No one is excited to deal with social rejection, but people with a certain mental health condition may struggle with this more than others. It’s called rejection sensitivity dysphoria, and Paris Hilton just highlighted her experience with it in a new interview.
“Any thought of a negative perception—if you think someone is being rude or you feel something…you will feel it like it’s physical pain and it’s not even real,” the 44-year-old shared on The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Show. “It’s kind of just this, almost like a demon in your mind that is, like, saying negative self-talk to you.”
Hilton says that people with rejection sensitivity dysphoria experience negative feelings “on such a deep level.” She also noted that the condition is especially common in people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which she was diagnosed with in her late 20s.
Hilton said she wasn’t even aware that rejection sensitivity dysphoria was a thing before her diagnosis, but she’s learned that many people with ADHD feel the same way as she does when it comes to social rejection.
Rejection sensitivity dysphoria isn’t a condition most people are familiar with and it’s not well defined in scientific literature. What is it and how does it differ from a standard fear of rejection? Psychologists explain.
Rejection sensitivity dysphoria can cause intense emotional pain.
Rejection sensitive dysphoria is not in the DSM-5, the handbook used by healthcare professionals to classify and diagnose mental health conditions, Gail Saltz, MD, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and host of the How Can I Help? podcast, tells SELF. “The term appears to have originated in popular discourse about ADHD but lacks a clear clinical definition, validated diagnostic criteria, or empirical research base in peer-reviewed medical literature,” Dr. Saltz says.
Jessica Bodie, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist at the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania, agrees. “The evidence base just isn’t there,” she tells SELF. Instead, Dr. Bodie says that people with rejection sensitive dysphoria may be dealing with a subtype of obsessive compulsive disorder around social connections—and that is in the DSM-5.
So, there’s no exact criteria that someone needs to meet in order to be diagnosed with rejection sensitive dysphoria.
Still, mental healthcare providers say this is a thing. “It’s one of those things that the internet made popular in certain circles,” Thea Gallagher, PsyD, clinical associate professor at NYU Langone Health and cohost of the Mind in View podcast, tells SELF. Rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) is when a person feels intense emotional pain related to rejection, according to the Cleveland Clinic. That can lead to a strong and possibly overwhelming feeling of pain or discomfort that’s hard to manage.
