We get feedback every day from friends, colleagues or perhaps a tutor if you are studying. Yet if you are neurodivergent, feedback can have a greater impact on your sense of self, making you question your value as a person. The good news is that some simple strategies can help make feedback feel more manageable.

What is feedback?

Feedback is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as: 

While this might make you think about study or work, we get feedback in all aspects of our lives. Think about the friend that comments on your new haircut, or the praise we might get from completing a task. All of this is feedback. However feedback often feels more formal in your studies or at work.

Study

I work with many neurodivergent students and have carried out research with colleagues to better understand their experiences. While neurodivergent people are all slightly different, this quote really resonated with what students often tell me: 

There are two issues here; knowing that feedback can help you get better while not wanting to be told things are wrong, especially when you did your best work.

Work

At work, a lot of the feedback you get might be verbal but you probably also get lots of written feedback. This can take the form of emails, feedback surveys perhaps, or more extensive and formal processes like probation or annual reviews. 

The issues here are similar to the feedback students get. What is said may be valuable for your development, but you might find it quite hard to deal with because when you think you are doing well, comments that challenge this can be hard to deal with.

Why is receiving feedback different for neurodivergent people?

There are a number of reasons neurodivergent people might find it harder to deal with feedback. Generally, existing in a world set up for neurotypical people, neurodivergent people may be used to getting a lot of negative feedback. Especially when being neurodivergent means thinking and often acting differently. Over time, this expectation of doing things wrong can run deep. 

As a neurodivergent person, you may get very invested in things you do. This is known as hyperfocus. When something has been the focus of your intense attention and it receives negative feedback, this can feel like not a judgement on your work but a judgement on you. Neurotypical people can be equally invested in their work but they don’t usually experience the same intense emotions. 

Rejection Sensitivity disorder

While feeling different can make us sensitive to feedback, neurodivergent people, especially those with ADHD may experience rejection sensitivity disorder. This is a result of the dysregulation of emotions. Although the term has the word rejection in it, it is commonly triggered by: 

• Criticism
• Feedback but also just knowing that feedback is coming
• Perceived failure

So, it is important to understand that feedback that might feel manageable to a neurotypical person might be experienced very differently when you are neurodivergent. This means you might need more strategies to help you deal with feedback.

Strategies that can help

While one tempting strategy might be just to avoid feedback, sadly we can’t avoid it. So, if you are neurodivergent, it is important to develop productive strategies that help manage the process. Three possible things to try are:

Getting distance from the initial feedback

The easiest strategy is often the most effective. Try to give yourself some distance from the initial thoughts feedback creates before you engage with it fully. If you have a hard copy of something, literally putting it away in a draw overnight can help. Otherwise, file it on your computer until you are ready to process it. 

Treating feedback as data

Sometimes deconstructing feedback can help you sort out what is useful from what is not. Sometimes the thing that is hardest to deal with is not the contents of the feedback but the way it is framed. Try using a highlighter to pull out what is useful for you to move forward. 

Using others to help you unpack it

Sometimes we can’t deal with feedback alone though. Find a colleague or close friend to help you look more objectively at the feedback. Perhaps they can help reframe it in a different way that is less emotive or more actionable. 

So next time that feedback feels too hard to deal with and makes you question everything about yourself, know you are not alone and give these tips a go.