Until I was well into my 40s I’d not heard of Occam’s Razor, it was seeing it as a song title on an album by Steven Wilson’s Porcupine Tree that made me curious enough to Google what it was.
So in a simplified explanation for anyone not familiar it is a way of making the assumption that the most likely or simple explanation is probably the right one. It’s not a law but around probability. For example, I got out of the house and find a teddy on the floor belonging to one of the kids – Occam’s Razor would lead me to conclude that it probably fell onto the floor when dropped by a child on the way back into the house from the car rather than that when we weren’t looking one of the kids took the teddy outside unlocking the front door themselves and running back in.
So what the relevance to Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria or RSD?
Since getting my ADHD assessment report and verdict that I display moderate to severe combined presentation ADHD I have worked with it to understand it. My RSD has almost ruined friendships before and can be devastating. I create stories in my head when there is a void of information confounding my negative narrative creation. Applying Occam’s Razor is a useful technique and whether right or wrong it can really reduce the impact of RSD.
So a real example, I messaged my mate the other week about meeting up again. I’ve always been the one to do the running to arrange meetups and I heard nothing back. Previously, I would have spiraled and assumed that he had decided that it was about time he stopped meeting up with me, after all he never initiated it. I decided that thinking of Occam’s Razor he’d probably forgotten or was really busy when he received it and didn’t have headspace to come up with a useful response.
He did reply about a week later which is late for him and explained what had been going on that had taken so much of his attention and we’ve arranged to meet up. He’d admitted before that he can be quite passive in arranging things and with me being the way I am, I am often finding ways to stay busy. Problem with that is that others assume that I’ll be in touch if I want to do anything with them. That feeds RSD – if it’s always me arranging perhaps they don’t really want to join me?! Of course anyone would eventually say if that was the case so it’s just RSD again.
It may be that sometimes the thing you assume is true and it’ll hurt but I’ll wager that for the majority of people with ADHD when they RSD hits because of a perceived slight the reality is much more benign and less harmful than the story you told yourself – remember Occam’s Razor!
#adhd #rsd
Leave a Reply