Here's a plot twist I didn't see coming in my own unmasking journey.

The person I abandoned the most was me.

Hello and welcome to Divergent Paths.

I'm your host, Dr.

Regina, PhD.

And today we're diving into a pattern so many late diagnosed neurodivergent folk recognize immediately.

People pleasing and self -abandonment.

Not the cute kind where you hold the door open and you say thank you too many times, but the deep, automatic, chronic, shape -shifting we learned long before we ever heard the word masking.

In this episode, I'm breaking down the connection between people -pleasing as a survival strategy, the self -abandonment that grows out of it, and why unmasking requires gently learning.

how to say the true thing.

So I talk a lot about people pleasing in the episodes and dawned on me the other day that I have never really explained what people pleasing is.

So that's part of what we're doing in this episode is working on some of the definitions of terms that I use often in the show and are things that you may come across in your readings after your late diagnosis.

So A definition of people pleasing that I really like is it is a learned survival strategy where you adjust your behavior, your tone, your preferences, and your boundaries to keep other people comfortable.

This reduces the conflict you face, it reduces the rejection you face, and you do it in an attempt to cut down on any kind of misunderstanding.

And that's, ironically, that doesn't always end up being the case, but that is the drive to do it is often to try to cut down on any type of potential misunderstanding.

I do want to make it clear that people pleasing is a survival strategy.

It is something you have done in order to feel like you belong somewhere.

And when you're neurodivergent and when you're late diagnosed and you haven't been diagnosed for most of your life, as I got my diagnosis at 49.

It's not a personality trait.

This isn't some, you know, inherent part of who you are, other than it is something that you have learned probably in early childhood and that you continue to reinforce because it was how you learn to feel safe in a world that felt unsafe because you weren't seen in your authentic, whole, amazing, beautifulness.

Often we're told we're too much, we're too emotional, too intense, too sensitive, too fidgety.

There's so many things.

Too distracted.

I got too distracted a lot.

And that's part of what you're trying to manage when you're people pleasing.

Rejection sensitivity plays a role here where because you have heard these things for so long, you seek out ways to fight that and to feel included.

in spaces where you struggle to understand like the social cues and things that are going on.

So you learn this as a survival strategy for some of those social pieces that you might have struggled with.

On the outside, people pleasing looks like you're just being agreeable.

You're just agreeing to something.

You're agreeing to the music choice at a party or, you know, to the food being served.

I told a story in a recent episode about having agreed to bell pepper on pizza, not realizing that it meant for the next several years I would be having bell pepper on my pizza when I hate bell pepper on pizza.

So it's examples like that.

So all of that is to try to build a sense of belonging.

And that's really what people pleasing is doing.

There's a joke now where I've seen a couple of videos that go around and it's like, well, if you're people pleasing, well, who is pleased with you?

Because people pleasing doesn't often make the people around you happy, but it makes your perception of that true or you think that that's what you're doing in order to stay safe.

So self -abandonment is what comes out of people pleasing.

So to define self -abandonment, it's what happens when years of masking and people pleasing teach you to disconnect from your own preferences, your signals, your nervous system signals, your somatic signals, the way your body feels about things.

and you default to what other people want instead of what you need and this is this is that overwhelming sense of not knowing who you are when you when you get your late diagnosis and you start unmasking that feeling that you have where you don't understand who you are or what you like or what the things are that you enjoy because for years you've been people pleasing and choosing things that other people like That's self abandonment.

So every time you say yes, when you mean no, every time you agree to something you don't really want to do, every time you overburden your calendar, because you did have the space, even if you didn't have the time or capacity for something, every one of those is a moment of self abandonment.

And this is something that builds up.

It's a cumulative process, where the more you say yes, when you don't want to be bigger a burden all of that becomes on who you are and on your soul and on yourself and on your energy.

It is really difficult to unmask if you are continuing to prioritize other people's comfort over telling the truth.

And this is, again, not a personality flaw, but you can't really get through that process of unmasking if you are still abandoning yourself because you are leaving your authentic self out of the equation.

This is a conditioned response as well.

Like I said, this is the response to people pleasing for so long.

This is essentially like a...

tax.

We talk about the ADHD tax sometimes.

This is a tax that neurodivergent people pay for social acceptance and belonging.

If you needed to leave who you were behind and leave your preferences and your choices to the side to feel safe in your family, to feel safe with your friends, to feel safe with your partners, all of that is a tax that you're paying.

from being late diagnosed neurodivergent.

Unmasking is really the process of relearning your preferences and stopping and asking yourself, what do I actually want?

Not what is in my case often, not what does my mom want.

Not what does somebody else want?

What does my friend want?

Not what does this person want me to do?

It is asking what you actually want.

And that can be a really hard question to answer when you have spent most of your life not answering it honestly.

It can bring overwhelming grief.

