoria a number of reasonable adjustments are put in place.

One of the adjustments is that emails shouldn’t include bold text or underlining as this triggers the above, not just emails from me, emails from any senior person in the organisation

My AIBU is NOT about the above diagnosis . It’s about the fact that an occupational health nurse can give this kind of recommendation (and others) based on a phone assessment for a self diagnosed issue. With absolutely no understanding of how this will play out in the real world? I cannot monitor or screen emails to this person. I cannot ensure they are never given feedback they might not like. I essentially cannot manage them at all!

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.

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.

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.

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 this post is very insightful and spot on

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.

This.

"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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

In my first post I was clear I had to be vague, there are a number of other adjustments alongside the email one.

I didn’t post them because I don’t want the person to read this and say hey this is about me and also the other adjustments can be met (one of which is having me present at her appraisal with her line manager, so those of you who wanted me to be bad guy are unfortunately incorrect).

She was off with workplace stress signed off by GP. The RSD first came up at her return to work meeting and then at the referral to Occy health (the person who posted about David Brent made me laugh btw it’s always been called Occy health and that’s how they refer to themselves!)

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.

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.

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.

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

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

That’s a fairly seismic leap you’ve made there

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.

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 ?

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.

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).

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