Rejection sensitivity is real. But when it’s weaponized to reframe boundaries as betrayal, it stops being a wound and becomes a form of emotional control. Here’s what happened when I said no to someone who couldn’t take it by Lovette Jallow.
“She told me, straight-faced, “I can’t wait for the Black girlfriend effect to take hold.”” — that was extremely gross to read. Idk how you managed to restrain yourself after being told that whew… where you share how unmanaged RSD can lead to complete rewrites of the story, where now you, the victim, are painted as a villain. This has happened to me recently and it was extremely jarring to experience… to be lied on to that magnitude kind of shattered me for a moment… I’m coming around to understanding it’s a them problem and nothing I did…
Exactly. It didn’t even end in my space. They took it to my friend’s comments and did a complete rewrite of the interaction. I had to send my friend the receipts and warn them I’d publicly correct the lies if needed. They deactivated after that. I’ll always protect myself because some people escalate to that level of dishonesty and that’s a kind of violence too.
Makes me understand all stories they told about other people were iffy at best.
So I am a big fan of your work and tell everybody I know about how fierce it is. You and many young women like you have so much to teach my generation. No perfunctory apologies is such a new way to imagine being in the world. I’m digging it!
I am very unapologetic and so was my grandma. I think we are our ancestors actually the ones who came before were unapologetic too. Things and other people and colonisation interrupted so we are just remembering but I stand on shoulders I cannot accept it’s just me.. I wouldn’t be without the ones who came before even my raggedy ass mamma did some unapologetic things too.
Every generation did their thing and for that I give them flowers. I give you yours too for always supporting me that’s rare 😭 ok amma go cry now bye
Thank you for sharing this piece. As a woman it already feels challenging to communicate "perfectly" for everyone, all the time; I can see from this article how it's even harder for a Black woman as you're held to an impossible standard. And as you stated, it's not even like you can control the outcome -- It gets filtered through someone else's views and sensitivity and then they run with that as reality. It's so, so frustrating when you try everything under the sun to communicate and someone just.. wants to be the victim because it's easier than admitting they were behaving in a way that was self-centered and/or inappropriate.
Anyway, all that to say that I really felt your message. You described your experiences very succinctly and approached them tactfully, even when it was clear how frustrating and unfair the situation was. I feel like I was able to really see it from your eyes and gain a new understanding on how we can be accountable for our own feelings and make room for the possibility that our nervous systems & mindsets have been influenced in a toxic, unproductive way by our society that we continue at home. There's always room for improvement in creating honest intersectionality!
Thank you for this. I am old enough to have grasped that other people’s anxiety, RSD, depression, anger disorders, etc., are their problem to deal with, just as my anxiety, RSD, etc., are my problem to deal with, and while it’s useful to have information that your friend suffers from e.g. anxiety that does not mean that you are responsible when she feels anxious. But I had never thought through how this is reflected through race, gender, money, and passport. This is very helpful, thank you.
I have so many thoughts swirling through my head, memories of past relationships and breakups. I have been married and divorced 3 times and only have a few people I call close friends. I don't live up to others expectations very well.
Thank you for your work. Thank you for shining a light on this. I've always known that it takes 2 to make and break a relationship, but I haven't always understood the "why," especially when it came to men. It has taken me years to understand boundaries and set them. When I was the one feeling rejected, I often struggled to understand what I did wrong. Your writing has given me another perspective.
This may sound funny, but I'm grateful you don't pop these gems out every day. I think my brain would explode. I may just stick all your essays into a notebook so I can more easily reread, underline, and make notes on them. Your mind is amazing and your labor is invaluable. Thank you.
What a generous with this reflection, thank you. And imagine living inside the mind that writes like this. It doesn’t slow down.
Doctors monitored me for months. I rarely sleep, but nothing came back “wrong.” This is just how my brain works, constantly twisting language, dissecting memory, tracking emotion, trying to translate what most people don’t notice they’re doing.
