Does anyone feel like praise doesn’t land, but criticism hits like a truck?

Yes, this pattern is extremely common in ADHD, and clinicians hear it often. Praise sliding off while criticism hits hard is not a personality flaw. ADHD affects emotional regulation and threat sensitivity. Negative feedback activates the brain’s alarm system quickly and intensely, while positive feedback does not register with the same weight. Many people with ADHD also have a long history of being corrected more than praised. Over time, the brain learns to treat criticism as important information for survival, while praise feels unfamiliar or unreliable. This is often linked to rejection sensitive dysphoria. Even mild feedback can feel like rejection in the moment, triggering shame, rumination, and emotional pain that lingers long after the situation has passed. Praise, on the other hand, may feel undeserved, exaggerated, or unsafe to trust, especially if past praise was inconsistent or followed by later criticism. Clinically, this is not about being ungrateful. It is about conditioning. The nervous system is tuned to scan for threat, not validation. What helps is not forcing yourself to believe praise, but letting it exist without arguing with it. Writing it down, rereading it later, or noticing when criticism is treated as a verdict rather than information can slowly rebalance things. The goal is not thicker skin. It is teaching the brain that safety does not depend on constant self correction.