Rejection Sensitivity as a Response to Growing Up Around Gossip
You’re eight, maybe nine, sitting in the back seat on the way home from a barbecue, sticky from a popsicle and half asleep against the window. An hour ago, your mom was hugging Linda by the cooler, laughing at her stories, telling her she looked amazing, and promising that they had to do this more often.
You’re eight, maybe nine, sitting in the back seat on the way home from a barbecue, sticky from a popsicle and half asleep against the window.
An hour ago, your mom was hugging Linda by the cooler, laughing at her stories, telling her she looked amazing, and promising that they had to do this more often. Now the car doors are shut, and the first thing your mom says is, “Did you see what she was wearing? And she does not stop talking about herself.” Your dad laughs, someone does an impression, and the whole front seat settles into a fantastic mood.
Nobody notices that you’ve gone very quiet, because nobody realizes you’re taking notes.
If you’re a neurocomplex adult who flinches at an unanswered text, replays conversations for hours afterward, and assumes the group chat went silent because of something you said, someone has probably told you that you have rejection sensitivity. Maybe you stumbled onto the phrase rejection sensitive dysphoria and felt, for the first time, as though someone had accurately described the inside of your head.
There’s a question that rarely gets asked, though: Where did your nervous system learn what rejection looks like? For some of us, it may have learned in the back seat.
The household that looked fine
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