← Overcoming Distractions-Thriving with ADHD, ADD
Overcoming Distractions-Thriving with ADHD, ADD
People-Pleasing & Adult ADHD — The Hidden Cost for High-Achieving Professionals
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I'm Dave Greenwood and this is Overcoming Distractions. If you are an adult with adhd, a busy professional, an entrepreneur, a high achiever, or just need some strategies to navigate your adult adhd, you're in the right place. Who am I? I'm an entrepreneur with ADHD and the author of two books, Overcoming Distract and Overcoming Burnout. I coach and mentor people just like you, and together we navigate the ups and downs of adult adhd, from getting out of our own way to helping people just like you thrive in the workplace. That's what I do. Want more info on working with me? Hit overcoming distractions.com ready? Let's get to today's podcast.
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All right, gang, what's going on? We are back in the Overcoming Distractions plush studios here in the dead of winter. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. You know, I want to talk today about something that maybe we don't think as busy professionals, high achievers with adhd, people demanding careers, something that maybe we don't associate with us. And it comes in the form of approval seeking behavior, excessive agreeableness. Right. Avoiding conflict over accommodating others, preserving any type of relationship at all cost, driven by external validation that interpersonal compliance. There's a word, right? Yeah. Hey, we're talking about people pleasing. And yes, even the most accomplished person with adhd, whether you're the CEO, the business owner, whoever you are, I think many of us still fall into this a little bit. I'll plead guilty here as well. And some of this conflict avoidance, and I guess let's just call it what it is, people pleasing I think has maybe gotten in the way of certain things in my professional career. But I think, you know, when you are that busy professional with adhd, it's not exactly coming out as it sounds. So it can come out subtly. Sometimes we don't even know it, but I feel it is somewhat of a barrier and it's something that causes a lot of stress in our personal and professional lives. A lot to do with our professional lives. Because I've been an executive, an entrepreneur with ADHD for decades, I decided I wanted to do a little bit of reflection on this critical topic over the years as well as kind of dig into it a little bit and understand this a little better. And I think a good percentage of us adults with ADHD who are in that demanding career running a business experience, people pleasing or, you know, in some shape or form. And I'm going to be honest with you, I think that if we do this over and over again, this kind of maybe Seeking approval, so to speak, or not wanting to have the difficult conversation, it's going to lead us to feel burned out. And I know it was a factor when I really kind of felt burned out. So let's kind of walk through this together because I think understanding this a little better and even some kind of hidden signs of people pleasing as that busy adult with adhd, I think, you know, when we kind of understand it a little better, maybe kind of rip the COVID off just a tiny bit, I think it's going to help us maybe make some kind of better decisions moving forward. And I think many professionals, executives, entrepreneurs, business owners with adhd, I think we're driven, right? We care deeply about our businesses and the people, whether it's our employees or co workers or clients, customers. We want to do good work, we want to be respected. But I think a lot of us, we want to avoid conflict, which isn't such a bad thing. I mean, nobody wants conflict, right? But I think a lot of some of the things that maybe we think are strengths and I can make a case for that, do kind of become those people pleasing, accommodating behaviors, right? And I think they create overwhelm for us. They can destroy maybe what little boundaries we might have. As I said, it does lead to burnout. It's going to undermine the confidence that many people have in your leadership. It's going to reduce your effectiveness in your business or your work over time. And I think honestly we're going to get taken advantage of if we kind of get right down into the dirt. So, and I think, here's what I think we need to kind of understand and honestly it took me a while to kind of figure this out is when we get into that people pleasing when we have adhd, it's, it's really about being nice, right? It's about regulating our emotions. It's about that rejection, sensitivity, it's our fear of disappointment. And it's actually kind of that nervous system kind of safety place, right? I think in the corporate and executive roles, maybe you do work for a company or an organization. Some of the ways that this shows up in our work, in our day to day is we say yes to unrealistic timelines. Maybe we want to make somebody happy or we don't want to have the conversation about maybe you can or you can't do this in the time that you agreed to, etc. We see it when we over commit or we avoid conflict or disappointment with others, we take on work that maybe should have been delegated. And then we have difficulty pushing back on whether it's other people in your organization. That could be leadership, that could be clients, that could be your workers. Right. Your employees. We avoid necessary but uncomfortable conversations. And then, and I kind of get this, I could go two ways on this, but I think we kind of absorb the responsibility for mistakes of the team. Some of us may think, oh, well, I'll just take one for the team. And if you're the leader or you're the business owner or you're the account manager, then maybe you just have to do that. Right. But all the stuff over time is just this overload. It's resentment. We get exhausted over the time and then we have trouble actually focusing. Right. It's kind of chipping away at our energy. If you're an entrepreneur, you're running a business, maybe it comes out in undercharging for services. I know, I did that for years in my PR firm. I knew it. I knew I could sell something at a certain price point and I wouldn't get an argument over delivering beyond scope. That's cool. Okay. But if you're not getting paid and you're working your ass off, then maybe something