The Energetics of Being: A Human Design Podcast

Neurodiversity Celebration Week - Navigating Rejection Sensitivity

• Sarah Atkins • Episode 13

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In part 3 of this Neurodiversity Celebration Week series, Sarah is joined once again by friend and colleague Cassie Footman to explore the real, raw, and often misunderstood experience of Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD). They share personal stories, client examples, and professional insight on how RSD shows up—especially in ADHD, autism, and other neurodivergent experiences. The conversation highlights how past experiences can shape our emotional responses, how RSD impacts everyday life, and how self-awareness, Human Design, and compassionate communication can help us manage the intensity.

Topics Discussed:

  • What is Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD)?
  • The emotional and physical experience of RSD
  • How RSD links to ADHD, autism, and past trauma
  • The impact of RSD on relationships, careers, and self-worth
  • Coping mechanisms: from sound boarding to slowing down
  • Human Design, self-awareness, and nervous system regulation
  • RSD in children and teens: what to watch for and support strategies
  • The importance of clean language, communication, and compassion
  • Why trauma doesn’t always equal neurodivergence—and vice versa

Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro & overview of today’s episode
01:20 – What RSD actually feels like
05:30 – Sarah’s virtual assistant story (and spiral!)
09:45 – Cassie’s experiences in the workplace
13:30 – Chronic fear, overworking & burnout from RSD
16:00 – Taking responsibility before others can reject you
18:00 – Managing RSD in real-time
21:10 – How RSD shows up in kids, classrooms, and careers
24:00 – The link between anxiety, misdiagnosis, and neurodivergence
28:00 – Is ADHD just trauma? A respectful challenge to Gabor Maté
32:00 – How high sensitivity is often a hidden gift
35:00 – RSD and unspoken communication
38:00 – Softening, compassion, and co-creation in relationships
40:00 – Final reflections & invitation to connect

Key Quotes:
“It’s easier for me to reject me than for someone else to do it.”
“I lived in a constant state of fear, waiting to be called out.”
“Rejection sensitivity is a complete dysphoria of reality—it's not real, but it feels very real.”
“Where there’s a gap, our minds will stuff it—and none of it is usually true.”
“My son said, ‘If someone did it, it must’ve been me.’ That breaks my heart.”
“You can’t always rationalise in the moment, but you can slow it down.”
“We are meaning-making machines—especially when we’re sensitive.”

Links & Resources:

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Sarah Atkins:

Welcome to the Energetics of Being Podcast, a podcast that delves into the fascinating world of human design and unravels the layers of conditioning beliefs and expectations that can influence who we become and how we show up in our lives. I'm your host, Sarah Atkins, and I'm really excited to share this journey with you. We'll explore topics such as human design, gene keys, astrology, holistic approaches, coaching, neuroscience, and psychology. We're gonna draw from a rich tapestry of wisdom to help you navigate your own personal journey of self-discovery. So whether you are new to human design or have been on a path of self-discovery for years, this podcast is for you. This is your invitation to step into your power, embrace your uniqueness, and create a life that resonates with your soul's deepest desires. So if you're ready to dive in, let's go.

Sarah:

Hello and welcome to episode three of our Neurodiversity Celebration Week special podcast series. And I'm joined again by the lovely Cassie. And today we thought we would talk about rejection sensitivity dysphoria. Shortened to RSD because it's a bit of a mouthful to say it all the time. And we thought we'd talk a little bit about like what it is, because I think there's some big misconceptions and misunderstandings around what it is, how it is perceived and how it shows up.

Cassie:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Do you wanna start us off, Cassie? What is rejection sensitivity dysphoria?

Cassie:

So for me, and, and so this is me going from personal experience, it is very much I, I think it's a bit like the label that's on the tin sensitive and being fearful of rejection,

Sarah:

and

Cassie:

it showed up in so many different ways. But in particular, having an intense emotional response to something happening or the perception of something happening, because sometimes for me it's been about the perception

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

than, if you look about, perhaps it's been about perception and belief rather than the facts. There, there is an anxiety. So say if something happens or, you know, let, let's use the example that I give quite often. Let's say you're in the supermarket and you've picked up your basket and you're just doing a little bit of shopping and you see somebody in the supermarket that you know, you, you, you just do a little wave, you know, hi, but they don't respond to you. They move on

Sarah:

Mm.

