I'm not going to link to the post but I saw a post about how making fun of the interests/hyperfixations of someone with ADHD is ruinous and will close them off from you forever, and like. not to be old about it but this is something we have to work on handling ourselves. RSD sucks, but it's too easy to trigger for us to just expect those around us to never trigger it.
"never criticize me and never express a negative opinion about anything I enjoy" is not a realistic expectation to have of anyone, and it's not a reasonable thing to ask of the people close to you. They need to be able to tell you when you're doing something they don't like.
like, for example, both my partners love Saw. I tried to watch Saw with them because they like it and I want to participate in things that they like, but Saw makes me very sad and uncomfortable. The partner who likes Saw the most actually told me to leave the room because they could tell it was upsetting me, and this was the right thing for them to do! It would not have been good for me to pretend to enjoy something that was distressing me in order to spare their feelings, and it would have been cruel of them to demand that of me. I tried it because I love them, but I didn't like it, and that's fine.
on the other side of the coin, I spent a lot of my childhood wanting to make music that my dad would like, because I loved and looked up to my dad and he had a lot of opinions about music. I felt embarrassed about liking music that he thought was bad, I felt ashamed of not being able to identify chords by ear the way he could, and when I made music I was sometimes paralyzed by the question of whether he would think it was good, even if I never expected to show it to him. It was great for me when I learned to disagree with him about music. Now I can hear him say "Ugh, this chord structure is so boring, it isn't going anywhere" and respond with "Well, I don't think so," or "Maybe so, but I like it," or just not respond at all and continue enjoying the song for what I appreciate about it.
You don't need other people's approval to live your life or to enjoy things. Rejection-sensitive dysphoria makes it feel that way, but you can choose how you manage that feeling and how you react to it. You may feel reflexive shame when someone disapproves of you, but you don't have to agree that that shame is warranted. It's really, really hard--I'm still working on it!--but it makes life more bearable and less anxiety-ridden, it makes it easier to just genuinely enjoy what you enjoy without worry, and it frees you from being beholden to other people's approval.
