How to Handle your Rejection Sensitivity in Intimate Relationships

Any quick google search will tell you how hard ADHD can be on relationships. You’ll read about the stress caused by the practical aspects of ADHD- managing finances, mess, household chores, and the like. But few things put an intimate relationship through the wringer quite like the emotional rollercoaster of rejection sensitivity that can so often come with an ADHD brain.  

Rejection Sensitivity and ADHD

ADHD is one of the 5 brain types that are most likely to be sensitive to rejection. Each of these brain types comes to their sensitivity in different ways, though. For ADHD brains, the sensitivity comes out of 3 things: history, rumination, and emotional regulation.

History:

Kids with ADHD are more likely to be rejected by their peers. They have a more challenging time reading subtle social cues, so they often have a hard time fitting into the complex social structures of childhood. This leads to a history of rejection and isolation, and pain. 

And the schoolyard isn’t the only place we feel the sting of criticism and rejection growing up. Trying to navigate life (and particularly school) in a world not well suited for the brain you were born with creates an endless opportunity for effort, intention, and desire to fall short and failure and criticism to reign.

And let's face it- we all carry around that hurt little kid around with us. As we grow up, the wound may heal-but the scars remain- making us more sensitive when something like it happens again.

Rumination:

Because ADHD brains ruminate more than is typical, they are more likely to anticipate fear ahead of time and circle on past pains. These future fears and past regrets circle around the ADHD brain like a record stuck on repeat, priming it to see rejection all around, even if it’s not intended.

Emotional Regulation:

The base issue with an ADHD brain is its struggle with regulation. It turns on or off and struggles to find a middle ground. And this is never more true than for emotions. So when an ADHD brain feels pain, it feels like a tsunami, crashing over it in a wave of pain. It goes from feeling fine one minute to crushed by pain the next.

Put all the history, rumination, and regulation together and you get a brain that carries around with it the history of pain and rejection, a pain the brain returned to over and over. This pain is like a bruise- a sensitive spot primed to flood with pain if something even brushes past it in the same way.

How Rejection Sensitivity plays out in Intimate Relationships.

Brains sensitive to rejection don't just feel that rejection (or criticism) more intensely, they also anxiously expect it - looking out in the world for confirmation that they will be rejected and are therefore more prone to perceive it.  

You see, our brains are like your brash uncle Jim- arguing his point long after anyone else stopped caring, last thanksgiving.

They don't like to be wrong. 

So, if your brain is expecting rejection, it's going to find it. It just knows it's going to happen, and so when something kind of ambiguous happens- something that could be read a couple of different ways- a rejection-sensitive brain will say- "See!! I was right! They do hate me!"

In relationships, this means that rejection-sensitive brains are more likely to see intentional rejection in the insensitive, unthinking things that our partners do (because let's be honest- we all do insensitive and unthinking things in relationships) even when no rejection or harm is intended.

Gender differences in Rejection Sensitivity:

Men and women tend to handle this perceived rejection differently in relationships. Men are more likely to see rejection (even if it's not intended) and get jealous and aggressive. Women, however, are more likely to see rejection and withdraw support and tenderness and feel more hostility.

Either way, though-regardless of the reaction the rejection spurred- both reactions lead couples to feel less satisfied with their relationships and more unhappy overall.

How can you manage rejection sensitivity in romantic relationships?

So, your brain is primed to see rejection where it may or may not exist, and it gets knocked off its feet by the pain it feels when it sees it- now what?

Medication may help.  There is some research that shows that certain meds (particularly MAOIs and Alpha Agonists) help to reduce the pain and sensitivity of rejection so that you don’t have to travel down the spiral of history, pain, and withdrawal.

But, meds aren't the only thing that can help. There are ways to minimize the struggle of rejection even if you continue to feel it. Because, it’s usually the reaction to the pain that causes the problem within a relationship, not the pain itself.  For example, when your partner shows up late for your birthday dinner it’s the yelling match that ensues rather than your hurt feelings that escalate what could have been poor time management to relationship def-con 5.  

But how does an ADHD brain that struggles to inhibit responses keep itself from blowing up when it’s flooded with pain?  Here’s a step-by-step process.  (But don't worry- you really only need to remember the first one at the moment).

5 steps to managing rejection sensitivity:

1. Get some space. 

When you’re flooded by feeling-- you can't think, you can only respond. And I guarantee you, you won't respond the way your calm self would want you to. So, give yourself some space. Take yourself out of the moment, the location, away from the people that are triggering you. This is the equivalent of giving yourself a time-out.  But it isn't a punishment- it's protection: protection for the people around you, protection for yourself, and protection from the judgment of your future self.

2. Calm down your system. 

When we get flooded, our fight/flight system gets activated. Our bodies prepare to fight the lions of tigers of yore. So our heart rate elevates, our breath gets rapid and shallow, and our muscles tighten. And the really tricky thing about all this is that our thinking brain shut down. We actually lose the ability to think things through at this time. So take the time to calm down your system- meditate, slow your breath, take a walk- whatever it is that helps you bring down that response and get your brain back online.

3. Brainstorm other possibilities. 

Ok, so you've gotten some space, you've calmed your system down, and your brain is back online. Now it's time to think it through- what are the other possibilities for what happened? 

Your partner didn't bring you your favorite dinner when he came home tonight- maybe he did it because he doesn't care about you. Or maybe he forgot. Maybe a call came in as he passed the restaurant and got distracted or maybe he was so busy planning a surprise party for your birthday next weekend he just wholly spaced on his promise to bring you your burrito.

4. Gather evidence: 

So now that you have some other possibilities- do you have any evidence for (or against) them? When you asked him where your burrito was- did he slam his palm on his forehead and say, "Shoot, I forgot!?", did he say he was having a rough day at work? Is your birthday coming up, and you've caught people whispering? What does the data say?

5. Next steps. 

So now you've opened up the possibilities for what happened. What next? 

How can you move forward? Do you need to check out your hypothesis with your partner? Are you going to create a script for what happened to remind yourself when you default back to your old thought? Or can you go DO something that fuels you and rewards you- can you take a walk, go to a yoga class or call up your friend.

Managing rejection sensitivity is hard. It takes energy, persistence, and faith that there might be other ways of seeing a situation, that your initial thoughts might not be correct. But it also gets easier. If you can keep it up, remain persistent over and over as you challenge each thought as it comes up, you can start to program your brain to not assume rejection at each turn.

You (and your relationship) deserve that.

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