Cassie:

And, internally there's something that potentially happens. Maybe it's a, oh, all of a sudden the mind goes back to the last conversations. Tracking back that you had with the individual. Did I say something wrong? Did something happen? Have I missed a birthday? And then all of a sudden all this stuff is happening really wild. The imagination is almost taken us places as far as the mind can reach, when actually the individual has got headphones in their ears and they can't hear you. So it's a lot for me. What I found is that the experience of it as an individual feeling, the effects of rejection sensitivity is that massive feeling of rejection, of shame, blame, causing me to withdraw, change my behaviour in so many different ways. And it's all based on my own thinking and experience, which to be honest, probably the roots of which go back to childhood. Maybe a need that I have wasn't attended to at the time and I felt abandoned or I felt. I don't know, a huge sense of rejection,

Sarah:

yeah,

Cassie:

created a meaning of what that meant. And then that programs continued on and on and on and on and on.

Sarah:

I think you're right, it is a programming. I think the key word, I used to think it was rejection sensitivity. But I think the key word is the dysphoria part, because it is a complete dysphoria of reality. It's not real. And that's what people really struggle with. They don't understand why you can't see the reality. And for me, like what you've described is exactly that. I had a funny scenario. Well it's funny now. It wasn't at the time, obviously. I have a virtual assistant, she's an absolute legend, she brings calm to my chaos. We've worked together for three years and back in, I think it was October I suggested we changed our communication platform onto something else. Which meant that we could share voice notes and files and I could have it open on my desktop. It was like an instant messaging thing and she was like, yeah, we'll try it, I'm open to that. So we tried it and I thought it was working quite well, and then all of a sudden I went to message her something. And I had an alert saying, this person is no longer available. They've deleted the app. And I was like, oh my God, maybe she didn't like it. That was straight where my head went. I hope she's okay. So I sent her a message on the old platform that we had been using. To say, I've noticed that you've deleted this account. Is everything okay if it wasn't working for you? When I'm saying this out loud, I realise how needy I sound. I was like, if it, if it wasn't working for you people pleaser coming out, then we can come back to this one. It's absolutely fine. You know, just anything to keep you happy. And she didn't reply. I let this go on for three, four days and still no reply. And I could also see that she hadn't seen the message. Now in my head, this then blew up into, oh my God, she's dumped me as a client. She doesn't want to work with me anymore. I've obviously pushed things too far now. I know I'm chaotic. I know I'm quite challenging to work with. I must have just pushed her over the edge and she must have had enough. That's immediately where my head went, and in the end, in my insanity. I had a word with myself and I was like, do you know what? I could see she was on Facebook. Just drop her a message on Facebook. You'll be fine. Just send her a message saying Hi. Is everything okay? I noticed that you deleted this. I did try to reach out to you on this, but didn't hear anything. I'm just a bit worried that you are not okay, or things aren't okay with us. She came back, she went, oh my God, I'm so sorry. I've just gone to log in and yeah, it's kicked me off the platform. I had no idea. It won't let me use my mobile number. I'd already deleted the old platform, so I didn't get a notification because we'd already shifted over. She said, I actually really like the new. It was like, oh my God,

Cassie:

Yeah.

Sarah:

How completely insane. But how quickly things can spiral when you are stuck in your own head and not focusing on the facts.

Cassie:

Absolutely. You know, where there is a gap and our minds are a rampage, we will stuff it and create so much inside of there, and none of it's true. It's all illusionary, but it feels because of the emotional response and then the physical response from the emotion is so real. We experience it as real, which then makes it feel even more real.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

it's, you know, and then what you create from there can be really quite, It can completely shift the path that you're going down, can't it? In to a completely different place I mean, I think about my past and the different jobs maybe I had back in corporate. My rejection

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

sensitivity was so incredibly high. I was blind to it. I didn't know I was always, you know, trying to blend in. So I wasn't sticking out, if you know what I mean, because I didn't wanna

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

I didn't want criticism. I

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

afraid of speaking up, speaking my mind.

