Tips from an ADHD Coach: People-pleasing everyone but ourselves

Many people with ADHD, especially women, consider themselves people pleasers. It can become a habit to start putting others first without thinking, even when it goes against what we really want. This can lead to some resentment down the line. 

This week on Tips from an ADHD Coach, Jaye talks about how pleasing others all the time can turn from selfless into self-serving. Listen for tips on what to do if we’ve spent our whole lives trying to please others at a cost to ourselves. 

We love hearing from our listeners! Email us at adhdcoachtips@understood.org. 

Related resources

• ADHD and rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD)

• Setting boundaries in relationships with ADHD

• Core values exercise

Timestamps

(00:39) Laura’s quote

(03:08) ADHD and people-pleasing

(07:49) When people-pleasing changes from selfless to self-serving

(10:37) What can we do?

(13:25) Recap

Episode transcript

Jaye: Do you consider yourself a people pleaser? Do you put in a lot of effort to make people like you, even if what they want goes against the things that you want? Does this create resentment for you when everything is said and done?

This is "Tips from an ADHD Coach," and I'm your coach, Jaye Lin. Today, we're talking about when we focus on pleasing everyone but ourselves and the consequences that can come from that. We're gonna hear from Laura, who shared with us how her people-pleasing can lead to negative consequences in her life.

(00:39) Laura's quote

Laura: I would call myself the typical people pleaser. I'm someone who goes out of their way to make people feel comfortable and cared for. And I'm always anticipating the needs of others, their wants, their perceptions, so I can mold myself to fit them. I often use humor and self-deprecating humor to connect with others and put them at ease. I tend to put my comfort before others.

So, I learned at an early age that if you're nice to people, they'll overlook your mistakes, often they will, and as an undiagnosed ADHD girl, I made a lot of mistakes. And so, I needed a lot people to be on my side, to help me and support me. To put myself first, or even consider what I want when someone else is involved, it often seems impossible. I have to remind myself that what I want is important, and what I have to say is valuable.

But I do think there's been some benefits. People are always going to like me, and that's, like I said, gonna play into my benefit when ADHD makes me forget or show up late or not do something. But I've put in a lot of work to please others that I often forget to please myself. That happened specifically when I was asked to switch fields at my job. I was working for a nonprofit as a sign language interpreter and then was asked to become a fundraiser. And this role was completely outside my expertise and not really what I had planned to do with my life.

But I made the decision to switch careers because I wanted to please my boss and I wanted to serve, and I felt like if I didn't take the new role, I'd be letting a whole community of people down. And while I did learn some useful skills, I really wish that I had assessed my desires in that situation rather than just automatically going with what someone else wanted me to do. I was on the rise in my current role. I was hitting milestones, making plans, and because I made that switch, I'm kind of at the bottom again when it comes to being a sign language interpreter.

I actually lost my certification because when switching careers, I neglected the important work needed to keep my certification up. So, I've since left the work of fundraising, and I'm currently trying to retest to regain my certification as an interpreter. I don't think I ever asked myself what I want or what I need, and had I done that, I would have made a lot more choices for myself than making choices for others.

(03:08) ADHD and people-pleasing

Jaye: A lot of ADHD people I know consider themselves people pleasers, especially women. For some of us, we've been doing it for so long that it has become automatic for us to try to please others. People pleasing is something we can identify with even if we also see ourselves as self-centered or self-serving. Isn't that interesting? But it makes sense why so many of us are people pleasers. Pleasing another person is an opportunity. And strategizing how we can please others can give us a bump of dopamine.

Since having ADHD means we have lower levels of dopamine, the dopamine we get from coming up with ways to please others feels really good. So, we can sometimes go deeper and harder into finding ways to please them. Also, many of us will admit that we're people pleasers as a form of protection, as Laura mentions. She molds herself to other people's wants and needs, but she does this so others will overlook her shortcomings. Because of her ADHD, she makes a lot of mistakes, and people-pleasing may have started out as a way for others to still like and support her, even with those mistakes.

