How Do I Know When My Dating Fears Are Real?

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

I have a question I don’t think I’ve seen addressed anywhere before. You’ve written about how having ADHD makes you more sensitive to rejection and all that, so maybe you might be able to answer this for me: how do I know when something is all in my head and when I’m right to be worried?

I’ve never had a stable relationship in my life. Every time I get close to someone, I start feeling like there’s a countdown until she dumps me. Even if things were going well, I always worry that there’s something else going on. Maybe she doesn’t like me as much as she thought and she thinks this was a mistake. Maybe she’s found someone else and she’s getting ready to tell me. I get really tense all the time and I get worried whenever it seems like her responses to my texts are getting shorter or the time between replies get longer. Or we can’t see each other that week and if she doesn’t suggest another day I worry that she just doesn’t want to tell me she doesn’t want to see me.

Then I get clingy and nervous and we break up. But before you tell me that I did this to myself, I’ve had girls dump me when I tried to tell myself I was being crazy and this was all in my head when I saw what I thought were signs and I was trying to be cool about them. So how do I know when something’s just me or when there’s something wrong and I need to worry?

Age of Anxiety

Whoo man, AoA, I can relate to this. One of the worst aspects of having ADHD – for me, anyway – is what’s known as “rejection sensitive dysphoria”. Rejection sensitive dysphoria is essentially a severe sort of emotional sensitivity, a sort of heightened sense of emotional pain, particularly regarding social rejection by others. Now at its core, this sounds utterly banal, like trying to make it sound like “woe is me, for being neurodivergent makes me a special sensitive flower” over something that everyone experiences. After all, everyone who actually cares about people is hurt by rejection. RSD is the unreasonable version of that. Take the average fear/dislike of rejection and the experience caused by it. RSD is like turning the dial on that to 11, then snapping the knob off. So not only is the pain of the experience of rejection in its many forms heightened, but you’re also getting the emotional equivalent of feedback squeal from your speakers.

The additional dissonance and noise creates a constant feeling of being on edge, like hearing the boss encounter music start in a game when you haven’t seen a save point in hours, but no boss shows up. So you’re tense, on edge, waiting for the shoe to drop and looking for signs that the shoe will drop any moment, even if there’s no evidence of a shoe at all. And needless to say, this has all sorts of fun effects on one’s emotions, anxiety, ability to feel secure in relationships… it’s a joy, let me tell you. So not only does this free-floating anxiety mean that you’re less likely to put yourself out there – and thus risk rejection – but you end up in a state of hypervigilence, looking for warning signs in order to do… something, precisely.

And it’s important to note that most of the time, this is entirely in your head. Not that you’re making things up so much as reading far too much into things and making assumptions based out of anxiety rather than logic. It just feels like logic because your brain is very good at crafting a narrative that makes it all fit together. RSD is the neurodivergent of taking a person’s normal relationship worries and turning it into Charlie Day’s character ranting about Pepe Silva.

Now, the especially annoying thing is that even if you know that what you’re experiencing is irrational, that doesn’t make dealing with it any easier. Intellectually you know it may be bullshit… but you still feel it. Your brain is saying “yes, we know there’s nothing to see here. But have you considered that maybe there’s something wrong and you’re picking it up on a gut level??”

And of course, if you do end up being dumped or rejected, regardless of circumstance, then your brain will latch onto that as “proof”. Like with cold-reading psychics, our brains are primed to remember the one time it was accurate and dismiss all the near-misses. So it really only takes being “right” once to lock that worry in.

But how do you know when it’s just the brainweasels fucking with you rather than your picking up on actual, legitimate problems? Well, to start with, pay attention to how often you experience it. After all, trusting your gut is only worthwhile when your gut can be trusted. If you always experience this anxiety, regardless of the state of your relationship, that’s a clue that this is much more about how you feel about yourself than it is about the state of your relationship. Much like “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, if you’re getting regular false alarms, the odds are that this is another false alarm.

To be sure, if you don’t have much relationship experience to compare it to, this gets tricky. One way that helps to alleviate the anxiety is to flip things around and consider your normal behavior and how that might appear to others. How often, for example, have you had shorter or non-committal responses to friends’ texts, simply because you didn’t have much to say or because you were distracted? How many times had you left a text or a DM until you could get back to it later? How many times have you begged off an invitation without suggesting another time? In all of those times, were they because you were trying to slow walk your way out of that relationship? Were they because you no longer liked that person or didn’t want to see them anymore? Or was it all a matter of circumstance in the moment, rather than growing disinterest or dissatisfaction with them?

If you’re capable of leaving a text on read without that being a sign you want the other person out of your life, then why could that not be true of your snugglebunny too?

Similarly, consider your relationship with them and what you know about them? Are they truly that conflict averse and unwilling to say how they feel? Are they direct and straightforward when they feel like something’s wrong? If they’re normally pretty up front and direct with their behavior, then odds are good that they’re not going to just end things by slowly fading on you. Especially if you’ve known them for a while.

