It should be noted that this is just a term one guy made up, and isn't medically accepted as an ADHD symptom.
Of course it is a legitimate thing that happens to people.
There's my partner. Heck, now I'm almost full!
Been there, done that, i can tell you it’s a bad approach, because relationships don’t last forever and aren’t always smooth 100% of the time.
Having friends is often also having somebody that you can talk about your issues (even about issues with your partner) and get a different opinion.
Opinions are like assholes, we all have 'em and they all stink. Take care :)
RSD can't be solved 100%. At best, you can give yourself some guidance on how to resume contact with someone:
1) When was the last time I was in touch with this person?
2) How would I rate my relationship with them on a scale of 1-10 -- this is important because in adulthood friendships can fade even if nobody did anything wrong
3) Why do I feel they would not want to hear from me?
4) List 3 light topics of conversation that are low-risk, and choose one to reach out with. That can help reduce the internal resistance, which is a key factor in RSD.
What I expect to get from it are hopefully new insights on the behaviours I described, not from my dumb Airtable setup, but from just putting _something_ new in to try and break the cycle. While setting it up (and writing this post), I was thinking about the problem in-depth, which is what's really valuable here.
Tip #4 on your list might work for me. I'm going to try that next time it comes up. Thanks!
I know if I "just replied quickly" to all of my personal text in a day I would almost never get any work done, and my circle of friends/family isn't even particularly large.
But yeah... once the initial chance to reply passes it quickly turns into anxiety/dread/avoidance. ADHD is a tough one to rangle, especially unmedicated.
However because I have a lot of 2nd and 3rd level relationships to keep in contact with (for business) the stress can accumulate. My technical solution was to create my own CRM (https://humancrm.io) that is entirely oriented around follow ups with important people. It helps me quickly process follow ups and remove the analysis paralysis.
I also am told all the time "Thanks for following up, I am so bad at it" - so I've just accepted that a lot of people feel the same way and I'm going to have to make the first move.
jmathai•9mo ago
I enjoy learning from posts like this because it can help identify patterns I might not have otherwise noticed. From there I can do something.
Something I do periodically is scroll my iMessages and see if there are conversations that have been dormant longer than I’d like. If so, I try to think of something to resurrect the thread.
a5c11•9mo ago
rchaud•9mo ago
A sad part of life is acknowledging that in relationships, one person usually cares more than the other. This is why we're encouraged to build OK friendships with several people instead of putting all our apples in one really good friend.