Sarah:

Mm-hmm.

Cassie:

I would just go along with whatever anybody said. I would avoid feedback on where I got great feedback. I didn't accept it because I was not quite good enough, from

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

own critical eye. I would overwork, I would work longer hours trying to catch up on the things that I should have done that I couldn't do because of the struggles that I had in the workplace that I wasn't aware of and all because I wanted to be accepted and I was so afraid I was gonna be sacked or you know, the stories I would make that were completely untrue. Which I think actually, to be honest with you, with all of it, led me to leave jobs.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

Yeah. For reasons that actually were not. Accurate. The creations I made in my own mind through this rejection sensitivity was not accurate. It wasn't what was happening. It was my interpretation.

Sarah:

Yeah, I think my experience is very similar, so I resonate with everything that you've said. Something that is quite apparent. It's not unique to me'cause this came up with a client recently. I think my experience of living with rejection sensitivity before I was aware of it, is I lived in a perpetual state of fear, constant fear that I'm gonna get called out for having not done something correct or having dropped the ball on something. And it's just, it's like for your nervous system, number one. Hideous because your cortisol levels are so high, and we know that. We all know that we need a little bit of cortisol, right, to be able to function. That's what pushes us forward. But when you've got that heightened state of anxiety and fear constantly, you almost become a bit desensitized to the effects. And that's when we can get into the overworking and massive burnout. Because when we've got heightened anxiety and heightened cortisol and adrenaline in our body, our pain receptors go down. So we don't recognise the signs that our body gives us to say, you're doing too much. You're pushing yourself too hard. We just lose that perception.

Cassie:

Yeah.

Sarah:

And it's, it's the ruminating, it's the ruminating of the going over, you're replaying. Over and over conversations. What should I have said differently? What did I say? And my experience, and I know we've had conversations about this before. I would turn it in on me, whatever scenario, whatever the situation was, if there was any kind of conflict, I would automatically turn it inwards. And take responsibility for myself or at least seek ways that it was my fault somehow, because it's easier for me to reject me than it is for other people to reject me, if that makes sense.

Cassie:

yeah, completely. And it kind of plays to that self-fulfilling prophecy that, you know, inside of us, we've perhaps got that egoic part of our mind that is always seeking to prove. Or to find evidence to prove our unworthiness un lovableness on whatever

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

that we believe. and, you know, by making it mean something about ourselves and then judging ourselves for it, it's just feeding into that self fulfilling prophecy. It's job done it, then

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. You were saying earlier that some of it you could possibly trace back to like root cause in like childhood, which goes back to what we said, I think it was in day one,

Cassie:

Yeah.

Sarah:

where. Our past experiences, our childhood experiences, like we can carry some of those with us, and then we seek evidence, our brain seeks evidence to prove that that thing is, that very thing is true. So one of the services that I offer is co coaching with employees and their line managers. And rejection sensitivity comes up a lot. Because I think people massively underestimate the impact it has on the individual. Because we hear things like, oh come on, just gotta get over it, just move on, it's fine, let go, like, don't worry about that. And outwardly we're going, yeah, oh, you know, we try and laugh it off. Inside, it's devastating, and I don't think people understand the extent to which the ruminating can keep I've lost sleep. Because I'm replaying conversations, discussions in my head, trying to see where it went wrong, trying to see what I could have said or done differently. And I didn't realise that that, like, not everybody does that. Like, the ability for some people just to go, oh, you know, they have this conflict, they get over it and they move on to the next thing blows my mind. I wish I could do that. And it's not about bearing grudges. I don't want people to think it's that, but it can be really debilitating.

Cassie:

It can be hugely debilitating and you know, it just kind of reminds me of a time when, do you know what, there's been multiple, multiple, multiple times and this is where I can tie myself up in knots and certainly more so in the past than now because I've learned different ways of. I guess navigating rejection sensitivity, whereas before I didn't have a clue. I didn't even know that it was a thing. I just felt the impact and what I made it about me. And I've lost days, weeks, months, even years. replaying, getting stuck in this, you know, it's like this video that is in constant replay, like watching, you know, if you're ever on a doom scroll and you're watching a little video that is on repeat, it plays again and again and again. These scenarios play out. And my mind so magnificently and so creatively makes it a real experience that I feel it every time and it makes me feel sick, it makes me whatever it is that it's making me physically, like, experience. The event happened, like, weeks, months, years ago.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

So if I could let go of it, I would have done. But I didn't know how, because I didn't have anybody who actually could sit with me, be with me, that I could explain what I was experiencing and help me dissipate it.

