You know that sting when someone is short with you, or doesn't reply, or you sense a shift in the room? For most people it is uncomfortable but manageable. For many people with ADHD, it can feel catastrophic: a wave of pain or shame that is completely disproportionate to what most would consider a minor social event. This is rejection sensitive dysphoria, or RSD, and it is one of the most significant and least understood aspects of the ADHD experience. What is RSD? Rejection

If you are neurodivergent, you may have spent years becoming very good at something that has no name in most people's lives: performing normality. Watching how other people behave, then calibrating your responses so that you appear to fit in. This is called masking, and while it can be a genuinely useful survival skill, it comes with a cost that is rarely talked about honestly. What masking actually is Masking refers to the way many autistic and ADHD people, and those with ot