I understand now why people find me fascinating and still struggle to understand me. Why I offer friendship and analysis when what they wanted was possession. I say this with full humility: wanting me my mind, my body doesn’t mean I’ll want you back. Something the case study didn’t get.
And that’s not a rejection of someone’s wholeness. It’s self-choosing. It’s knowing that while many people feed parts of me, none feed all of me.
And that’s okay.
As for not posting daily, I hear you. I truly do. But when the thoughts stack too high, I have to push them out or they start looping. Some weeks, that means multiple posts. For release.
You don’t have to read them all at once. Save them. Return to them when they serve you.
But know I’m honored they hold space in your notebook. And I’m holding gratitude for this moment with you.
I feel this with my whole being. My mind is constantly moving; words, pictures, sounds. It makes it extremely difficult for me to sleep.
While your medium is words (as near as I can tell), mine is fiber and paint (I do mixed medium art and fiber out). I am a rabid consumer of words though. I do understand the need to push things out, to keep them from circling through the brain.
I promise, I don't read everything all at once. I read, then mull over for a bit. Then a thought, word, or action triggers the brain and I mull over your words again, ruminating. Each time I get something new. Many times you words overlap and come together to form a larger picture. Reviewing your written words helps keep my mind from changing them.
I have been considering it for a while but I think I am going to get more serious and release it on kobo or perhaps read it in also in snippets audio. Might take a few weeks of concentration actually.
This is so powerful and true! The more that I am aware of projection, it's easy to see it everywhere! We all do it. It's so easy to only see an idea of someone and let the unhealed parts of yourself take the wheel. Thank you for such honest and insightful food for thought
Another excellent piece of writing, on a tricky topic.
RSD is new to me, but when I think of rejection, I envision sincerely offering someone my love and having it returned to sender. That type of rejection can be heartbreaking, but ultimately strengthening. The type of rejection that weakens us is the kind in which we are not offering love, but entitlement: “I feel entitled to your love and you are withholding it from me and now I feel bereft (and angry).” One form of rejection is of an offer that comes from a place of fullness and while it hurts to not be able to give love, the giver can return to the well and carry on. The second claim of rejection is based on using and comes from a place of emptiness and lack. Its cycle of blame and perceived powerlessness (“you have something I need and you are selfishly withholding it from me”) is an endless spin that never resolves itself. It must be abandoned, wholesale.
Thank you 🙏🏾 . Your comment captures the split I’ve been trying to articulate for years.
There is a kind of rejection that hurts but clarifies, where someone offers something sincere, it’s not accepted, and both parties recalibrate with dignity. That’s part of being human. But what I described here and what many of us have lived is the second kind. The kind where what’s being offered isn’t love, but possession of parts of us. And when that possession isn’t received, it turns punitive.
What often gets framed as “unrequited care” is, in reality, unacknowledged entitlement. The offering wasn’t asked for. The emotional intensity wasn’t mutual either hence my pause. And yet, when boundaries are held, the person on the other side still expects intimacy or redemption in return. That’s not giving. That’s conditional access masked up as generosity.
In this case, the “love” offered was fast, overwhelming, and ultimately unstable. I know the difference I have been in love. When it wasn’t returned with the same fervor, it calcified into a need to rewrite the narrative, publicly even. Because some people aren’t devastated that you said no. They’re devastated that their performance didn’t secure a yes.
And I won’t let that be mistaken for connection. ❤️🫶🏾
Exactly! Thanks for clarifying an experience I have had as well, but did not have the awareness to articulate so clearly. 👏 An older me loves to dissect the meanings today, but my message to a younger me would still be, “If it feels off/bad/wrong, then run! You can figure out why later, when you’re safe and sound.”
God, you make my heart ache, not in a bad way but thatcglare of recognition. Until recently I spent my entire adult life doing this, I'm ashamed to say. Acting rejected because of my own insecurities and then projecting it onto them. Having recently realised how unfair this is, I am now an addict withdrawing from my own ego.
