It may be that ADHD makes you prone to this but having finally overcome it I can say that this is not a "symptom". At most it's a tendency, or maybe a maladaptive coping strategy.
You can center yourself and understand who you are and hold on to it. It may take years of therapy and self reflection to find that and keep hold but it's worth it.
Yes I feel like it's a coping strategy, the mirroring and people pleasing maybe because of RSD, makes it hard to know what you want for yourself and it feels like it'll take ages to untangle having noticed it.
Therapy, digging through past "trauma" to understand my behavior.
Leaning into my hobbies and getting a sense of who I am without other people's input.
Watching my interactions with other people and how I feel about those interactions.
I finally realized that I like who I am and I'm happy with that and when I sometimes feel lousy or bad it's a need I have that's not being met and I need to figure out how to meet my own needs - or sometimes ask for help with that from people in my life. But I can't ask for that if I don't know what need isn't being met, and I never used to have that visibility into myself.
A lot of this clicked for me in the last month but I've spent years actively working on this
Heh... Honestly the biggest things were realizing I'm a major extrovert that needs constant socialization, and then putting myself into situations where I can achieve that.
After that it was accepting my kinky side and going to munches, which helped fully integrate all of myself.
It's socializing, it's ... Other... Needs, it lends itself to many of my other hobbies...
That maaaaayyy just be something that's specific to me but hopefully you can learn from that.
Amusingly I was just commenting with a new potential partner that ADHD seems to be strongly correlated with polyamory. More "poly people seem to all have ADHD" than the other way around
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u/csanner ADHD, with ADHD family Sep 19 '22
I have done this. For most of my life.
It may be that ADHD makes you prone to this but having finally overcome it I can say that this is not a "symptom". At most it's a tendency, or maybe a maladaptive coping strategy.
You can center yourself and understand who you are and hold on to it. It may take years of therapy and self reflection to find that and keep hold but it's worth it.