Thread by @seananmcguire

Some really interesting conversations about RSD (rejection-sensitive dysphoria) going on on my timeline today. It's nice to see.

RSD is frequently dismissed as being oversensitive (and why is that a bad thing? Why is remaining sensitive and soft something we have to condemn), when people with it get our feelings hurt at comments that seem like "nothing".

I do a lot of panels. I've been known to bring an egg timer to make sure I don't dominate the conversation unfairly. I fight to pry open space for quieter, shyer panelists, because everyone should get their time.

I nearly threw up on a panel where someone I considered a friend, whom I had not paneled with before, said, "Oh, Seanan's not feeling well, maybe the rest of us will get to talk," and laughed. Did I have a reputation? Did she not want me there?

We're still professional acquaintances, but I have put her down as someone I will not panel with when filling out convention surveys, and I still feel a little sick when I think about that moment.

RSD isn't a choice we make. It's an inability to shield against a casual or off-hand comment, all the more when it comes from someone we trust.

I have burned friendships to the ground over tiny comments made at the exact right/wrong moment, not because I wanted to, but because I knew that trying to explain the problem would be dismissed as "you're being too sensitive" and not really listened to.

And I make wrong comments too! Everyone does! I am EXHAUSTING, because I not only have RSD, I was an abused child, so I'm constantly monitoring and interpreting and watching for trouble.

When someone sighs, I'm right there going, "Are you okay?", and receiving "I'm a loud breather, I've always been a loud breather" in return. It's the leaky faucet that wears away the tolerance of the people I love, and I can't help it.

(This is after years of therapy on my part, and not me going "well, you just have to let me hurt you, it's how I'm made." My life is a constant checklist of minimizing the harm I do to the people I care about.)

But someone made a comment that stung a few months ago--just stung, not full-hurt--and I said "Stop making fun of me," and got pouted at for assuming they would, and that's the part that made me stop talking for a week.

If someone thinks you're mocking or making fun of them, try to figure out what you said that made that interpretation possible, instead of jumping to "you're a bad friend if you think I'd mock you." Because that's what some of us are waiting to hear. That we're bad friends.

We're bad friends for singing in the bathroom. For wanting to do something--anything--specific and not always leaving it to other people to decide what we're doing. For being ourselves. For being a little weird. We're bad friends.

And if we're bad friends no matter what, why are we still here?

RSD is the monster at the end of the book. It isn't always awake and biting, but it's always here, and it always hurts. We're not being oversensitive. We're being eaten alive.