The social life of Paris Hilton has been well managed, but, privately, the actress claims that her inner world was sometimes disorganized and excruciatingly noisy. Hilton has in recent discussions declared in an unusually blunt way that she was diagnosed with ADHD in her late twenties and has subsequently come to realize that she too is a sufferer of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. To her, these revelations did not come in the form of labels but in the form of explanation of many years of emotional turmoil that she had trained to conceal in full view. She says ADHD predetermined not only the way she worked and concentrated, but the extent to which she felt rejected, criticized and stressed before she could even articulate what was going on.
Hilton has said that she did not start to truly make the connections until doctors diagnosed her with ADHD and she was introduced to the idea of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, commonly known as RSD. Up to that moment, a great deal of her responses were disorientating to her. Some of the moments would strike with such force, and the stress levels might be deafening, as though they would fill every compartment of her mind. She has indicated that, although the audience perceived power and dominance, at times, she shouldered the burden of that feeling and concealed the vulnerability, given that she did not yet know what was going on inside.
In an appearance on the podcast The Him and Her Show on Dear Media, Hilton gave an extraordinarily personal account of how exhausting and intrusive RSD can be. It is just this, almost it is like a demon in your mind that is saying negative self-talk to you, she said. Many listeners could relate to the description as it described something that is hard to articulate: how experienced rejection can be a powerful emotional trigger that is often larger than the incident itself.
In the case of Hilton, the daily interactions might turn into a nightmare any time out of the blue. She said that RSD is common among patients with ADHD, and that even the slightest stimuli can trigger discomfort. It is simply, she said, like, any thought of a negative perceptions, whether you believe somebody is being rude or you feel something. It will be like it is physical pain, and it is not even real. The pain, she explained, is true to the one who is undergoing it even when the causing factor is thought or a misperception.
She thinks that one of the factors that contributed to her late diagnosis was the time she was brought up in. In girls, and, in particular, in ADHD, it was a topic that was seldom raised during the childhood and adolescence of Hilton. The symptoms that did not coincide with the stereotypical hyperactive boy in a classroom were quite frequently ignored. Rather than getting empathy or compassion, she was subjected to thinking that something must have been amiss with her and silently this was destroying her self-esteem in her school life. She has proposed that that ignorance caused permanent emotional scars.
These weaknesses were further difficult to control as she gained popular spots all over the globe in the early 2000s. Fame came quickly, merciless and unforgiving and Hilton has cogitated on the ways that the perpetual media attention gave excessively large prominence to emotions that she was yet to label. I have experienced so much in my life and everything I was experiencing with the media that I recalled how emotional reactions were exaggerated by criticism and prejudice by the community. Commentary, public opinions, and headlines became triggers and contributed to the sensitivity she was yet to understand as a sign of ADHD and RSD.
The struggle, however, is not the highlight of the story of Hilton, but the shift that ensued. Instead of retreating to her diagnosed condition and quitting her public life, she leant in, with curiousness. She has mentioned how she became so engaged in the workings of her own mind, how she heard about ADHD, the management of emotions, and neurodiversity and how she did so with such attention that she now acknowledges it as one of her strengths. Such a learning process allowed her to reconsider her experiences that she previously interpreted as personal failures in terms of patterns that she can comprehend and control.
Reclaiming agency is another thing that Hilton has addressed through telling her story. It has a special importance to a person who has been the subject of speaking to the tabloids about mental health. She has stated that she would like to shift the perceptions of the people in regards to ADHD and other related conditions, particularly to young women who might continue to be neglected or not understood. I would like people to realize that it does not have to be a thing that keeps them down in life but can actually be used as the superpower to go out there and pursue their dreams in life, she said.
That concept of a superpower is not presented as a manifestation of an impossibility. Hilton has made it clear that ADHD and RSD are debilitating and painful especially when not managed. She however attributes the same qualities to driving her creativity, ambition and multi-tasking skills. To her, her neurodivergence has enabled her to make use of her brain rather than struggling with it all the time and this change has given her not only a sense of well-being but also professional success.
Her frankness comes when the subject of adult ADHD, particularly among women is finally getting the attention it deserves. Several adults are diagnosed later in life after decades of not understanding the symptoms due to the misconstructions of the same as personality weakness or lack of emotions. This experience is not unique to Hilton, as a wider truth is that being aware can be transformative, albeit with its own g.