When you recognize how much time you have lost, it will bring fear.

Will people stay friends with me if I let my true self out?

And hopefully you can feel those feelings and get to a point where you just feel relief being able to be yourself because that's really what the process of unmasking is.

Learning to hear your own voice after years of tuning it out or however much time you have been masking, years, decades, all of that time you have shut out your own voice.

So being able to get back to it doesn't necessarily mean you're becoming somebody new.

It may seem that way to some people who have known you for a long time, but really you're just getting back to who.

you are authentically.

So here are some tips and some small things you can try as you learn to stop people pleasing, to stop putting other people's needs above your own in learning to accept and voice your needs.

So the first thing I would say is start small.

um when somebody asks you to do something and it's something you don't want to do taking a moment to pause and say i just need a minute um saying i need to think about that those are really good ways to at least put a pin in it for a second um and then you can say you know let me check my calendar or you know i can't do that today maybe i can do it another day you know things like that try not to be avoidant if it is something that you know that you are not going to do don't say i'll get back to you just work really hard to get to that now and just set that boundary and what is often the case is that you need to teach your nervous system that being honest is not putting you in danger because that's what you were doing with people pleasing was trying to keep yourself safe.

So your nervous system thinks that it's dangerous to tell the truth and dangerous to have preferences that might disagree with the group that you're in.

So teach your nervous system that telling the truth is not dangerous.

This is a slow process.

It does get easier, but it is a slow process.

So rewrite your inner dialogue.

So work on saying things to yourself that reaffirm how important your needs are.

And that can start as simply as saying my needs matter.

And this is one that I use a lot because I will put my needs to the side a lot in a lot of circumstances.

I will just sacrifice myself because somebody else needs something for me.

Need to remind myself often, less often now because I've been doing this for a while, but I do remind myself on a regular basis and you should too.

My needs matter.

Another phrase to use is I can disappoint people and still be safe and accepted.

Like I said, we're trying to train our nervous system to feel safe telling the truth.

And lastly, and probably most powerfully, I'm safe being myself.

So say that one again.

I am safe being myself.

What this process does is help create neuroplasticity in your brain.

It literally starts to rewire the pathways in your brain that have been set to people please to keep yourself safe, starting to note your needs, and starting to own that your needs are important and valuable, and that you will be safe when you express them is a way of resetting the physical working in your brain to start recognizing that telling the truth and acknowledging your needs and acknowledging that you need your needs met is okay and safe.

This is really literally rewiring how your brain is working.

And so for fun, my last one is to rebuild your character sheet.

So let's make this a little nerdy.

So when you when you have a character in a role playing game, you have a character sheet, and they have certain characteristics that they are stronger in and weaker in.

And so as you are looking at figuring out how to unmask, rebuild your character sheet.

So I am a strong proponent of writing as a means of kind of helping you through some of this.

Always.

I always go back to writing, which is, you know, my biases.

I have taught writing for many years, but also because it is a really good way to take an internal process and start to work to make it external.

So really, really quickly in five minutes, write down the responses to these questions.

What are.

your top three values what are the top three three to five if you if you have a lot i'd say three is a good if you're working with five minutes what are your top three five values what are three non -negotiables like what are three things about who you are that are non -negotiable or that are things that you will just never say yes to and then lastly What are your actual energy levels and what are your sensory needs?

So some of that might look like I had a lot of pressure growing up to dress a certain way and to wear makeup a certain way and to perform in very specific ways physically.

And my non -negotiables and a lot of my, a lot of time now are, you know, working on being accepted with not always having perfect hair and not always having perfect makeup.

And those are things that, you know, are sensory challenges for me a lot of the time with clothes.

So think about it in terms of that.

So write that down as quickly as you can.

Rebuild a character sheet.

Figure out what are those things that are so important to you and do it like stream of consciousness, whatever.

Just get the words out.

Just get them down on the page.

If you write better with bullet points, write with bullet points.

However it is, just get the words out.

Get them down on the page and see what.

comes up in that kind of short time as being so valuable and important to you.

So this process of these tips is really going to help you anchor your decisions in self -knowledge instead of self -abandonment.

You don't have to earn belonging by abandoning yourself.

You never did need to do that, but people pleasing kept you safe at one point in time in your life, but it's not the full story of who you are.

Unmasking isn't about completely becoming someone new.

It's about coming home to the person you've always been.

So start small, take baby steps.

Be honest in tiny ways.

Start saying no.

Start saying, I can't do that.

I don't have time.

I don't have energy.

Start speaking to yourself with kindness and compassion that you've given to other people and a lot of other people in your life have benefited from.

You can benefit from that now.

This is how we heal.

This is how you grow.

This is how you rewire your brain.

to love you and who you are.

So thank you so much for being here today and listening to this episode.

Please take care of your brilliant rebuilding brain.

And until next time, tell the truth.