Exploring Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

Sometimes I think about the people I lost — not the ones who drifted away naturally, but the ones who slipped through my fingers because I couldn’t reach out, couldn’t speak, couldn’t risk being misunderstood. The almost-connections. The ones who might have mattered if I’d only found the courage to show up fully.

There’s a special kind of ache in that — not heartbreak exactly, but something quieter and lonelier. A kind of grief that doesn’t have closure, because there was never anything solid to lose. Just potential, hovering between what I felt and what I couldn’t say.

Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria has a way of stealing moments like that. It tells me to stay silent, to hold back, to be careful — because rejection, even the smallest kind, doesn’t just sting. It burns. It carves deep. It whispers that maybe I said too much, or not enough, or that I’ll never be fully understood anyway.

When I care about someone, that fear grows louder. I start editing myself in real time, hesitating between thoughts, pulling back before I can say what I mean. I worry they’ll misread me, that I’ll overwhelm them, that I’ll be too much or not enough all at once. And by the time I’ve untangled what’s safe to say, the moment has passed — another door quietly closing before I can step through it.

Being autistic adds another layer to it all — because even when I do try to connect, sometimes my way of communicating doesn’t translate. I “pebble” — offering small pieces of myself, a song that reminds me of someone, a random fact about their favorite topic, a meme that says what I can’t. It’s my way of saying, I care about you, but often people don’t recognize it that way. They might think I’m distant, distracted, or uninterested, when really I’m trying so hard to show affection in a way that feels safe.

There’s also the double empathy problem — that constant mismatch between autistic and non-autistic ways of understanding each other. I’m not broken in how I communicate; I just speak a different language. But it still hurts when my intentions get lost in translation — when warmth is mistaken for weirdness, or silence for disinterest.

And then there’s small talk — that social glue that feels so easy for others and so foreign to me. I don’t always know how to float in those casual conversations. I want to dive deep, skip the surface level, talk about what really matters — but the world doesn’t always work that way. So I hover on the edges, quiet, waiting for a door that never quite opens.

There are people I still think about — people who might have been friends, partners, or something in between, if only we’d found a way to understand each other. Maybe they thought I didn’t care, that I was cold or detached. They couldn’t see what I meant behind the silences, the awkward pauses, the sideways gestures of affection. They didn’t know how loud my quiet really was.

It’s painful to admit how often RSD and miscommunication kept me from connection, how often they convinced me it was safer not to try. I’ve missed out on love, on friendship, on moments that might have changed my life — all because I couldn’t find a shared language before fear got in the way.

Sometimes I imagine what could have been if I hadn’t let that fear win. If I’d been able to explain what pebbling means to me, if I’d trusted that my kind of care was enough, if I’d had the words to say, please don’t mistake my silence for disinterest — it’s just how I breathe between sentences.

Change comes slowly. Even knowing about RSD and autistic communication differences doesn’t make it easy. The fear still rises every time I reach out, the same old question echoing: Will they understand me this time?

But awareness gives me a map — not out of the struggle, but through it. It reminds me that my way of connecting isn’t wrong, just different. And maybe that difference deserves patience, not apology.

Maybe some of those lost connections will stay lost. But maybe next time, I’ll risk being misunderstood if it means being real. Maybe next time, I’ll speak my language anyway.