Why do I give even a second thought to the reaction of other online users (who may not even be human) when I get blocked? They’re strangers. None of this matters. It will not affect my physical life in any way what so ever. My rational side is absolutely boggled at my emotional side. (additionally, I know I’m not the only one but I prefer to ask questions like this in first person.)
Sure thing:
OSDD: Other Specified Dissociative Disorder
DID: Dissociative Identity Disorder (once called Multiple Personality Disorder)
RSD: Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria
From the way I understand it, dissociative disorders sit on a spectrum. Some people have an intact identity, but dissociation/derealisation as a coping mechanism. That would be one end of the spectrum.
OSDD sits somewhere in the middle and has a couple of subtypes.
DID is the other end of the spectrum and is quite rare. It usually involves very very severe trauma sustained over a long period at a very early age. This is where multiple different people live in the same mind and can take over and “front”.
Heres a lengthy further musing if you’re interested friend:
spoiler
I find it most useful to see OSDD as emotional fragmentation of identity as a reaction to severe trauma that manifests as multiple parts of yourself that most consider to be a normal internal experience. Often as separate internal monologues representing different aspects of yourself.
It’s my observation many ADHDers, especially ones diagnosed later in adulthood, talk about the many monologues in their minds, the radio playing, the intrusive thoughts they can’t control etc. It’s such a common trope. Some element of healthy internal talk is expected, but when it is intrusive and it comes with decreased ability, or memory loss, or anxiety and other weird symptoms (too numerous to list here), that’s when a dissociative disorder should be investigated.
Many of us ADHDers assume rationally that these symptoms are just a manifestation of executive dysfunction within ADHD. That logic makes sense on the face of it.
But if that were the case, it occurred to me to ask the question why so often these worrying symptoms get worse and more extreme with age? After all, ADHD is a genetic expression and a fixed thing, it’s not something that should worsen with age drastically; only St pace with natural age related cognitive decline.
So I dug into it from a trauma perspective, and ended up getting therapy and with my therapists help realised that for many including myself, ADHDers end up with a dissociative disorder.
The disorder sits on top of the ADHD and at first is a coping mechanism that to some degree works to manage the extreme emotions from the trauma we keep experiencing that we can’t process properly.
But as we age and gain more and more trauma, and the older trauma festers behind the repression, it ends up causing more and more cognitive decline, loss of capability sense of self, fragmentation, numbing of emotions and a heap of problem too numerous to name here.
I think it’s possible RSD itself doesn’t actually exist. I thought I had it, but it was all along trauma sitting on top of the ADHD.
This approach to therapy hasn’t fixed my ADHD but it is making living with it a hell of a lot easier.