3 THINGS THAT TRIGGER RSD IN BUSINESS & HOW TO FIX IT.

What is RSD? Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria. It’s extreme emotional sensitivity and pain that is triggered by the perception that you have been rejected by someone who you really value or sensing that you have fallen short of what you think other people’s expectations are.

When you have ADHD, you are more likely to have RSD. We are more emotional than the average person and we tend to perceive other people’s behaviors as a rejection especially if they don’t go how we anticipate them to go, or as fast as we’d like them to happen.

And that’s why when you’re an ADHD entrepreneur it’s critical to understand when your RSD gets triggered because it can quickly make you lose potential clients who would have been a perfect fit.

Continue reading to learn how RSD can show up in your business and what to do about it to ensure that you don’t drive yourself to insanity.

Let’s get straight into it.

RSD TRIGGER 1: NO RESPONSE.

A majority of entrepreneurs will attest to the number of times they have reached out to potential clients only for the client to respond weeks later. Now, for the neurotypical entrepreneur, it’s quite easy to move forward from it but that’s not the case with ADHD entrepreneurs.

A feeling of rejection will most definitely overtake you when you notice a client has not responded to your email, text, or even DM. And that could easily send you down a spiral of emotions coupled with assumptions as to why the client has not responded.

Often it will go something like, “This client probably doesn’t want to work with me. He probably doesn’t like my services. I think I must have said something wrong? Was my price too high? She has probably gone with someone else.”

While you might not necessarily recognize how the thoughts come about, they are often disruptive conversations that can quickly discourage you.

So how can you fix that?

HOW TO FIX RSD TRIGGER 1

Well, the first step is recognizing when you begin experiencing these deep emotions of rejection, what you say and how you explain them. Allowing yourself to go down the rabbit hole is never the answer.

Instead, begin to ask yourself questions that trigger logic in your mind.

For instance, instead of thinking that the client does not want to work with you, you can easily ask yourself.. What could be the logical reason that this client has not responded? Could they have forgotten about the email? Can I remind them? Or did they even see the email/ DM I sent? If they did, how can I simply send out a reminder to let them know about my previous text/email/ DM?

That way, you’re able to trigger your logical thinking abilities that will move you from being in your emotional brain to your logical brain.

Loving this post so far? Click here to save this to your favorite Pinterest board so that you remember this post and to also increase awareness about adhd in adults.

RSD TRIGGER 2: UNFOLLOWS & Likes

This one is a classic cause of RSD. When we want to grow an audience, we have the expectation that a lot of the people we are attracting are interested in our content and what we have to say.

So when we start seeing a couple of people unfollowing us then we tend to think that there’s something wrong with us or the content we’re producing.

Or even making a bomb post that took you a while to make or write only to see 10 people like it, can feel heart wrenching.

SOLUTION TO RSD TRIGGER 2.

Lack of engagement could have happened for many reasons.

You didn’t post at an optimal time, the image wasn’t attractive enough, the headline didn’t make people click “read more”, the post didn’t have much value to it.

Also remember just because not many “liked” doesn’t mean not many saw it or even read it.

How many times has someone said “oh yea I saw you guys went to the game from that insta post” but they never even liked or commented.

People are watching so don’t worry.

The truth of the matter is, that even the most popular people on the Internet get massive unfollows (I get roughly 160/weekly) but that shouldn’t dictate your worth as an entrepreneur and content creator.

Understand that you cannot control people’s actions and it’s okay if they unfollow you because you only want people that are sticking around to buy or learn more from you. Focus on the ones who are still there and considering your services/products.

RSD TRIGGER 3: COMPARISON.

I struggled with this one. I would often see business coaches say that they made $10k months and I didn’t understand how. I was really okay with just making $3k but even that number seemed so hard to get especially when I was starting out.

And that made me feel as though there was something wrong with my business or the products that I was presenting to my audience. I started to worry that my business would never really pick up because the thought of making $10k a month seemed so difficult to attain.

Fast forward to today, I launched a new 1:1 program that fully booked out in 4 days (a 19k launch) and I have made more than what I thought I was even capable of making.

So what did I do to get over my RSD?

SOLUTION TO RSD TRIGGER 3.

In my case, I had to play detective. I went on to do my research about all these coaches that were making all this money. Initially, it started with trying to figure out what they were doing that I wasn’t, but it ended up with me realizing that they had set up their businesses earlier than me.

Once I realized that they probably had more experience than I had, I stopped comparing myself with them. Instead, I started competing with myself. I started asking questions that would make me want to perform better than I had the previous day.

For instance, you could ask yourself, “Have I learnt something today that I didn’t know yesterday that could move the needle for my business?” “Have I done one more extra task than yesterday that will help me get more clients to get to my goal?”

And that way, I stopped focusing on other business coaches and started focusing on my own business growth.

ALL IN ALL

RSD will come but it’s up to us to be prepared and help ourselves navigate it so it doesn’t steal our growth. It is a direct threat to your business. As a CEO it is your job to protect direct attacks to your business and RSD is one of those. You got this friend!