That insistence on ( imagined? ) connection means being very careful socially. Don't break yourself or others.
I came to say that you are changing my life. Your writing is a lot of small explosions in my head. Knowledge is power after all. Thank you always. You have made me both a better man and a better human. No holy book or otherwise has done this, only you. X
This means a lot, because most people don’t get it. Not really.
It takes real humility to name that pattern without deflecting into shame, performance, or apology. What you’ve described “withdrawing from your own ego” is the work most people never do, especially when their pain has been culturally excused or even rewarded.
I don’t write for admiration. I write because clarity matters. And your response is what clarity makes possible: not perfection, but responsibility.
Don’t break yourself trying to prove you’ve changed. Just practice the pause the space between feeling and reaction. That’s where transformation actually lives.
And thank you for letting the writing shift something in you. I’ll always respect effort over theatrics. Keep going.
Very interesting...thank you for the enormous amount of work and energy that must have taken to write.
I never even knew about RSD until about a year ago. The concept definitely resonates with me but I never considered that I should work on it. I have mostly felt rejected by women...I think they find me weird because i like science and am not traditionally feminine...makeup, shoes, hairstyles all very practical...but I am cis/straight. I was pretty, so men...well, you know. I've been married for 40 years to a man who loves me and has never felt even an inkling of RSD his life, apparently. I never chase after people who reject me, and, when younger, even failed to see the rejection many times while still feeling something was "off." Now, at 63, I just figure it's their loss if they don't want my fiercely loyal and funny friendship. It never occurred to me that this victimization could be turned and weaponized. I hope I've never done that...I'll have to ponder. Thanks again for the education. Especially since my oldest grandchild, now 10, is AuADHD.
Thank you for engaging so thoughtfully and for honoring the labor it takes to write something like this.
Your reflection is a powerful example of what so many people never get to witness: someone pausing to examine not just how RSD shows up internally, but how it can land on others. That kind of curiosity is rare, especially when it comes to power and perception.
You naming that you’ve felt “off” or misunderstood without chasing after people is important. Because RSD doesn’t always look loud or dramatic it can also look quiet and internalized. Many times people do not pause to interrogate because of previous nervous system dysregulation and it falls on someone else. The question becomes: when discomfort happens, what do we do with it? Some people project. Others process. And that difference matters deeply. Esp if you are dealing with someone you dont know well and claim to care about and also intersectional.
The fact that you’re still open to learning at 63 especially with a grandchild who is AuADHD says a lot. It tells me you’re not afraid to hold tension between what’s personal and what’s systemic. That’s where the real work begins.
Thank you again for reading. I hope this gives your next generation a stronger foundation to build from. 🫶🏾
Thank you. And I'd like to add that I hope you find someone who appreciates your strength instead of being intimidated by it. Respect and trust are the foundation of any relationship and they need to flow both ways. Not always easy!
Thank you. I’ve been lucky in many ways as I’m surrounded by people whose presence weighs far more than any momentary loss. I show up as myself, fully and consistently, and that often acts as a natural filter. If someone can’t sit with their own reflection, they’ll struggle to see me clearly and that’s not a loss on my end. I say the same in my neurodiversity work: some misreadings say more about what people are avoiding in themselves than about any of us.
Thank you truly. That means a lot to me. I write so none of us have to carry the weight of unnamed experiences alone. If even one paragraph met you where you’ve been, then it did what it was meant to do. I’m glad we’re in conversation. 🙏🏾✨
You have beautifully explained something I have been experiencing and struggling to articulate. Thank you.