Sarah:

Yeah. And that's the thing. So for anybody that's listening to this, rejection sensitivity dysphoria is mostly associated with ADHD. It can, it, there's a lot of crossover as well with borderline personality disorder. And I also do have some autistic clients that experience rejection sensitivity, but they experience it in a slightly different way. And I think it's important to say that different people's experiences again, essentially the themes are the same, but they might, their personal experience can be different. And what was the other thing I was going to say? It's not recognised as a diagnostic criteria. They don't diagnose it. If you're going through a formal diagnosis thing, it's more understood as a thing, it's one of the subjects that I most people on, if I'm honest,

Cassie:

Yeah.

Sarah:

And how to kind of manage it. And that's the other thing. It's not the best way to manage it is to process it in the moment, right? Talk it through to reason, rationalise things. So I've got, obviously I've got you and I've got another friend who experiences RSD and we use each other almost like a sounding board to kind of check in with what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking versus what is real, like what's the evidence and this is one of the best ways to manage this, you've already touched on this, like what are the actual facts, how am I interpreting those and what assumptions am I making? How true is that? How would I like to feel differently about it? And it's an ongoing thing. I think this is what people don't realise is the way it shows up, right? And I see this in my kids because I've got, I've got three rejection sensitive kiddos who experience RSD in very, very different ways. It's quite hard to spot, I think. Until the person is willing to share their experience, but it can stop you from putting your hand up in a classroom and asking for help. It can stop you volunteering an answer for fear of getting it wrong. It can be, Oh, I don't want to have a birthday party. Oh my God, this is a big one for me. I would never throw a birthday party like a big event for my birthday because I don't want the shame or the embarrassment of nobody coming. So I would never do it. Right. And I mean, that's kind of a trivial thing, but it stops people from applying for promotions. It stops people, like you say, sharing ideas in a meeting because you don't want to look stupid. Sometimes with my middle son, he would say, well, somebody's done it. It must've been me. So he'll actually put his hand up, even though it had nothing to do with him, but he doesn't like the conflict. So he's like, if I just put myself forward, they've got someone to blame and then we can just move on and move out of that space and I'll take it on and it's. It's insane how it can manifest in different ways. Had an author, I worked with an author last year and took him five years to publish his first book. And that was largely to, due to, he worked with a mentor, somebody he admired massively, shared his transcript with him. And this mentor sent back his manuscript and basically red penned it. It took him five years to be able to revisit that with somebody who was much more supportive and collaborative to be able to then self publish his book, but he didn't realise that it was rejection sensitivity, but five years, five years he lost. And that's the, that's reality. That's how much can impact people.

Cassie:

Oh, yeah, it impacts massively. It really does. And I, you know, I've experienced a lot of those impacts myself where it stopped me from showing up in places where I used to thrive. I used to enjoy it until I had a bad experience and then created it to mean something about me

Sarah:

Yes.

Cassie:

and then evolved and realised that actually it had nothing to do with me. And, you know, so now I'm starting to explore those areas again. You know, I've just what you were saying about your son automatically, you know, taking the blame and, you know, I see that in myself. I used to do that a lot. You know, if somebody shouted at home, it was like, what have I done? I might not have

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

been in the room, I might not have been around, but it's me. I did something. When I did it,

Sarah:

And I think what's interesting. So going back to the nervous system, we said neurodivergent individuals have a slightly more sensitive nervous system, it escalates very quickly. I think one of the things that I realised. Is I don't always recognise when rejection sensitivity is playing a part. Like I said, I need to soundboard, I need to talk things through. But occasionally in certain scenarios, my body will have like a trauma response to certain situations. And what I've learned to do, and again, I'm not professing to be an expert at this because I don't always get it right. I'm human at the end of the day. Sometimes it catches me off guard, but I'm learning to take a pause and not to react. in that moment. So what you said, taking a breath going, okay, where's this coming from? What am I thinking? What am I making it mean? What is it actually meaning right now? I sometimes store it up or make a note if I've got, you know, if I'm in a meeting or whatever, something that I need to revisit, that was really interesting, I need to explore that response because the body remembers, right? And sometimes we respond, and we don't know why, because we're so good at pushing through and getting on with it.

