The Island

 TL;DR - I'm doing an art project for therapy reasons.

This is a little difficult to explain, so bear with me. I deal with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD). Basically, as a side-effect of ADHD, I feel excessively emotional when I feel rejected or criticized, or if I feel like I've failed. (That's a general definition, btw, not quite what happens to me. But close enough.) My last therapy session addressed that. 

I've been dealing with a fair amount of RSD thanks to the cesspool that is the dating scene. There are a couple of people I'm seeing that are causing the RSD to kick into high gear. One I could push past, because I know what's going on in his life, and it's a bit chaotic. I can quiet the brain gremlins pretty effectively, and it ends up as just a twinge. But the other one? The other one was getting to me big time. We had gone out once, and it was a really good date. We had both expressed a desire to see one another again, but any time I mentioned it, he would either fail to reply or change the subject. When I finally cornered him about it, he said he wasn't available in the near or less-near future. This, of course, triggered the fuck out of the RSD. So my therapist asked me where on the Island of Kitty this person was. 

The what now? 

I was told to envision an island. I'm at the center of it, and anybody who makes it to the center of the island is someone I feel like I can't live without. Moving outward from the center are varying levels of emotional intimacy, and each level has some set of criteria to enter. To pass the deep ocean and get into the shallows, for example, is the baseline for me being willing to talk to you. There are no red hats allowed in the shallows. Unless they're the old lady red hats that were a thing in the 90s and early aughts. To get from the shallows to the dock, which is where I go beyond the casual getting-to-know-you stage, there's another, stricter set of criteria. Then there's the shore, where I'm willing to meet someone in person. Then the transitional area from beach to jungle is where I decide if I want to continue contact. (The friendzone lagoon lives in that circle.) And so on and so forth. She asked, realistically, where this guy is. And I thought about it. He got to the beach, but given his behavior, hadn't made it past there. And looking at that, did I really have the emotional investment to be feeling as badly as I did? Well, no, not really. 

Did this fix the RSD? No, not entirely. But it definitely helped. It's much easier to deal with the bad stuff if you have a way of quantifying it. 

So I'm painting my Island. From The Deep to the Mountaintop (the center). And then I'm going to attach it to a magnet board, get a bunch of pushpin magnets, and label them with the names of the people I'm most likely to feel RSD about. Then I can move them to their respective places on the island. Here's hoping I can get it to look the way I want it to!