“She told me, straight-faced, “I can’t wait for the Black girlfriend effect to take hold.”” — that was extremely gross to read. Idk how you managed to restrain yourself after being told that whew… where you share how unmanaged RSD can lead to complete rewrites of the story, where now you, the victim, are painted as a villain. This has happened to me recently and it was extremely jarring to experience… to be lied on to that magnitude kind of shattered me for a moment… I’m coming around to understanding it’s a them problem and nothing I did…
Exactly. It didn’t even end in my space. They took it to my friend’s comments and did a complete rewrite of the interaction. I had to send my friend the receipts and warn them I’d publicly correct the lies if needed. They deactivated after that. I’ll always protect myself because some people escalate to that level of dishonesty and that’s a kind of violence too.
Makes me understand all stories they told about other people were iffy at best.
It’s audacious to try you even a little bit 😭😭 truly
So I am a big fan of your work and tell everybody I know about how fierce it is. You and many young women like you have so much to teach my generation. No perfunctory apologies is such a new way to imagine being in the world. I’m digging it!
I am very unapologetic and so was my grandma. I think we are our ancestors actually the ones who came before were unapologetic too. Things and other people and colonisation interrupted so we are just remembering but I stand on shoulders I cannot accept it’s just me.. I wouldn’t be without the ones who came before even my raggedy ass mamma did some unapologetic things too.
Every generation did their thing and for that I give them flowers. I give you yours too for always supporting me that’s rare 😭 ok amma go cry now bye
So many exceptional quotes in this brilliant essay.
Thank you for sharing this piece. As a woman it already feels challenging to communicate "perfectly" for everyone, all the time; I can see from this article how it's even harder for a Black woman as you're held to an impossible standard. And as you stated, it's not even like you can control the outcome -- It gets filtered through someone else's views and sensitivity and then they run with that as reality. It's so, so frustrating when you try everything under the sun to communicate and someone just.. wants to be the victim because it's easier than admitting they were behaving in a way that was self-centered and/or inappropriate.
Anyway, all that to say that I really felt your message. You described your experiences very succinctly and approached them tactfully, even when it was clear how frustrating and unfair the situation was. I feel like I was able to really see it from your eyes and gain a new understanding on how we can be accountable for our own feelings and make room for the possibility that our nervous systems & mindsets have been influenced in a toxic, unproductive way by our society that we continue at home. There's always room for improvement in creating honest intersectionality!
Thank you for this. I am old enough to have grasped that other people’s anxiety, RSD, depression, anger disorders, etc., are their problem to deal with, just as my anxiety, RSD, etc., are my problem to deal with, and while it’s useful to have information that your friend suffers from e.g. anxiety that does not mean that you are responsible when she feels anxious. But I had never thought through how this is reflected through race, gender, money, and passport. This is very helpful, thank you.
I have so many thoughts swirling through my head, memories of past relationships and breakups. I have been married and divorced 3 times and only have a few people I call close friends. I don't live up to others expectations very well.
Thank you for your work. Thank you for shining a light on this. I've always known that it takes 2 to make and break a relationship, but I haven't always understood the "why," especially when it came to men. It has taken me years to understand boundaries and set them. When I was the one feeling rejected, I often struggled to understand what I did wrong. Your writing has given me another perspective.
This may sound funny, but I'm grateful you don't pop these gems out every day. I think my brain would explode. I may just stick all your essays into a notebook so I can more easily reread, underline, and make notes on them. Your mind is amazing and your labor is invaluable. Thank you.
What a generous with this reflection, thank you. And imagine living inside the mind that writes like this. It doesn’t slow down.
Doctors monitored me for months. I rarely sleep, but nothing came back “wrong.” This is just how my brain works, constantly twisting language, dissecting memory, tracking emotion, trying to translate what most people don’t notice they’re doing.
I understand now why people find me fascinating and still struggle to understand me. Why I offer friendship and analysis when what they wanted was possession. I say this with full humility: wanting me my mind, my body doesn’t mean I’ll want you back. Something the case study didn’t get.