Cassie:

And hiding it and, you know, not even recognising the signs. You know, I didn't even, I didn't really wholly understand anxiety until I had needed to do some study as part of my professional development, that that was like, Ah, so that's anxiety. So, what I have been experiencing is anxiety.

Sarah:

Yeah. But this is an interesting thing though, isn't it? I think it depends what you consume and what you watch, but I see a narrative in the press like, Oh, you know, everybody's got ADHD these days or there's, you know, there's an increase in people seeking diagnosis and things. You mentioning anxiety, I have a very, very high number of clients, I've worked with a very high number of clients who are late diagnosed in their sort of late thirties, as old as in their mid fifties. who have been diagnosed with anxiety. They've been on antidepressants and anti anxiety meds for like 20, 25 years. They've been in and out of therapy, believing that they've got depression or an anxiety disorder. And then they've been diagnosed. With ADHD or they're autistic and it's like, this goes back to the identity piece that we talked about last time is trying to untangle actually what you said I was experiencing, you were dismissing it and saying I can fix it with this. It doesn't fix it, because you're just treating the symptoms. Anxiety is usually a symptom, you have to understand what the root cause is. And this is where, I know I've shared a little bit on social media before, I massively admire Gabor Mate's work in trauma. I think he's what he's done for in the trauma space and sort of helping people understand, especially like PTSD and things like that. I think it's phenomenal. However, I do disagree with one of his core beliefs in his book scattered minds where he almost, and I know the book is quite old now, but where he suggests that ADHD isn't a thing. It's a trauma response. What are your thoughts on that?

Cassie:

Yeah, it's an interesting one and I'm going to use that word interesting that I really don't like because it's not in the script. I suppose I'm still, you know, shaking and sorting my own personal opinion around that because I do see a sense of, a thread of truth there. And, you know, let me give you an example, perhaps. That's where I see this plays out for me, personally, because that's the easiest place for me to speak from. Let's say, something happened at home, I was in the kitchen there was a response to something that shocked me, and I automatically felt rejection. It was like a slam dunk, in my body and I was about to start playing out the rejection and I managed to pause myself at some point and just check in and just say, how old are you? How old are you? And I was speaking to the part of me that had all of a sudden come in like thunderbolt lightning and it was the six year old me. And I suddenly realised that the six year old me had come in because I felt threatened and unsafe. And it was the six year old response, not me as the 49 year old that I almost, that I am. It was year old. Now, because of the work that I've done, and I'm understanding better the traumas that I've had. That it was the trauma of an old experience that has come forward, which then gave the rejection sensitivity and everything then that happened. So I see where trauma can play, but actually what I see to be really honestly true is people who have neurodivergent strengths, I think their massive strengths are high sensitivity.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

really high sensitivity. They've got deep empathy, highly aware, very strong intuition.

Sarah:

Mm

Cassie:

And I believe partly that some of these gifts that we have, we're not taught and we don't know how to use in a useful way. they end up competing on on us. But also what I understand is that my brain is wired differently to other people's brains. which almost then set up for the response to happen the way that it does as well.

Sarah:

hmm. Mm hmm.

Cassie:

I'm not an expert. That is just my own experience and it's still an area that, you know, I'm learning more about for myself.

