Welcome back to day seven, of ADHD and relationships. And yesterday, we dived into that big topic about emotions and emotional regulation and how to pause, notice what's going on, then be able to create the patterns, to be able to take that step back and recognise them and take the action that you want, and take that control back of them. But now we're gonna branch out to a bit of a deeper topic that is quite new to the ADHD world, but it's circling quite a lot at the minute and can be a huge root cause even further deep down of why those emotions come out the way they do for a lot of individuals with ADHD. And that is RSD.RSD is Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria. Bottom line is RSD is a perceived, heightened sense of rejection that's formed from other words, people's words, or actions. And a huge question that comes up, is it but like biological? Is it environmental? It's still not known. But this seems to be a huge new topic that's come up that people with ADHD really, really struggle from. Basically, most individuals with ADHD have either had so much rejection in their lives from being undiagnosed - and studies actually show that people with ADHD, hear 60 more negative reactions than a neurotypical - or, that individuals with ADHD actually have a heightened sense of awareness and sensitivity, so they sense more and feel more of people more deeply, which is prone to rejection. But whatever the reason for many people with ADHD, it's real. And the feeling can be really paralysing, and can cause quite a lot of these emotions.RSD in relationships is very, very common. As, even if you've been together five minutes, 10 minutes, a lot of individuals with RSD have been struggling with this for a long time. And a new relationship, sometimes, is not going to rewrite the past of an individual for someone with ADHD. But, as a coach, my question is always, how do we move forward now we know that some of this might be RSD, rather than looking at the past? And RSD is there and it's a part of a lot of things. But rather than rewriting it, of what may or may not happened in the past, what's causing it. I want to talk about how moving forward. And I want to tell you a little tale. An old Cherokee chief teaching his grandson about life, "a fight is going on inside me" he said to the boy, "it's a terrible fight. And it's between two wolves. One is evil, angry, sorrow, reject, regret, rejecting. The other one, wolf, is good. He's joy, peace, love, hope, empathy, faith, compassion, the same fight of wolves is going on inside for every person." The grandson says to the man that "which wolf will win?" and the man says "the one you feed". So in other terms, if you want to feed the other wolf, of good, all those things, with RSD, we see the evil, the resentment, the rejection, from the experiences we've had.So here are some practical steps are really helping bind both parties with RSD in a relationship, so we can feed that positive wolf so that people can move forward and actually take things as they are rather than how they're perceived. And so my first kind of tip is kind of noticing, are there any topics or situations where emotions and reactions are more apparent in your relationship? Are their kind of patterns a bit like yesterday, that kind of when it comes to rejection? If so, where's this rejection coming from? And this can help either partner, for the non ADHD partner to know that reaction might not be at you. It's coming at you. But this the whole point of this, the whole cause of this is probably rejection from somewhere else. And for the ADHD partner, it helps them come back to the present knowing where it's from. If it's not, if it's a rejection from the past, you're reacting to something that's happening now. It's not the ADHD partner. Number two is fact versus story. When you feel that wolf, that rejection, what is the fact? What is actually happened? versus what is the story or the rejection that your mind is trying to tell you? Fact versus story. You can do that together. What's the fact? What's the fact in this situation that's just happened, that's caused this rejection? What is the story? The next one, which I find is one of the biggest people with ADHD, what is the evidence? What's the evidence of the good? The accomplishments, the success of every day? So when you're feeling rejected, you have the evidence to show that it's not a fact, it's a story. Ask your friends, what do they love about you? What are the strengths? What are your strengths? Say to each other, what do you love about each other? What are your strengths? What experiences have you had together? Where you've just been yourselves? What are your passions? Who are you? Now that is your evidence to feed that. And the last one, having some did someone or a space to go to when you feel rejected. To ask yourself is it fact versus story? Or look at the evidence. To claim that mind look at the evidence in front of you to show that it is just a perceived rejection, not the facts.And all I'm gonna say is, I know what rejection feels like, and it's horrible. But sometimes the rejection that you feel now is not from now. It's from before. Tomorrow, we're going to kind of take that step further and talk about conflicts and how we can manage them when there's RSD and emotions and a lot of stuff going on. Just remember, if we hear people with ADHD has 60 more negatives than the neurotypical then it means that we need triple 60 positives to counteract that. You've evidence, feed the good positive wall, so you can see clearly what's in front of you, not what is perceived as rejection from the past. Look in front.