A Note from Debz - Why I created This Prompt π¦π RSD Patterns
Hey team π A few days ago, I asked Sage to do a full deep dive into my RSD patterns. Not a surface-level "here's what RSD is" explainer, but a proper, pull-no-punches analysis of MY patterns, MY triggers, MY spirals, and where they come from. I won't lie. It was a lot. It surfaced things I half-knew but had never seen laid out so clearly. Like how my people-pleasing isn't just "being nice." It's a survival strategy I built as a kid to prevent abandonment, and it's still running the show at 60. Like how a small trigger at work (my boss being stressed) can send me into a full emotional spiral in about 30 seconds flat, because my brain links it to every time I've ever been told I wasn't good enough. Like how I use helping others as a (very convincing) way to avoid my own hard stuff. It also showed me strengths I wasn't giving myself credit for. My humour. My ability to read a room. The fact that I managed my RSD before a terrifying meeting with my boss, used a protocol I'd never tried before, and walked out with clarity instead of tears. Sage called it "textbook emotional regulation." I called it "holy heck, did that actually work?" The part that hit me hardest was the attachment theory section. Seeing how my childhood, my family dynamics, and my relationship history have all wired my nervous system to expect love to be conditional and temporary... and then watching how that wiring plays out with my partner, my boss, even my cohort interactions. It was like someone turned the lights on in a room I'd been stumbling around in for decades. But here's the thing. It wasn't just insight. Sage gave me a practical Emotional Spiral Prevention Plan with specific scripts, body-based strategies, and a step-by-step protocol for when the RSD wave hits. I've already used it. It helped me survive a rough day. It helped me have a real conversation with my partner about how we BOTH have RSD but cope in opposite ways (like two magnets on the same pole, pushing apart when we most need to come together).