Sarah:

I think you've described that really well, though, because I mean, I've coached a lot of people, neurodivergent people over the last four years. And in my experience, a lot of those neurodivergent people have had traumatic experiences. However, most of those traumatic experiences, similar to what you've said, go back to childhood. So my argument would be, is that actually those traumatic experiences are as a result of their neurodivergent needs not being identified and not being met, and being misunderstood. Because when I look at my own children, even, there was evidence of their neurodivergence in my eldest son from 14 days old. I can pinpoint certain sensitivities that he had from then. He was 14 days old, he hadn't experienced any trauma other than being born, which, let's face it, they go from lovely in utero safety to this crazy, loud, wild world. That is traumatic in itself. But other than that, he was born into a very loving, very warm, very safe, calm household. So, people can't tell me that he is neurodivergent because he's had a really traumatic start in life. And that's where I have the disconnect. I'm not saying he hasn't experienced trauma since. He absolutely has. But that's largely to do him being a teenage boy bullying at school. He's bullied because of his neurological difference. Because he doesn't understand teenage banter, communicate in a different way to his peers. When you speak to him, his vocabulary is phenomenal. His English teacher told me it's like speaking to an academic at the age of 13 or 14. That's not how most 13 and 14 year olds speak, so therefore he stands out. He's different. And when you're different, as we all know, when you're in secondary school, different isn't okay. Different is to be ridiculed and, in some cases, people are fearful of it. They don't understand it, so therefore they'll ridicule it instead and pick on it.

Cassie:

Yeah. Indeed, absolutely. And I think that's where, you know, going back to what we said in the introductory episode of this series, going back to the Maori community and the language that they use to describe some of these things, is incredibly helpful and it's more accepting, and more expansive, you know. Talking about, the term for autism basically being defined as in one's own time and space.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

And for ADHD, being attention goes many ways or to many things. And I think it goes back to the shape sorter. We're all different shape sizes. We all have different degrees of sensitivity. And yet we've been squeezed into a world that is, I suppose, in some respects, kind of being forced into thinking and behaving in the same way, when actually we're not meant to think and behave in the same way. You know, as a neurodiverse community, we are more sensitive, we are very creative, we have deep empathy, we have very high awareness. Super awareness, that sixth sense, that strong intuition. We pick up on things, we read between the lines. Where there's a gap and somebody looks and says there's nothing, there is sooooo much. You know, that's the place where I spend most of my time these days. There is so much in the gap, in the space, in the void. It's what isn't being spoken. You know, even when it comes down to communication, we know that the words we speak is a very small percentage of communication.

Sarah:

And that's one of the things that comes through in rejection sensitivity, I think. That what has become apparent is helping my clients understand that they're not just listening to the words that are being spoken to them. They're reading the body language and there might be a little flicker of a reaction that most people wouldn't notice, but I guarantee my autistic and ADHD clients would have noticed it and they're already ruminating what that means. They're looking for the meaning.

Cassie:

Yeah, definitely. And I think something that I found to be really effective in the workplace or as a coach is, actually in every, everywhere, actually applying this in everyday life is using this understanding that everything suggests something.

Sarah:

Mm hmm.

Cassie:

So even if somebody doesn't finish the sentence, if somebody interrupts somebody, if somebody doesn't allow somebody to speak, if somebody. You know, gives a look if there's a bunch of chairs around a table and not enough for one person. Everything suggests something and our beautiful creative brains are wired to find the answers.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

Yeah. So if we just have an awareness that we are creative beings, we are meaning making machines.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

And for many of us, we're meaning making machines on overdrive.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Cassie:

And yes, we have a responsibility to what we make things mean, but I think everybody else has a responsibility for what they create

Sarah:

Mm hmm.

Cassie:

as well, if makes sense. Yeah.

Sarah:

I think that's something, if I could go back to my 28, 29 year old self, I would encourage her to question things. If you're not sure on what they mean, clarify. Don't think you know. Because people don't always say what they mean. We've got a phrase in our house, like, say what you mean and mean what you say. If you don't genuinely mean what you're saying, don't say it. Because things can get misinterpreted. And I remember from my teacher training, one of the things that we were taught with giving feedback is identify the behaviour, don't make it personal, and it's funny because I, I communicate with my boys this way. Because they don't understand the inference, they don't, like, you have to be quite explicit with what you're saying, which then removes the misinterpretation. If you're watching the video, you'll see this. But if I hold my mug up, for you Cassie what side is the handle?

