Why Criticism Feels So Intense With Dyslexia and ADHD

Has someone ever sent you a text that just says, Can we have a quick chat tomorrow? And that's it, nothing else, and suddenly your whole night is gone? You're lying there at two in the morning running every possible version of what they're going to say, and in most of them you're in trouble. And then the next day they just wanted to ask you something about the weekend. Yeah, I know that feeling really well. So today we're talking about why one small comment can wreck a whole day for a dyslexic and ADHD brain.

It's Stephen from the Truth About Dyslexia. Let's get into it. Okay, so I want to start with a memory because I think this is where it started for me, or at least it's the first time I really remember it. I'm in a maths class, I'm maybe 11 or 12, and the teacher puts an equation up on the board and asks if anyone knows the answer, and nobody puts their hand up. So he tells us the answer, and I'm sitting there going, Oh, I knew that, and I actually say it out loud, I knew that. And the picture I've got in my head is this teacher at the front of the room laughing at me, pointing at me and going, No, you didn't.

Now, did that actually happen like that? I honestly don't know. I've talked about this before on the episode Our Pictures Can Lie. Maybe he made a little comment and I built the rest. But it didn't really matter because what I took away from it was, Don't put your hand up. You might be wrong, and being wrong in front of people hurts.

And I was the quiet kid in class for years after that. One comment, maybe 10 seconds long, and it shaped how I acted in a classroom for the rest of school. And I think if you're listening to this, you've probably got one or two of those moments too. So there's a name for this that's been getting talked about heaps lately, and it's rejection sensitivity. Some people call it rejection sensitive dysphoria, or RSD, which is a bit of a mouthful, I'll be honest. And I want to be careful here because it's not an official diagnosis that a doctor writes down on a form.

It's a term a lot of ADHD specialists use to describe something that a heap of us live with every day. So I'm not a doctor, I'm just a bloke who's felt this a lot and talked to a lot of people who feel it too. The way I'd describe it is when you feel like you've been rejected or criticised or like you've let someone down, the feeling doesn't arrive at a normal volume. It arrives at about a nine out of ten. It's this big physical hit kind of in your chest, and it can knock you over for an hour or a day or sometimes longer. And the tricky bit is it doesn't even need to be real rejection.

It just needs to feel like it might be. A short reply to your email, a friend who didn't laugh at your joke, your partner going quiet in the car, your brain grabs onto it and goes, Right, something's wrong, and it's probably you. Does that make sense? I'm guessing it does, or you wouldn't have clicked on this one. Let me paint you a picture. There's a woman called Priya, and Priya designs wedding cakes, like proper ones, five tiers, sugar flowers that take her about three days each, the whole thing.

She's really, really good at it. She's got a waiting list. People cry when they see her cakes, which is a pretty good review if you ask me. So it's a Wednesday night, and Priya gets a text from a bride whose wedding is on Saturday. And the text just says, Hey Priya, can we have a quick chat tomorrow morning? That's it.

No smiley face, no exclamation mark, nothing. And Priya's brain just goes. She's thinking, Oh no, she's seen the photo I sent of the sample and she hates it. And then she's thinking, Maybe she wants her deposit back. And then she's picturing the bride telling all her friends. And then she's picturing a one-star review sitting at the top of her page forever.

And by about midnight, she's kind of decided her whole business is probably over. And she's lying there, wide awake, going over every single thing she's ever said to this woman, trying to find the moment she stuffed it up. And here's the bit that matters. Years ago, before she went out on her own, Priya worked at a big bakery, and her old boss there had a thing he'd say before he let someone go. He'd walk up and go, Can we have a quick chat? And she watched him do it to two people she really liked.

So those four words in Priya's head aren't just four words. They come with a whole movie attached, and the movie ends with someone packing up their apron. So the next morning she rings the bride, and her voice is a bit shaky, and the bride goes, Oh, hi. Sorry, I know it's late notice, but would it be at all possible to add some cupcakes for the kids' table? Cupcakes. That's all it was.

And Priya laughs it off on the phone, Sure, no worries at all. But she's wrecked. She's had about three hours' sleep. She's got a five-tier cake to finish, and she spent all her energy on a fight that never even happened. And the bride has absolutely no idea any of that went on. To her, it was just a text.

So why does this hit dyslexic and ADHD brains so hard? Well, I've been thinking about this a lot, and I reckon it's a bit of both of them working together. Let's start with the dyslexia side. Think about a dyslexic kid at school. Every day, a lot of times a day, they're getting corrected. The red pen on the spelling.

Read that again. Slow down. That's not quite right. Try again. And sometimes worse than that, the lazy comments, the you're not trying hard enough. And you can do that for 10, 12, 15 years.

So by the time you're an adult, I think your brain has kind of built a really sensitive alarm system. It's been trained to listen for the bit where you've got it wrong, because for years that bit came along pretty much every day. My mum always remembers me saying to her, after I got diagnosed at 10, at least I know I'm not stupid. And when I think about that now, a 10-year-old saying that out loud tells you exactly what was going on in his head before anyone gave it a name. Then there's the picture thing. Our dyslexic brains are visual and they're fast.

So someone says a short sentence and we don't just hear the words, we see a whole movie of what it means, like Priya with her apron. And the movie is usually based on something that happened in our past, not what's actually happening right now. And then on top of that, you add ADHD. And the way I've described it before is a really fast engine with a slightly slow brake. The emotion comes in hot and quick, and it's really hard to slow it down once it's going. So you put those together, and you've got a brain that's been trained to expect criticism that builds a full movie in about half a second and that can't easily hit pause once the feelings start.