With ADHD, mistakes and missteps can sometimes be harder to avoid than they would be for those who don't have ADHD. It can be easier for us to lose track of time, to put off doing something important until it's too late, to overlook a mistake we've made, to show up late, et cetera. And with emotional dysregulation, we can be extra sensitive to rejection and try to avoid it at all costs. So, if someone sees us as an overwhelmingly amazing friend, partner, or family member, they will overlook when we're late, when we interrupt them, when we don't follow through on something, et cetera, right?

Sure, I guess, but what overall effect does that people-pleasing have on us, on relationships we have with others? Well, like Laura said, it can be hard for her to consider what she wants when someone else is involved. Being in a people-pleasing mindset can often get us to put so much more value in what other people want that we can default to thinking that our own needs and wants don't matter.

I used to do a good amount of traveling with friends and romantic partners. For those trips, I would always serve as the planner, custom-tailoring an itinerary for my travel companion's personal interests. If my friend liked books and was a mixology nerd, I would have a stop at a whiskey bar that occupied an old library. When I started traveling alone, I found myself completely incapable of figuring out what to do because I didn't have someone to customize these trips for.

I never stopped to think about what I enjoy doing on vacation, because I seem to get all my enjoyment from the joy others get from my efforts. But was that true? I guess. Sometimes. Sometimes the people I'm putting in a lot of effort for would be touched with how thoughtful I was with my planning, my gifts, my acts of kindness. And sometimes they would just think it was OK.

So, after I spent hours and hours researching the best spots for a friend and they shrugged it off and said it was OK, or when I found a cafe that serves ancient grains and foraged food for my friend who's obsessed with healthy eating and she said she wasn't impressed with the menu, how did I feel after that? Not great. Like all the effort I was putting in to make them happy was taken for granted. Like my efforts weren't being appreciated. And that's because I put in all this effort toward pleasing them.

But since I'm not them, I don't actually know what they will be genuinely pleased by. Maybe that style of food isn't what my healthy eating friend likes eating after all. Or maybe she normally eats that way, but doesn't want to when she's on vacation. They weren't trying to make me feel unappreciated, but they never asked me to take these special considerations for them. They might not have even wanted me to. They might have assumed that I insisted on going to these locations because I personally wanted to go there.

If they knew that I was doing all of this for them, they might've felt uncomfortable that all of my attention had been on their needs, and that's a lot of pressure for them to like it. Many of these friends have grown to know how much I needed them to be pleased, though. I started noticing a lot of them faking their excitement when I did something like that, which also didn't feel great.

(07:49) When people-pleasing changes from selfless to self-serving

When we do a lot to please others, it can often veer from being selfless into self-serving. If the goal is to make someone else's life better, what happens when we go overboard with efforts to please them? There often is a pressure for them to act pleased, but feeling like they have to respond a certain way and express a certain emotion tends not to be fun. And when they're not pleased? We can feel a lot of resentment about it. I put in all this work, overlooked my own needs, and no one appreciates it.

These people-pleasing tendencies may have started out as a way to strengthen our bonds with other people, but they can often weaken them because everyone is less likely to get their needs met. And we're relying on others to give us the dopamine we need rather than finding a way we can get it for ourselves without relying on pleasing others.

A great example of this is a helicopter mom. She really dedicates her life to making sure her kids will be successful. She does research on the best colleges for them, puts them in all the high-achieving extracurriculars, picks out their clothes, and drives her kids to their job interviews to make sure they're there on time. To these moms, they're giving so much of themselves to their children. And yet, I find that these kids don't actually want their moms to do everything for them.

They wanna be able to make their own decisions, make their mistakes, do their own research, and at the same time, because they know that their mom's whole life revolves around them, they're uncomfortable asking for that independence because of how their mom would feel. In these scenarios, nobody is actually getting what they want, and there's a lot of resentment that builds and builds. And then there is a breaking point. We stop doing the thing we're only doing to please others, which can have its own consequences.

Laura became a fundraiser to please her supervisor, but she didn't actually want to be a fundraiser. Now she's trying to go back to her original career as a sign language interpreter, but she's behind where she was before and needs to get recertified. And that fundraiser position that needed to be filled before, it's vacant again. Back when she took the position to please others, there was an opportunity for someone to be placed in that role who actually wanted to be a fundraiser.

