Intro
This article will look at RSD and PDA and how these phenomena impact on shame, acceptance, relationships and trust. The findings of this article are based on my personal experience and professional reflections while working with neurodiverse individuals.
“Hope rising from a petal that thought it held none.”
Article
One of the first books I read when I began my coaching journey was Viktor Frankl’s book, ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’. In his book, he talks about the experiences of the WWII concentration camps and survivors. Those who were able to find the purpose of their life, who said yes to life, were more likely to survive through finding the meaning of life in every moment of living. When hope is high, life can go on, despite suffering.
How does this relate to an article about RSD and PDA? I want to look at being ok, while not being ok.
When working with individuals in a coaching setting, sometimes we need to make individuals realise that they might not be ok. This is done while maintaining strict coaching principles and staying outside of the counselling realm. It is mainly about increasing aspects of self-awareness and expanding zones of comfort.
Being ok in the discomfort zone is important, as it helps us to push ourselves towards opportunities and not remain in the protective bubble of the comfort zone. One thing is sure in life: we can’t avoid pain and suffering, but we can learn how to respond to them constructively. Some of this pain is initiated by external factors, other pain comes from our perceptions of situations. If we can find the courage and the power to stop focusing on fixing our shortfalls and start focusing on strengths and virtues, our pain ‘threshold’ will increase and our perceptions will change.
We need to learn to be authentic as a coach to enable the client to be their most authentic self as well. The application of unconditional positive regard in all circumstances and acceptance of the client’s full self – shame, failure, pain, opportunities, everything – is the key to transformation. Without this we could help them stay in the comfort zone, where no real growth is happening. But this must be done artfully and safely.
Showing compassion while the person is experiencing the turmoil of feelings, which will enable the facilitation of change is important. Holding the space for reflection and feeling the feelings is ok because there are no such things as good or bad emotions. Emotions are there to signal individuals towards unmet needs and learning how to listen to and navigate these is helpful for growth.
Wouldn’t it be an amazing world if we could just accept our greatness, unconditionally, with the help of an external source (like a great coach)? No shame, no guilt, just pure acceptance that actually, “I am enough, I am ok, I will be ok”.
When coaching work is done with a neurotypical individual, the above can be more straightforward, however let’s put the rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RSD) and pathological demand avoidance (PDA) prisms on top and suddenly we witness a new type of mental whirlpool. When I reflect on my personal experiences and on working with neurodiverse clients, I always think of these as extraordinary insights and in a very positive manner. Uniqueness and not a lack of something is the first thing that comes to my mind, although from the client’s perspective, this might feel like not being good enough.
RSD and PDA are vital aspects to consider when working with neurodiverse individuals in a coaching setting.
Before we look at the complexities of the relationship between the above, let’s look at the definitions of these concepts.
RSD refers to a phenomenon, where an individual feels intense emotional response to situations, where they think or perceive rejection. This can be a short, rejected feeling, however more often, this is a long-lasting impact, which can feel unbearable, gut-wrenching and sometimes manifest in intense physical pain as a secondary ‘symptom’.
According to the UK’s National Autism Society, PDA is defined as someone consistently resisting the ‘demands of everyday life’, which can be direct demands, internal demands (bodily needs), and implied or indirect demands. The forms of resistance can vary from giving excuses, diverting the topic of the conversation, point blank refusing the task, or passively withdrawing from the situation. In extreme circumstances the refusal can manifest in aggression.
Both RSD and PDA will impact on relationships, confidence, trust and the ability to be vulnerable and trusting, all essential for effective coaching relationships.
Understanding the importance of these concepts will support coaching, as without effective knowledge, coaching tools which would normally work with neurotypical clients won’t have the desired effect, creating frustration, and eroding long term trust.
When working with PDA clients, it is important that we create an environment that is low arousal, meaning that the sensory overload is minimal, the space feels safe, supportive and calm. These are principles for ordinary coaching spaces as well, however we need to take extra care when working with PDA clients, to reduce their stress response and maximise their processing capacity.
Coaching spaces should always be without judgement and this is increasingly important when working with neurodiverse individuals. Between sessions, you might not see the progress you are expecting the client to have, which in return creates feelings of frustration in you as a coach. This is a great observation point you might want to bring up during supervision. Dissociate the person from the symptoms of their neurodiversity as this will help you remain compassionate about their ways of thinking. You are not shaming them for not doing something, you are compassionate in your understanding of the why because, at the end of the day, the client is responsible for their outcomes. You are the vehicle to help them achieve these outcomes, not the responsible officer to police it. Your focus is on strengths, not on judgement and fixing because there is nothing to fix; empower them rather than pushing them into more masking behaviours.
