Hey there. I am incredibly sad, downright depressed and mentally exhausted.

I wanted to celebrate my birthday yesterday for the first time (maybe ever?) with lots of nice people. I invited about 30-50 people. Some, I invited personally, some just casually through groups. Lots of those people I thought of as somehow close and friendly.

I exhausted myself in the effort of preparing the party, I rented a room, I prepared photos, activities, food, music, and just put a lot of mental energy into the planning. I have been planning it for about 2 months, invited those who were most important to me back then even.

5 people showed up.

I am devastated. I was always so anxious about my birthday and never celebrated it. I think I removed myself from groups a lot in my life. And only the last two years, I’ve started to understand my diagnosis and how to communicate with people. This throws all my anxiety and pain back into my body and brain.

I don’t know how to deal with it. Especially I don’t know how to interact with the people that were important to me and who didn’t show (or those who didn’t even cancel). My past behaviour was burning down all the bridges. I don’t think I should do that. But I also don’t know how to pretend like it doesn’t hurt…

Any advice about rejection anxiety and … well, real rejection?

Thank you.

  • BougieBirdieEnglish
    3•2 months ago

    Happy belated birthday!

    My wife also has really bad rejection anxiety, and she’s sensitive about her birthday. She’s had some bad birthdays in the past, and when she tries to turn them around they never live up to expectations.

    Part of the nature of the disorder is that you’re going to focus on the people who didn’t show up. If I might suggest, it would be good to reflect on the people who did show up. They have your back and love you enough to celebrate your birthday with you.

    I’ve done some rounds in therapy, and what I’ve found really works for me is to give people the benefit of the doubt and try my best to assume no malice was intended.

    Your birthday is clearly important to you, so right now it really hurts. It might even feel like betrayal. If we feel very poorly about ourselves then we start to view other people poorly.

    When going through therapy I had to learn a list of Cognitive Biases. These are ways in which our brain lies to us, so if any of them sound familiar you can work on deconstructing them.

    I’m going to try to speculate some reasons why people might not have shown up. If it makes you feel anxious, please bear in mind that I’m only trying to help.

    For what it’s worth, I’m not really a birthday person. My own birthday isn’t important to me, so sometimes I forget that they’re important to other people. It greatly helps if someone says “Hey, this is important to me.”

    You mention inviting 30-50 people. That’s a lot of people. Personally, I wouldn’t be comfortable in a crowd that size, it would make me anxious. I’d also be tempted to think that if that many other people were coming then you wouldn’t miss my absence.

    You also mention inviting people up to two months before the event. Did you make sure to remind people closer to the date?

    If it was me, I’d probably let people know a month and a week away from the date. Too far in the future and people think they don’t have to put it in their calendar right away. Too close to the date and it might be too late to change other plans. Reminders throughout to cement that this is happening.

    Another thing to bear in mind is that if you have ADHD, it stands to reason that friends and family you resonate with are also neurospicy. I’m sure you can probably relate to forgetting an important date or appointment.

    I hope your next birthday is everything you hope it’ll be.

    • @MightyOPEnglish
      2•2 months ago

      Thanks for the kind words. I appreciate them.

      I think I handled the invites okay. I did remind people. I did so several “waves” of invites depending on the closeness of the people.

      My birthday isn’t important to me. That’s why I never celebrated. I wanted to celebrate my 40th because I feared that being by myself would be too painful with the big number. But this ended up being much worse.

      I don’t think that I don’t understand why people haven’t come. Most have told me reasons and I can relate to lots of them. I still don’t know how to handle it. How to tell people that it was important to me without antagonising them. I know I can’t pretend like it’s no big deal and I’m really scared of all the questions of “how was your party?” I can’t lie. But if I tell people it was the worst day in a long time, I don’t think that comes across in any helpful way …