Rejection Sensitive Tigers by Phil

Describing how RSD feels when it hits is challenging. Everyone knows about social anxiety, but this is something much bigger than a simple catch-all term for it.

Imagine you are out for a nice walk and a sunny day in a pleasant placewith trees and bushes with some friends. You feel happy, relaxed, comfortable and safe. Life is pretty good.

In a single step, youur friends have vanished. The trees are thin and offer no protection from the bushes, which have somehow become tigers. There is nowhere to run, no defence, no hope, as the adrenaline surges in your veins and you freeze in abject terror, knowing with absolute certainty that this is a mistake from which you cannot possibly recover and your only future is being torn limb from limb.

The mistake? A word. A glance. A silence. It’s nearly always something small that has a perfectly reasonable explanation, but that requires some calm, careful processing. Have you tried being calm and rational when you are trapped by tigers?

As time goes by, you learn that you have to somehow get through it and that THERE ARE NO TIGERS. You have to sit with the terror that your friends won’t return. You have to accept sometimes they won’t and that you’ll never be sure if it’s because a tiger got them, or due punishment for your terrible sin.

The cure? Let me know if you find one. I remind myself there are no tigers, the real friends are the ones who come back, and when I inevitably have a moment of tiger terror and say and do things I otherwise wouldn’t, I try and see it as an opportunity to grow and not a stick with which to beat myself. That has never helped! Maybe every day I get a little better, even if some days it feels like the opposite. Facing our fears gives us strength!