From a transactional analysis point of view, you are not entering the parent-child mode and creating an artificial power imbalance where distractions are taken as sign of disrespect. Most of the time, these distractions are nothing to do with respect, just brain wiring.
This is when your emotions as a coach can come across strongly. If you feel that you are internally criticising your client for not making enough progress, the neurodiverse individual will pick up on this and feel shamed, rather than empowered. In scenarios when individuals struggle to complete tasks and goals between sessions, you might want to think about executive dysfunction.
A simple coaching example for this is going for a promotion. The goal might be to complete the application form between two coaching sessions with you. However, when the client is actually about to start the process of filling the application form out, they might encounter issues that distract them. Maybe it’s their space. The desk is too messy and before they can start the application form, they need to tidy the desk, then they can’t find their pen, they have 32 tabs open in their browser… and suddenly the environment is high arousal, anxiety kicks in, disabling executive functioning and the task won’t get done. If you couple this with time blindness as well, you have an excellent cocktail for procrastination! In the world of time blindness, the future of opportunities doesn’t feel real until the opportunity becomes part of the past. If there is an external driver of ‘getting this promotion’ added to their own internal motivation, this can trigger PDA, increasing the occurrence of intense emotional responses.
If you are experiencing strong feelings of frustration due to lack of progress with a client, supervision can help you unpick your own perceptions and feelings. You can support your client more effectively because, unconsciously, they will pick up on your frustration, whether you show your feelings or not. In the session, if you are experiencing a client becoming anxious and losing focus, you might want to ‘role model’ deep breathing, which they can mirror. Slow things down. Another helpful strategy is to refocus their attention using movement. Ask them to stand up, shake their legs and arms to regain regulation. My personal favourite is to have a glass of really cold water nearby as this helps them internally reset.
Equally, when things are not working out in the coaching process, RSD can kick in. If a client picks up on your frustrations, their sense of rejection will surface, which is an uncontrollable process that blocks trust, stops listening and turns their focus to their own internal monologue of not being enough, cast aside, rejected. Individuals with high levels of RSD often come across as perfectionists, as a form of protection from ‘perceived failure’, which is in their eyes is just another form of rejection. Avoiding opportunities can also be a symptom of RSD: if they don’t try something, they can’t fail, so there is no risk of rejection. The client remains in their comfort zone, not maximising their potential.
Here is a simple example of RSD from an environment where trust is in the process of being built:
In a training scenario, one of the learners is experiencing RSD. Everybody was asked to contribute following an activity but the struggling learner hasn’t been asked to share:
“Everybody is being called on but me. They forgot about me, I am not important, I don’t need to say anything, my opinion doesn’t matter. It really feels painful that my opinion doesn’t matter.”
If the struggling learner was able to name the feelings they are experiencing and ask: “can this be just my RSD and nothing else?” they might be able to reach a more positive conclusion:
“I’ve started to feel that gut wrenching feeling of ‘my opinion doesn’t matter’. But then I realised that Sam’s name was called before mine. My name is Zack… the facilitator is calling the participants in an alphabetical order. It’s not because my opinion doesn’t matter, it is because I am the last in the class, my name starts with Z…”
The trainer in our example was using alphabetical order so nobody on the list was missed. The learner’s RSD was triggered because the trainer didn’t explain they’d call on everyone in that order.
To help clients through reflection, we must create an environment where they are happy to feel their vulnerabilities. Sometimes, especially with RSD and PDA, anger is the superficial emotion which is demonstrated via the client, because being angry is less painful than being rejected or being vulnerable.
Vulnerability = possibility for rejection = pain.
Neurodiverse individuals will work through the above equation, probably unconsciously following an event and their reflections might result in feelings of shame, especially if they have reacted to situations with anger. In the moment, their impulse control wasn’t present, however, now removed from the situation, shame can set in and self punishment, rather than acceptance of different ways of thinking and reacting.
When individuals feel accepted as their whole self, they can start to build the systems around trust. We need to make sure that we understand the fragility of trust, because trust is very much impacted by systems.
- Trust in the system,
- trust in the people of the systems and most importantly,
- trust in self as the closest system to the client.
Self-trust is only available when we allow self-reflection which is both accurate and not distorted by unhelpful lenses.
Coaches working with clients who are lacking trust, or perhaps wearing a shield, will need to break down the walls with consistency, approaching the relationship in a supportive and strength-based manner. We must develop the courage to trust again which can be difficult, especially as we know that neurodiverse individuals have more negative experiences and feedback throughout their lives than neurotypical people, further inhibiting effective trust development and more triggers for amygdala highjack.
Foto: Gareth Howden
