The other day I found myself questioning the presentation of rejection sensitivity and how it is both similar and different in individuals with neurodivergence and those experiencing trauma or traits of borderline personality disorder. I quickly found myself running down the rabbit hole of different implications: What’s the epidemiology? The presentation? The function? And how does our approach need to change? And more importantly, is this even the line of questioning I should be asking?
When I took a moment to pause and ask myself that final question, I heard my own brain say – “You’re not ‘too much’. You’re not ‘not enough.’” Then the pieces came together. These two cognitions have been at the root of my own healing journey the past few years, and I hear them echoed in so many of those with whom I have the pleasure to work and to work alongside.
My guess, is that many of you are already sitting there thinking, “Oooo, I know that thought! What’s the answer?” Well, I’m afraid you probably won’t get any earth-shaking realizations from the rest of this post. Because a LOT of it you have ALREADY heard. My hope is that perhaps you will hear it on a slightly different level.
In my life, I had associated “Too much” with being “needy” or “overbearing.” I am learning that there is a distinct difference between being needy and having needs. I am (shocker!) an overthinker. And so I have been acutely aware of the difference between my needs and my wants. While it’s appropriate to push aside my wants at times, it’s not ok to consistently neglect my needs. But, here’s where my overthinking failed me miserably. In looking back, I found that instead of meeting my own needs, or when necessary asking others to meet my needs, I would minimize them and frame them as wants so that I could excuse the lack of meeting them. Then when the inevitable exhaustion, or feelings of resentment showed up, I’d throw them right back at myself in the form of the judgment that I am “too much.” My journey now is to state my needs and determine: Can I give this to myself? Does the person I’m asking this of even have the capability of meeting my need? Is there a space in the middle? And probably most importantly, I LITERALLY say to myself, “being needy and having needs are not synonymous!”
As for the overbearing part, it’s more nuanced for me. Because I CAN be too much for certain containers. That does not always imply the problem is me! Sometimes it’s because I’m pouring myself into the wrong containers! Both can be true. I cannot show up fully as my wild, uninhibited, creative person in an executive meeting the same way I can on a girls’ night out. However, I don’t have to pretend that this side doesn’t exist. And when someone else struggles to hold my emotions (both positive and negative), it doesn’t mean they are too big; it means I’m pouring into the wrong container. Perhaps they have a different purpose in my life and perhaps, I have outgrown them (ouch!).
As for “not enough,” this is 100% something I recognize as what Brené Brown calls “the hustle for worthiness.” MAN, I have been hustling since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I know I’m not alone. In recent years, I have found that at times, my spirit needs to just BE with people who accept me fully without expecting the DOING. That was life changing. But not nearly as life changing as the work I’m doing now, which is recognizing that I have to be one of those people for myself! I need to accept myself APART from my to-do list, my accomplishments, my appearance, my …. And the list goes on.
Ok, so back to the original questions that sparked my curiosity in this lane. Rejection Sensitivity. First of all, it’s pretty human. Where it becomes clinically significant is when the intensity, persistence, or impact of that reaction begins creating meaningful distress or interfering with relationships, functioning, decision-making, or our ability to take in evidence that contradicts the rejection we fear. In THIS moment (totally not researched, etc), it seems that the more useful clinical question may not be simply who experiences rejection sensitivity, but what does the rejection mean to this particular person? For some neurodivergent individuals, rejection may become closely linked to performance, competence, social missteps, or worth. For individuals with borderline personality disorder or traits, perceived rejection may more often activate fears around abandonment or instability in relationships even if the evidence supporting the thought is performance based. But neither pathway belongs exclusively to one group, and for many people these experiences overlap. Clear as mud? Ultimately, the universal messages of “too much” and “not enough” highlight the dialectic that Marsha Linehan built DBT upon. We are all doing the absolute best we possibly can given our current circumstances, skills and history AND we all need to do better and be better! We’re in this ocean together, folks, even if o