And they could have been more established in that role had Laura not felt the pressure to take it on. Oftentimes, trying to please others can create more negative consequences down the road for everyone than if we were more true to our own needs instead.

(10:37) What can we do?

So, what can we do if we spent our whole lives trying to please others at a cost to ourselves? The first thing we can do is to get a better understanding of our own wants and needs. What values and beliefs are important to us? What would make our lives feel more fulfilled? Where do we want our lives to be with regards to our careers, the things that bring us joy, our relationships with others?

We can figure out the answers to those questions and use them as a north star to how we make our decisions. I have a values exercise that helps with this, and you can find it in the show notes.

The second thing we can do is to see our wants and needs as good things to take care of. It can often feel like the right thing to do is care about others more than we do about ourselves, but I've learned that I am the best friend, family member, and loved one when my own needs are met. Everyone's lives are better off when I give from a place of generosity and care than they are when I'm giving from a place of desperation and fear.

And honestly, I started realizing that the joy I feel when others feel joy goes the other way, too. The people I love, love me too. And they also feel good when I feel good. They will also feel pleased when I plan a stop for us at afternoon tea because that's a vacation activity that pleases me.

The third thing we can do is to be more honest about what we need back from our efforts to please others, and scale back our efforts to make sure our expectations from others are reasonable. If I spend hours and hours finding a place I think my friend would like on a trip and it means they would have to be overjoyed with the find, that's a lot of pressure.

But if I just spent one hour looking up different spots they might like and presented the findings to them for them to decide on what they like, maybe they could just find it OK, since I didn't spend so much time on it.

For those helicopter moms, if doing everything for their kids means their kids need to be successful and thank them in all of their acceptance speeches for everything they've done, what amount of effort would make it so there wasn't a result that had to happen in order for it to be worth it? We can try to do that. If other people are used to us being people pleasers for them, it's a good idea to communicate our intentions when we start going for the things that we want and need, and scale back on what we're doing for them so they don't get whiplash from our actions.

It might be a clunky transition for everyone while we settle into a new normal, and we'll probably have to do some more explaining and communicating, but when the dust settles, we can have stronger bonds with them and have more fulfilling lives for ourselves.

(13:25) Recap

It's common for people with ADHD, and especially ADHD women, to be people pleasers because coming up with ways to please others can give us boosts of dopamine, and because we want to prevent rejection and negative reactions from our peers. But constantly trying to please others can lead us to overlook and sometimes not even recognize our own needs and wants.

Putting in a lot of effort to please others can also place a lot of pressure on them to do things or react a certain way, and when they don't, we can feel resentment and feel underappreciated. The resentment and negative feelings can build until we stop doing the things we did to please others, which can have its own consequences. But if we're more acquainted with our own wants and needs and see pursuing what's important to us as a selfless, not selfish act, we can take pressure off of how others need to respond.

We can also allow others to be pleased at seeing us pleased, since many of the people we love want to see us happy, too. If we are doing a lot to please others, we can ask ourselves what we need to receive in order for it to be worth it, then scale back on our efforts so that there's less pressure, and we can communicate our intentions with all of this to the people involved so they can be supportive and not be confused by the change in our actions.

The transition might be clunky, but at the end of it, we can have more fulfilling lives and stronger bonds with the people around us.

You've been listening to "Tips from an ADHD Coach" on the Understood Podcast Network. If you have a challenge you're facing, we'd love to hear about it. Send us an email or a voice memo at adhdcoachtip@understood.org. You can also check out the show notes to find links to anything mentioned in the show and more resources.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.

"Tips from an ADHD Coach" is produced and edited by Jessamine Molli and Margie DeSantis. Video is produced by Calvin Knie. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright, who also mixes the show. Samiah Adams is our supervising producer, Briana Berry is our production director, and Neil Drumming is our editorial director. For Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick. And I'm your host, Jaye Lin. Thanks for listening.