needs to change there. Maybe we do have those weak boundaries with clients. Maybe it's that, you know, eight o' clock on a Sunday evening, call or email or what have you. Right. It's letting pain in the ass clients stay too long. Right. Boy, I did that too. You might not want to enforce contracts, agreements, payments. Right. I had people going out three months on invoices and I'd be like, oh, it's okay. Don't worry about it. Yeah, it's not okay. I was being a. I was being a people pleaser. I didn't want to rock the boat. I know it. I wrote about this in my book Overcoming Burnout, about how people wouldn't pay me and I just sucked it up. Yeah. Meanwhile, my bank account was dwindling. And then we actually, on that kind of theme, maybe we avoid pricing increases in our business. Here's what happens though, is our revenue might go down. We're spending more time working for less money. We get exhausted again, emotionally again, because we're pissed off and we're resentful. Then maybe your business doesn't grow. No, I've been there. If you're in any type of leadership role, and again, you could be a manager, you could be the CEO, you could be the coo, a chief marketing officer. Maybe you're avoiding conversations about performance. Maybe you're shielding some Team members from accountability. Maybe you're, you're not so good at setting expectations and you could do a little better because you don't want to piss somebody off or make them mad at you. We want to be liked more than we need to be or want to be respected. Right? Okay, I get it. We all want to be liked. The problem, we get fatigued and there's actually now you've got some kind of blurred lines in the authority, right, in your organization. So you know, if you dig into this, there's kind of some reasons for why we People please, right? I mean the first one is that rejection sensitivity. Maybe we think of this in younger adults with adhd, but our brain is kind of wired. Don't ask me to explain, that's more scientific than we get here on overcoming distractions. But there's like this heightened emotional response to like disapproval or conflict or we disappointed somebody, right? But the problem there is it kind of leads to avoiding that conflict. And we want to be liked and you know, approved more than having that conversation. And guess what? And you know this, but I'm going to tell you anyways. We dwell on this for days, don't we? We dwell on it at 2 in the morning. We wake up having to face that person and it's uncomfortable for us, right? Then we got the nervous system regulation, right? People pleasing becomes, I guess a self soothing type of strategy, right? It's easier in the moment than doing the hard thing. This is like procrastination, right? Holy crap. Saying yes reduces that kind of stress and gives you that little short term relief, but long term, over and over. Burnout, resentment, you're overwhelmed. Burnout is chronic stress. Let me repeat that. Burnout is chronic stress. And when you're totally stressed out because we're seeking the approval of others or not wanting to have the conversation or just avoiding something, then that does become chronic stress if you're doing it over and over again. I think a lot of us want to be helpful, right? We thrive on being needed or being reliable or being indispensable and that is again, it's okay. But I think over and over again, year after year, it's starting to become tiring, right? So I, I, some of these things that, that I came up with and thought about are kind of, if, if you kind of pull the, the COVID back on these things a little bit, I think you'll find that some of these things and they may resonate with you are actually people pleasing again. I don't care if you're the CEO or the business owner or the chief marketing officer or whatever. You know, you may say to yourself, you know, I'm just responsible. I just care. I like doing a great job. That's cool, okay? I don't want to let anyone down. And if you just take a step back and think about that for a moment, then I think you begin to kind of realize that maybe sometimes you do have to let people down for the sake of your own kind of emotional well being. But here's what people pleasing does to us over and over again, month after year after whatever, right? We feel resentful immediately after agreeing to something, right now we're going to feel behind all the time. We never feel done with anything. We have this immediate like stress or anxiety when we actually do say no. We over explain decisions, by the way, no need to explain yourself in most cases, okay? If you can't be somewhere, you can't be somewhere. You could be something as simple as, I'm busy at that time. There's no need to explain yourself. I think a lot of us feel guilty, especially leaders with adhd. We feel guilty when we actually prioritize your own stuff. We're blocking off time, right? We're not available for other people. Well, how are you going to get your shit done? And then there's this mental rehearsal, right? We talk about this in overcoming burnout, the rehearsal of situations. We like, sit there and just word it and wordsmith it in our own head to ourselves, right? About how we actually have to say no to somebody or have a conversation and we just rehearse the shit out of it. Here's the cost of people pleasing, right? You're gonna get burned out. You might actually have to get another job because maybe you've dug yourself a little bit of a hole. We talked about overcoming burnout, about how we train people, how to treat us. This is dead on, right? And it's hard to come back from again, poor focus. We're not actually utilizing our strengths, right? So if you're, if you're spinning your wheels and doing work for other people and not being able to get your stuff done, you're not actually, as they say, you know, if you're an entrepreneur or a business owner, you know, working in your business as opposed to working on your business, right? At some point that has to happen. It's the same thing if we're doing stuff for other people all the time and where we're missing out on the priorities, the things that are going to grow our, our business and our career trajectory etc. Etc. Here's the cost, especially if you're, you know, running a business, is you're going to lose revenue, you're going to work yourself into, you're just going to overwork yourself, right? You're going to have problems with