And that’s not a rejection of someone’s wholeness. It’s self-choosing. It’s knowing that while many people feed parts of me, none feed all of me.
And that’s okay.
As for not posting daily, I hear you. I truly do. But when the thoughts stack too high, I have to push them out or they start looping. Some weeks, that means multiple posts. For release.
You don’t have to read them all at once. Save them. Return to them when they serve you.
But know I’m honored they hold space in your notebook. And I’m holding gratitude for this moment with you.
I feel this with my whole being. My mind is constantly moving; words, pictures, sounds. It makes it extremely difficult for me to sleep.
While your medium is words (as near as I can tell), mine is fiber and paint (I do mixed medium art and fiber out). I am a rabid consumer of words though. I do understand the need to push things out, to keep them from circling through the brain.
I promise, I don't read everything all at once. I read, then mull over for a bit. Then a thought, word, or action triggers the brain and I mull over your words again, ruminating. Each time I get something new. Many times you words overlap and come together to form a larger picture. Reviewing your written words helps keep my mind from changing them.
I see you.
I would love to read your book. Is there a kobo or other digital format available?
I have been considering it for a while but I think I am going to get more serious and release it on kobo or perhaps read it in also in snippets audio. Might take a few weeks of concentration actually.
💐💐💐🤲🏻
🙏🏾✨✨✨
This is so powerful and true! The more that I am aware of projection, it's easy to see it everywhere! We all do it. It's so easy to only see an idea of someone and let the unhealed parts of yourself take the wheel. Thank you for such honest and insightful food for thought
Another excellent piece of writing, on a tricky topic.
RSD is new to me, but when I think of rejection, I envision sincerely offering someone my love and having it returned to sender. That type of rejection can be heartbreaking, but ultimately strengthening. The type of rejection that weakens us is the kind in which we are not offering love, but entitlement: “I feel entitled to your love and you are withholding it from me and now I feel bereft (and angry).” One form of rejection is of an offer that comes from a place of fullness and while it hurts to not be able to give love, the giver can return to the well and carry on. The second claim of rejection is based on using and comes from a place of emptiness and lack. Its cycle of blame and perceived powerlessness (“you have something I need and you are selfishly withholding it from me”) is an endless spin that never resolves itself. It must be abandoned, wholesale.
Brava, for your hard-won wisdom and self-care!
Thank you 🙏🏾 . Your comment captures the split I’ve been trying to articulate for years.
There is a kind of rejection that hurts but clarifies, where someone offers something sincere, it’s not accepted, and both parties recalibrate with dignity. That’s part of being human. But what I described here and what many of us have lived is the second kind. The kind where what’s being offered isn’t love, but possession of parts of us. And when that possession isn’t received, it turns punitive.
What often gets framed as “unrequited care” is, in reality, unacknowledged entitlement. The offering wasn’t asked for. The emotional intensity wasn’t mutual either hence my pause. And yet, when boundaries are held, the person on the other side still expects intimacy or redemption in return. That’s not giving. That’s conditional access masked up as generosity.
In this case, the “love” offered was fast, overwhelming, and ultimately unstable. I know the difference I have been in love. When it wasn’t returned with the same fervor, it calcified into a need to rewrite the narrative, publicly even. Because some people aren’t devastated that you said no. They’re devastated that their performance didn’t secure a yes.
And I won’t let that be mistaken for connection. ❤️🫶🏾
Exactly! Thanks for clarifying an experience I have had as well, but did not have the awareness to articulate so clearly. 👏 An older me loves to dissect the meanings today, but my message to a younger me would still be, “If it feels off/bad/wrong, then run! You can figure out why later, when you’re safe and sound.”
God, you make my heart ache, not in a bad way but thatcglare of recognition. Until recently I spent my entire adult life doing this, I'm ashamed to say. Acting rejected because of my own insecurities and then projecting it onto them. Having recently realised how unfair this is, I am now an addict withdrawing from my own ego.
