Alex Partridge > Quotes

“The most frustrating thing about living with ADHD is when someone witnesses a shutdown and calls me lazy. I get it, it might look like laziness when I’m lying on the sofa, doom-scrolling social media, but the truth is, I’m in a state of decision paralysis and overwhelm.”
― Alex Partridge, Now It All Makes Sense: How An ADHD Diagnosis Brought Clarity to My Life

“The frustration is compounded because people think ADHD means we should all be physically hyperactive (and sometimes we can be – remember that time when we did a week’s worth of stuff in an afternoon?), but most of the time it’s internalized, it’s in my mind, and it causes me huge overwhelm, so please don’t call me lazy. It isn’t a choice.”
― Alex Partridge, Now It All Makes Sense: How An ADHD Diagnosis Brought Clarity to My Life

“What can you learn from this experience?’ or ‘What went wrong and how can you improve?”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“In the evening, sit on the end of your bed and close your eyes. Think deeply about the day that’s just passed. Ask yourself the following questions: What happened today that brought me joy? What happened today that made me anxious? What tasks did I enjoy? What tasks frustrated me? Write down your answers.”
― Alex Partridge, Now It All Makes Sense: How An ADHD Diagnosis Brought Clarity to My Life

“I hope this book has helped you on your journey of self-awareness and enabled you to recognize that you are not broken, not too sensitive, not too much, not too energetic, not too anything. You are different, you live with RSD, and you have always been enough.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“You feel the world very intensely, you’re able to love more passionately and give more of yourself to others, but it also leaves you exposed to really feeling every single bump in the road.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“Our natural empathy and drive to make others happy create a powerful source of motivation because we associate the outcome of a task with how someone else is going to feel.”
― Alex Partridge, Now It All Makes Sense: How An ADHD Diagnosis Brought Clarity to My Life

“I sometimes fantasize about having a time machine in which I could travel back in time, put my arms around the younger version of me, and reassure him that he’s not broken, simply different, and that he has always been enough.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“Try to catch your negative self-talk and imagine how you would speak to a child under similar circumstances.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“We feel this urgency to act straight away because we’re subconsciously worried about forgetting the thought. You can bypass this urgency by writing the thought down. I always have a blank piece of paper nearby. If I’m working and a random thought enters my mind, I pick up my pen immediately and write it down. I park it for later. This enables me to stay focused on what I’m doing.”
― Alex Partridge, Now It All Makes Sense: How An ADHD Diagnosis Brought Clarity to My Life

“Success didn’t happen when I completed a task but when I tried a task that I’d never tried before.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“If we’re going to be roped into being an unpaid therapist, we’re damn sure we’re going to be the best unpaid therapist the world has ever known!”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“This heartbreaking exposure to critical feedback makes us feel like we don’t belong, as though we are not accepted as we are, and ultimately that we are broken.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“The RSD compulsion to overwork often overrides the human need for breaks.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“we can also forget what we say in these chats. Our brain has a habit of deprioritizing self-care because it believes we don’t deserve to improve ourselves.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“It makes it hard for us to make the initial move because the thought of being rejected is too painful. We wait patiently for someone else to make the first move and when they do, we latch onto them because they have just given us something that we deeply lack: approval. This makes us vulnerable to abuse because the idea of approval is so appetizing, it overrules our inner BS radar that knows they might only be after one thing.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“rather than needing to be the best at everything I tried, I needed to try as many new things as possible. I needed to conduct as many experiments as I could to collect the evidence that told me who I truly am and what I truly care about.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“I never slept the night before a presentation. Every time, I stood up on stage and rushed through the presentation as quickly as possible.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“I was scared to ask for help, but, on the other, it made me feel that I didn’t know enough to complete the work to a standard that silenced my perfectionism.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“protect yourself from reacting on impulse.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“they will always adopt an agreeable position, even with complete strangers, and even when the consequences of this position put them at risk.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“It also creates lots of mini-deadlines, and there’s nothing my brain loves more than a deadline.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“People with RSD would prefer to leave a job out of principle and be temporarily unable to pay rent than they would to stay in a job where they feel judged by their manager and inadequate in their role.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“ADHD is often thought of as having a deficit of attention, but I believe it is more a deficit of self-awareness. We typically have an abundance of attention towards things when we are actually interested in them.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“giving clear written instructions”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“The emotional response is seldom proportionate to the comment or event that triggers the reaction.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“Before my ADHD diagnosis, I had no idea how much I was burying my inner child under layers of masks. Once diagnosed, I finally realized how much effort I was putting into concealing my inner child, my core, a place full of shame.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“I wasn’t defective or broken, I was different, and I had only just realized. I was always enough, and it was in this moment of realization that I saw the power in community, in finding your people”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“If someone cancels dinner plans at the last minute, RSD will make you reply with ‘No worries!’, even though ‘Sure, that’s a shame – I do need to tell you that I have just spent money on a taxi getting to the restaurant, so cancelling last minute is disrespectful of my time’ is what someone without RSD might say.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

“RSD has a need for external validation and approval that is much stronger than any internal warning system that’s trying to alert them that they’re in danger.”
― Alex Partridge, Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria