To add one thought that others haven’t mentioned, inattentiveness to the early warning signs of volatility in the moods of others can often leave us suddenly surprised when others express emotions such as anger or frustration or irritation.

For me at least – and I have friends who say the same – this often leads to codependent people-pleasing behaviour because these emotions and situations catch us off guard and can make us fearful of finding ourselves in such a position. As a result, we might develop a maladaptive pattern of pre-emptive management of the feelings of the people around us, where instead we might just learn to accept being uncomfortable, or develop boundaries around the culpability we accept for the circumstances leading to others’ moods. In friends who have had abusive or unsafe childhoods, the maladaptive pattern seems especially pronounced because it’s an important part of survival.

What this looked like for me before a butt-ton of therapy is that I felt stressed when anyone around me started to express any negative emotion, but even before then, I was orienting my behaviour to give attention to the more volatile people in my life as a top priority. My task selection wasn’t really focused on achieving my goals most times, but on doing things that others wanted–or things I perceived others wanted or needed–in order to make sure their days went well and any potential bad emotion dissipated before it got very strong.

For instance, if my (perfectly loving and kind, but ‘normal range of human emotions’-having) wife had a bad day at work, I might come home, make them their favourite meal, make up their bed, and then watch a show with them until they fell asleep.

And on the surface, sounds nice! Sounds like caring! But it’s done primarily out of fear, not out of caring. There is caring in there, no doubt in my mind, but it’s not the first motivator.

And I’ve seen this pattern play out in me in different contexts and in different ways… with my wife, with my kids, my parents, and in the community; in hovering, fawning, in leaping to ‘be useful’…

I think over time, this sort of behaviour leads to an external focus that does make you feel like your job is to help everyone. Throw in a soupçon of impulsivity and then you’re telling strangers in the grocery store that the bouillon cubes they’re looking at are on sale at the store across the street.

Therapy’s helped. It’s such an ingrained pattern for me that I fall back to it and it’ll be my life’s work to remember that I’d rather act out of true love and kindness rather than fear of discomfort.

I think that’s part of how our brains are wired. It’s part of the “if the rules have been explained and they make sense we will follow them to the death” thing. You have certain experiences, so you recognize that pattern in other people’s and default to solutions because when you were in your situation you needed solutions not moral support.

If you don’t have that experience you still default to problem solving. At least I do. I think this is why people think we’re so good at handling things in a crisis. It’s because we go into damage control mode. We assess and then make a plan and we do it rapidly.

I struggle with these feelings too. I’m always on the lookout for someone expressing distress and I tend to attend to their needs at the expense of my own work. It is important for me to recognize when someone actually wants assistance or if I’m just “mansplaining,” which would be annoying and demeaning.

Sometimes, if I don’t understand the problem myself, I find it very interesting to learn how to solve it, and the experience is usually mutually beneficial.

Yup. Especially if there’s a problem for me to solve. Doesn’t help that this is kind of also my day job. I’m trying to develop good habits of NOT immediately offering suggestions at every opportunity.

I feel genuinely awful when I cant help someone.

Or if I am walking some where and someone was asking for something or I see someone needs help I also start feeling heavy to where it is hard for me to move past someone.

I pass homeless people on the road while I’m in traffic and just feel terrible because I have nothing to offer them.

Or with my work if I can’t solve an issue it affects me greatly.

Kind of. Ever since I was diagnosed with ADHD, I’ve reinterpreted some of my lifelong habits, and I think for me my urge to chip in is at least partially ADHD related. My attention continuously refocuses, which means it continuously refocuses on whatever is going on at the moment - which makes anyone requesting help, even if not specifically from me, extremely hard for me to ignore.

Every time my attention jumps away and then jumps back, it’s like getting hit with the help request brand new, so it’s much easier to try to address the need for help than try to ignore it popping up in my head every ten seconds from now 'til the issue is resolved on someone else’s initiative.