Are there other possibilities – that you already know about – that could explain things more than just getting ghosted? Are they just not a prolific texter? Do they go in bursts of engagement and then slow down before bursting again? Are they having issues in their lives that might otherwise affect their availability or their time free to chat or text, or that might be putting them in a less social mindset? If you know your sweetie’s dealing with a major deadline at work or they’re having family drama, then it’s much more likely that those are the issue, rather than anything wrong with your relationship.

It’s also worth examining when you experience these feelings and under what context. If, for example, you’re most prone to feeling this way when you’re checking your notifications on your phone or your computer, then it’s likely that the issue is anxiety rather than an actual problem. The more you’re sitting at your computer, staring Gatsby-like at WhatsApp and looking for the “online” dot to appear next to their username, the more you’re reinforcing the idea that they’re ignoring or avoiding you. Stepping away from things – and thus putting barriers between you and your ability to check – means that you won’t have as many things that can trigger those thoughts or worries and less material for your brainweasels to gnaw on.

The same goes for what you’re consuming – literally and metaphorically. If you’re reading a lot of shitty subreddits or stories about break-ups or signs that a break-up is coming, you’re priming yourself to see them. If you’re using depressants like alcohol or cannabis, then the effects on your central nervous system may be triggering a more depressive state which, in turn, makes you more prone to anxiety.

But you may also be reinforcing the anxiety in other ways. Anxiety is, in a lot of ways, a reaction to uncertainty. The constant checking in, measuring the reply ratio or the time to response and other ways of looking for signs of an impending break-up, you’re ultimately trying to resolve that uncertainty. It’s like the tension being built in a haunted house or a thrill ride; the anticipation can get so bad that the scare is less bad by comparison. You know the dude made up to look like a monsterlous clown is going to jump out at you eventually and scare the fear-pee out of you, but the waiting for it is worse and you’d much rather get to the scare already so at least you’ll get that release and it’ll be over.

By constantly feeding yourself sources of uncertanity – trying to parse when someone’s online or not, whether they’re actually dodging you or not – then you’re just building that anticipation. Stepping away from it lets the anticipation drain away, instead of constantly building until you’re practically wishing they’d just say “we need to talk” and get it over with already.

However, it’s worth noting that these are logical approaches to what’s an emotional problem and you can’t logic your way out of feeling something. But the goal here isn’t to stop feeling this; it’s to give yourself some metaphorical breathing room. Most of the time, anxieties like this come in bursts and swells; they roll in and make things feel awful, but if you hold on, they often roll back out again. If you can hang on long enough without doing something drastic, you’ll often end up realizing that it’s all just another false alarm in a string of false alarms. Not only does the tension fade, but there’ll usually be something to tell you that it really was all just your  brainweasels deciding that they would like to rage.

This is why giving your brain something else to focus on can be helpful. Stepping away from your computer or your phone – and the ability to check for updates – is a start. Gently directing your attention to something else that will occupy you instead is the next step. You’re not trying to repress the feelings or NOT feel them, you just want to give your brain something else to occupy its bandwidth instead. Reading something that you know you get lost in, watching a movie or TV show or playing a game that demands your attention all give you a break from the anxiety simply because you have something else occupying your thoughts and doesn’t leave room for free-floating anxiety. By giving yourself that break from thinking about things, you’ll often discover that the worry’s faded and now you’re able to be a bit more rational and a bit less reactive.

Another thing to consider is how often things like RSD and dating anxieties are a reflection of how you feel about yourself. If you have a hard time believing in your own worth and value, then its harder to believe that other people might see or believe in it. When you don’t think someone could possibly be interested in you for yourself, it’s not surprising that you’d worry that the thing you’ve hoped for is going to vanish. After all, you believe that they could find someone “better”, so doesn’t that mean it’s just a matter of time until they do?

So while thinking things through, paying attention to your triggers and redirecting your attention are all useful in the short term, part of the solution is to focus on improving how you feel about yourself. This is a longer process, yes, but it addresses one of the core underlying causes, rather than treating the symptom. Doing things that make you feel like a sexy badass – regardless of what others may think – and things that make you feel like a million bucks goes a long, long way towards easing those anxieties. You become less worried, partially because you know you’re money, but also because you know that as much as it may suck if this relationship ends… it’s not the end of you. You’ll cry, you’ll grieve, but you’ll recover, move on, and meet someone new. The interim may be unpleasant but you also know it’s temporary. And hey, by working on yourself and finding the things that make you feel great about yourself, you’ll be occupying your mind to the point that you won’t have the available bandwidth to expend on those freefloating anxieties.

Oh, and one more thing. If you’re regularly experiencing these bouts of anxiety in relationships, you may want to talk to a counselor or therapist. You don’t mention if you’re neurodivergent or not, but RSD doesn’t just show up with ADHD. It tends to be a co-morbidity with a number of mental and emotional conditions, including depression, borderline personality disorder, autism and others. The recurring anxiety may be a symptom of an underlying problem, and getting that identified and treated can go a long, long way to helping get that anxiety under control.

Good luck.