That's kind of a perfect storm when you think about it. And here's what surprised me when I started looking into this. It doesn't look the same in everybody. It comes out in a few different ways, and some of them don't look like sensitivity at all from the outside. For some people, it comes out as anger. And yep, that's been me.

Someone says something small and you snap back before you've even really thought about it, because attacking feels safer than sitting in the hurt. There's a bloke called Ben. He's a zookeeper. He looks after the penguins, which I think is a fantastic job. And Ben gets home after a long day and his partner says, Oh, you left the washing out again and it rained. That's all she says, and Ben just goes off, Well, what about you?

You never do this. You never do that. And 10 minutes later, they're having a full-on argument about something from three years ago. And what was going on for Ben is that his dad used to say, Can't you do anything right? Pretty much daily. So when his partner mentioned the washing, Ben didn't hear washing, he heard his dad.

She was talking about some wet towels and he was answering something from when he was nine. Then for other people, it goes the other way. It goes inward. You don't snap at anyone, you just go quiet. And then you replay the moment over and over for days. Some people stop trying things altogether because if you never put your hand up, nobody can laugh at you.

Which, yeah, was me in that maths class. And then there's the people pleasers, and I think a lot of us end up here. So the people pleasing one, this is where you get so good at avoiding the rejection that you just become whatever everyone else wants you to be. I'll be honest with you about this one. In my first marriage, I think I did a lot of that. I had pretty low self-esteem back then, like a lot of neurodiverse kids grow up with.

And I found someone I really liked, and I kind of became the person she wanted. And I don't say that to have a go at anyone. It was me. I did it. And it sort of works for a while because nobody's rejecting you, but you're slowly disappearing a little bit at a time, and that never really works out long term. Let me give you one more quick one.

There's a woman called Grace, and Grace flies drones for real estate agents. She takes those big sweeping shots of houses, you know the ones, where it swoops up over the roof and you can see the beach in the background. And she sends a set of photos to an agent, and the agent writes back, These look great. Love them. Just one thing. Could the lounge shot be a bit brighter?

And what does Grace hear? She hears the just one thing, and that's pretty much all she hears. The great and the love them have completely disappeared. And she ends up re-editing the whole set at 11 o'clock at night, about 40 photos, when the agent only asked about one. And then she drops her price for that agent the next month, just in case. And the agent thinks Grace is amazing, by the way.

She'd tell anyone, Grace just can't hear it. Okay, so what do we actually do about this? Because I don't think it ever fully goes away. I still get it, but it's gotten a lot quieter for me. And here are a few things that have helped. So the first one is just naming it when it happens, like out loud even, or in your head.

Oh, here it is. There's the movie again. It sounds a bit silly, but the second you name it, you've kind of stepped half a step back from it, and you're watching the feeling instead of being completely inside it. Awareness, I know I say it every week, but it really is where it starts. The second one is ask one question before you react. Priya could have sent a text back that night that just said, Of course, is everything okay?

And the bride would have gone, Oh yeah, all good, just a cupcake question. One question and Priya gets a full night's sleep. Our movies fill in the gaps, so the trick is to give them fewer gaps to fill. The third one is to explain how it works for you to the people closest to you, and do it on a good day when you're both calm, not in the middle of an argument about the washing. Something like, Hey, when you say things a bit short, my brain can take it as something way bigger than you meant. It's not your fault, it's just how I'm wired, but it helps if I know.

My wife and I have done a fair bit of this, and it makes a real difference. And the fourth one, and this is a weird one, but I love it: keep a kind file. Screenshot the nice messages, the client who said thank you, the friend who said you made their day, the review, the comment. Stick them in a folder on your phone, because our brains are amazing at holding on to the one bad comment and letting 50 good ones slip straight out the back. So you've got to keep the good ones somewhere you can actually see them, out of sight, out of mind, right? And look, if this stuff is really heavy for you, if it's hitting you hard most days, please go and have a chat with someone, a GP, a psychologist, a counsellor.

There's no prize for carrying it on your own. I want to finish with something one of my mates said to me on a really bad day a while back. I'd had a shocker, everything had gone wrong, and I'd broken something at work that I was meant to be fixing, and I was being really hard on myself. And he goes, Isn't it painful to realize we're only human? And that line has stuck with me because rejection sensitivity kind of tells you that everyone is watching every little mistake you make and judging you for it. But most people are way too busy thinking about their own stuff.

The bride was thinking about cupcakes. The agent was thinking about the next listing. And Ben's partner just wanted the towels dry. So next time one small comment knocks you sideways, I want you to remember that the movie in your head is just a movie. Some of it might be true. A lot of it probably isn't.

And you're allowed to check before you believe it. If this one hit home, come and join us in Right Brain Resetters. It's a really kind group of people who get this stuff, and nobody's going to laugh if you put your hand up. That's rightbrainresetters. com. And my book goes into a lot of this, all the stuff that comes along with dyslexia that nobody tells you about.

It's called Dyslexia and ADHD Explained from the Inside: What I Wish They'd Told Me, and it's on Amazon. And if you've got a mate who stays up all night over a can, we have a quick chat text, send them this one. They'll know why. Have an epic rest of your day, and I'll be back next week.