That insistence on ( imagined? ) connection means being very careful socially. Don't break yourself or others.
I came to say that you are changing my life. Your writing is a lot of small explosions in my head. Knowledge is power after all. Thank you always. You have made me both a better man and a better human. No holy book or otherwise has done this, only you. X
This means a lot, because most people don’t get it. Not really.
It takes real humility to name that pattern without deflecting into shame, performance, or apology. What you’ve described “withdrawing from your own ego” is the work most people never do, especially when their pain has been culturally excused or even rewarded.
I don’t write for admiration. I write because clarity matters. And your response is what clarity makes possible: not perfection, but responsibility.
Don’t break yourself trying to prove you’ve changed. Just practice the pause the space between feeling and reaction. That’s where transformation actually lives.
And thank you for letting the writing shift something in you. I’ll always respect effort over theatrics. Keep going.
Thank you. And that " space between feeling and reaction " is exactly where the work lies.
Very interesting...thank you for the enormous amount of work and energy that must have taken to write.
I never even knew about RSD until about a year ago. The concept definitely resonates with me but I never considered that I should work on it. I have mostly felt rejected by women...I think they find me weird because i like science and am not traditionally feminine...makeup, shoes, hairstyles all very practical...but I am cis/straight. I was pretty, so men...well, you know. I've been married for 40 years to a man who loves me and has never felt even an inkling of RSD his life, apparently. I never chase after people who reject me, and, when younger, even failed to see the rejection many times while still feeling something was "off." Now, at 63, I just figure it's their loss if they don't want my fiercely loyal and funny friendship. It never occurred to me that this victimization could be turned and weaponized. I hope I've never done that...I'll have to ponder. Thanks again for the education. Especially since my oldest grandchild, now 10, is AuADHD.
Thank you for engaging so thoughtfully and for honoring the labor it takes to write something like this.
Your reflection is a powerful example of what so many people never get to witness: someone pausing to examine not just how RSD shows up internally, but how it can land on others. That kind of curiosity is rare, especially when it comes to power and perception.
You naming that you’ve felt “off” or misunderstood without chasing after people is important. Because RSD doesn’t always look loud or dramatic it can also look quiet and internalized. Many times people do not pause to interrogate because of previous nervous system dysregulation and it falls on someone else. The question becomes: when discomfort happens, what do we do with it? Some people project. Others process. And that difference matters deeply. Esp if you are dealing with someone you dont know well and claim to care about and also intersectional.
The fact that you’re still open to learning at 63 especially with a grandchild who is AuADHD says a lot. It tells me you’re not afraid to hold tension between what’s personal and what’s systemic. That’s where the real work begins.
Thank you again for reading. I hope this gives your next generation a stronger foundation to build from. 🫶🏾
Thank you. And I'd like to add that I hope you find someone who appreciates your strength instead of being intimidated by it. Respect and trust are the foundation of any relationship and they need to flow both ways. Not always easy!
Thank you. I’ve been lucky in many ways as I’m surrounded by people whose presence weighs far more than any momentary loss. I show up as myself, fully and consistently, and that often acts as a natural filter. If someone can’t sit with their own reflection, they’ll struggle to see me clearly and that’s not a loss on my end. I say the same in my neurodiversity work: some misreadings say more about what people are avoiding in themselves than about any of us.
Oooo, I like that: “…some misreading say more about what people are avoiding in themselves…”
I also think envy/jealousy can play a role…they don't want a bright star in their circle of space rocks. :)
**Standing ovation**
Had to hold myself from highlighting and sharing every line and paragraph.
Thank you for always giving language to the things we have always felt but couldn’t name.
Your work is incredible and so resonant 🫶🏾
Thank you truly. That means a lot to me. I write so none of us have to carry the weight of unnamed experiences alone. If even one paragraph met you where you’ve been, then it did what it was meant to do. I’m glad we’re in conversation. 🙏🏾✨