The RSD Files: A Psychologist’s Honest Account: Why Rejection Hurts More Than It Should

You are not too sensitive. You are not too emotional. You are not a lot.
You are, in all likelihood, undiagnosed.
Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria — RSD — is a feature of the ADHD nervous system that produces intense, overwhelming emotional responses to perceived rejection, criticism, or failure to meet the expectations of people who matter to you. It is not in the DSM-5. It has no formal diagnostic criteria. And it has been quietly running the nervous system of every woman who has ever been told she is too much.
Dr Melanie du Preez is a clinical psychologist with 26 years of practice, an ADHD specialist, and one of fewer than five Maudsley-certified BWRT practitioners in South Africa. She was diagnosed with ADHD at fifty — mid-career, mid-practice — after her own children's diagnoses prompted her to look more carefully at her own neurology. She knows this from both sides of the consulting room.
This book is part memoir, part neurological map, part honest account of what it actually looks like to manage RSD in a clinical practice, a long marriage, and a daily life — before and after having a name for it.
Written in a dry, honest voice that refuses toxic positivity, Why Rejection Hurts More Than It Should offers a name, a clear explanation of the neuroscience, and practical tools grounded in BWRT, Polyvagal theory, DBT, and ACT.
This is not a workbook. There are no fill-in prompts and no transformation promises. What there is: the specific relief of finally feeling seen by someone who has been exactly where you are.
For the late-diagnosed, the still-undiagnosed, and everyone who has ever lost a Tuesday to a two-sentence email.
You are not a drama queen. You are neurologically specific. That is a different thing entirely.