clients sooner or later and then you're only going to be able to get your business to a certain point. This is going to lead to that chronic stress, which is burnout, fatigue, loss of joy, which means you just don't want to go to work anymore and you're going to have some strains on relationships. I know I had a handful of clients over the years in my PR firm where that relationship did get strained sometimes. I walked away from a difficult conversation, it should have been had. And then sooner or later that client company relationship ended because I got so pissed off that the only way I could deal with it was to basically fire the client, right? I probably, if I look back and being completely honest with all of you, I probably still have a few clients that were paying me pretty good monthly retainer fees if I didn't let the people pleasing go on for so long and then get bullshit at myself and actually just pull the plug on it. So, so, all right, we've kind of framed the problem, so to speak, or the challenge, right? Maybe problem is the wrong word, but you know what I'm saying? How do we kind of minimize this? Because I don't think we can get rid of it altogether. Our brain is our brain. I get it. But we can minimize this first. We sometimes just have to have the hard conversation with somebody, client, employee, a co worker, etc. Etc. And when it comes to time, because time is a really hot topic in the ADHD world, right? Time actually isn't on your side when it comes to these things. You let a big important conversation just kind of go on, you know, without having it. You let that go for, for too long and then it's not, it's not gonna do you well. So here's the other thing. We have to, we have to figure out how to shift from that automatic yes to maybe a more well thought out choice. Like, for example, let me check my calendar and I'll get back to you. Things like that, it creates a little bit of a pause. Maybe you can put off the answer for a little bit to allow you maybe to kind of chill out and think it through. So instead of just being helpful, being nice all the time, being available all the time, which again, I understand you're in a position where these things do need to take place at various points. We have to be sustainable, we have to be strategic with our time and our energy and our capacity. We need to work on that age old topic of boundaries, right, Whatever that may be, disappearing for a while, not picking up the phone, shutting your email off, not letting people storm into your office at all hours of the day. And that requires us to be more intentional or have some more agency over our, our time and our energy and our commitments, etc. Etc. So, and I think as I mentioned a few minutes ago, when you kind of dig into this topic and go ahead, hop on Google or buy a book or whatever, this is like a kind of driven by your nervous system, right? So I think we gotta, we do have to tolerate, if you will, a little bit of discomfort if we're going to kind of get through this wall, right? Regulate stress or that ruminating. And I think we have to allow for the disappointment of others. Now I will say that the disappointment we think that person is going through is probably a fraction of what they actually are going through. And I think we overthink this. Tell me if that sounds familiar. Here's a couple questions that I've continued to ask myself as I try to hone in more on a strategy and a more understanding with myself about how I'm going to move forward without having 90 irons in the fire or going in a thousand different directions. Does this align with my role? Is this my responsibility? Does this move my highest priorities forward in the way that I want? And what am I saying no to if I say yes? And we've all heard that last one a thousand times, but you have to, you have to ask yourself that. I don't think our value is determined by how useful we are to others. When we get right down to it, okay, you want to be liked, you want to work with people, you want to have a great working relationship with others, right? But because you had to say no or you had to protect your time and energy doesn't mean your value is any less. So here's if you have challenges trying to work through this and some of these things feel difficult, it's like anything, we got to start small, right? And maybe low risk type of things. So it's maybe start declining minor requests, setting small limits on the time you provide others and maybe you can work that up, maybe you can try and delay responses. Now that's funny because some of us will take a week to like return an email, right? But I'm talking about the other side of this, right? Isn't there? Isn't it interesting, the dichotomy of different things in the ADHD world? Right? I'm telling you to delay things, right? You're like, I already do. Yeah, I get it, I get it. Okay? But we're talking about commitments here. So remember, this is kind of a learned survival strategy. And I think for many of us busy people with adhd, it probably did start early. I look back at myself and it probably did start early. You know what? I took on the violin when I was in middle school, might be even elementary school, because I thought I had to. I didn't realize that I didn't have to play an instrument. And I don't know why, because there were tons of other kids that weren't playing an instrument. But for some reason, I felt like I had to play an instrument. So. Yeah. Oh, boy. I think some of the stuff protected you, but I think now it's kind of holding us back. So I think for us to kind of build that career and that business and what have you, we need to be sustainable, aligned, we need to be healthy and we need to be intentional. And we had to have to have some of those moderately difficult conversations. So at. At some point. So. All right, cool. Hey, if you are a person that I have described, the busy professional and just happen to have ADHD, or you think you do, you don't have to have an official piece of paper here then, and you need some help, you need somebody to work with side by side to kind of help you through these challenges. Then just hit Overcoming distractions dot com. Hit that button right on my homepage that says book a 15 minute chat and we can introduce each other and see if. If I can be of assistance. So I work with people just like you every single day, so. All right, cool. Hey, we'll catch you next time.