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!

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. 🤣

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.