Front Matter
RSD and ADHD.
Thriving with a Luminous Mind.
A cited guide to rejection sensitivity, attention, and the practice of coming back to yourself.
Second edition. By Ammanuel Santa Anna. Luminous Prosperity.
A note before we begin. This book is educational and does not replace individual assessment or treatment. Nothing here is a diagnosis. If you are in crisis, contact local emergency services or a crisis line.
The written edition of this book carries a full reference list, chapter by chapter, and a companion workbook of reflection questions and worksheets. This recording is the book itself, read straight through, one chapter to a track. Where the page shows a citation, the reading simply carries on.
How to Use This Book.
One book, one workbook.
This book is written for you if you are living with rejection sensitivity, whether or not ADHD is part of your picture. Each chapter opens inside a gold border — a mark this series uses consistently — with a short reflection and a haiku before the chapter itself, then names a mechanism and tells you what the research supports, and how strongly, using the grading scale described in a moment.
A box marked Bringing This to Your Clinician closes most chapters — a specific, sayable sentence or two, if you see a therapist, psychiatrist, or other professional, for what is worth raising in that room. You never have to use it. It exists so that a conversation which is often rushed has something concrete to start from.
The reflection questions and worksheets that go with each chapter live in the companion RSD and ADHD Workbook, so this book stays clean to read, lend, or revisit, and the workbook stays the one place you write. Twelve questions per chapter — four self-inquiry, four appreciative inquiry, four journal prompts — plus ten one-page worksheets. Bring the workbook, not this book, to your next appointment.
Appendix B, Practices at a Glance, gathers every technique taught in this book into one place, so you can skip straight to a reminder of how STOPP or the Rejection Reframe works without hunting back through a chapter.
A Note on Evidence and Citation.
What is known, what is claimed, and how to tell.
The first edition of this book asserted a great deal without saying where any of it came from. This edition cites its sources in APA style, and — more importantly — grades them. Where the evidence is strong, you will see it said plainly. Where a widely repeated idea rests on clinical description rather than controlled research, that is said just as plainly, because you deserve to know which floor you are standing on.
Every chapter closes with a short Evidence at a glance summary using this scale.
Well supported — replicated randomised trials, meta-analyses, or consensus statements.
Moderately supported — consistent findings from smaller trials or observational studies.
Emerging — pilot studies, qualitative work, case series, single findings.
Clinical model — useful in practice, not yet tested, or actively contested. Held loosely.
Two honesties belong here at the front. First: rejection sensitive dysphoria is not a diagnosis. It appears in no edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, including DSM-5-TR. It is a clinical description, introduced in the ADHD community and popularised through lay publications, whose first detailed appearance in the scientific literature was a four-person case series. Second: the experience it names is well attested. Emotion dysregulation in adults with ADHD is robustly documented in meta-analysis and systematic review, and rejection sensitivity itself is a measurable disposition with three decades of research behind it. Both things are true: the label is provisional, and your experience is real.
Citations were checked against publisher records or indexed databases. Where a source is a preprint, a case series, a book, or a clinical commentary rather than peer-reviewed empirical research, the reference list says so.