Cassie:

Well, to me, it is, it's looking like it's on the left, but actually if I turn my body around, it's on your right. Yeah,

Sarah:

it's on my right, for you, you can see it's on your left. We're both right, we've just got different perspectives, viewpoints on the same thing. It's the same as when we go to a film or something. We might watch a programme with somebody. And if you have a chat about it afterwards. You've both taken very different perspectives or viewpoints of the same thing. Neither of you are wrong. It's how we interpret it and our interpretations, again, coming full circle, especially when we're thinking about rejection sensitivity, our interpretations are very much largely based on our past experiences. Yeah. Yes.

Cassie:

absolutely. They are. They are definitely. You know, and if we don't realise that, we then create from that place. So just going back to that story that I shared about me realising it was a six year old that was responding to somebody else's behaviour. And if I continued to respond as a six year old, I would create it and it would play out as one way. Being able to catch that and to be able to almost, consciously say, Ah, it's okay. That isn't happening now. That, that isn't today's situation. I'm, I'm safe, I'm here in my 48, 49 year old self, who is resourceful, resilient, courageous, well equipped. Let me just take a breather. Let's just remove ourselves from the room and come back in a minute. And to then be able to navigate differently. When we're in these situations and we got this ambiguity, ambiguity leads to even more confusion, which is where, you know, what you're saying here, your perspectives are really important. Being able to talk things through is really important. Using clean language is really important. Asking for what you want and need is really important and actually can be very challenging as well for, you know, high achievers or, whatever. But it is really important. And definitions as well. Like you're saying with perspectives, sometimes our definitions, the definitions that we apply to something, we create different meanings from. And we're not on the same page. So we need to get on the same page and understand how you're defining something. Because then we can start to wipe the slate clean and create, something that's really useful. Gosh, rejection sensitivity is huge, isn't it?

Sarah:

It is massive, absolutely massive, and I think, to raise awareness around it is really helpful. I mean, it comes down to improving lines of communication, which we know can be a bit tricky. Regardless of, well, outside of that, I know particularly in the neurodivergent space, and this is another session that we're going to bring up, is communication. And things can help to support communication and why things get miscommunicated and why things get misinterpreted. But yeah, it's essentially like we are all in this big wide world. The more tolerance, understanding and acceptance and compassion that we can have for people's differences, abilities, then the world will be a calmer, better place. That might sound a bit idealistic, but that's what I believe we are capable of.

Cassie:

Oh, we are hugely capable of, and it's that softening of the heart, isn't it? So many people, and I know myself as well, have come into something with a really hard stance on something and perhaps the full protections up, the warrior mode, this is the way things are going to be, it's going to be my way or the highway kind of thing. And actually, it's where we can soften and start to really understand, take ourselves out of the picture, in some sense, if you're being with somebody who is sensitive, in this way, I just really seek to understand, hold that compassion and really deeply want to understand because when you can come together, then then something really beautiful can be created and it's that co creation then instead of being one against the other.

Sarah:

Absolutely. Brilliant. Well, I'm sure we could carry on talking about rejection sensitivity, so we might end up revisiting it in future episodes.

Cassie:

Who knows?

Sarah:

If you've got any experience or your own personal experiences with rejection sensitivity, And you want to share them, please feel free to. We are always open and up for having a conversation. Like I said, we could talk about this for ages. But thanks for listening and we'll hope you join us on the next episode.

Sarah Atkins:

I hope you found our exploration today, both insightful and inspiring, and if you resonated with what you heard today, I invite you to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on your preferred platform, whatever that might be. Your feedback is really invaluable and it helps us to reach even more listeners on their own journey of self-discovery. And remember, the conversation doesn't have to end here. You can connect with me on social media. I'm on Instagram under the handle sarah m atkins. Or you can find me on Facebook just as Sarah Atkins. I would really love to hear from you and continue our conversation there. I am on a personal mission to bring you thought provoking conversations and practical insights to help you break free from the conditioning that holds you back. And as we close out this episode, take a moment to reflect on what you've learned today. How can you apply these insights to your own life? What steps can you take to further align with your own authentic self? Thank you again for listening. I really do appreciate you choosing to spend some time with me. And until next time, stay curious, stay authentic, and stay true to you.