Gift giving and expectations at Christmas
Christmas can be an overwhelming time of year for anyone, but it is especially overwhelming for ADHDers. There are a lot of reasons for being overwhelmed during the festive season, and it’s not just because of dealing with family and friends or burning the turkey.
For many ADHDers, Christmas can be all about gifts and expectations. We set ourselves super high expectations on the kind of gifts we might want to receive but we also feel a lot of pressure when we give gifts to others. This overwhelm could well be seen as RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria).
Operating at 150%
Hear me out. ADHDers operate at 150% and that means giving gifts at 150% as well. For us, there is a HUGE amount at stake when we give a gift because we have often put so much care and thought into it. There is a burning need to show people ‘here, look I care.’ And because we focus so much on the gift and making it perfect, something often gets fundamentally lost or missed. We sometimes become so focussed on the expectation of the gift that it completely loses its specialness.
We are excellent gift givers. But this can come as a cost to an ADHDer’s wellbeing and our sensitivity to rejection.
Alex’s Top Tip:
Whenever you’re thinking about buying a gift for someone. Simply ask yourself,
How much of this is ‘I really need them to like this?’
AND/OR how much of this is ‘I’m going to spend more money than I need to just so I can mitigate the possibility of feeling rejected?’
When searching for that perfect gift, stop, and ask yourself these instead…
What do I know about this person?
What do I know they love?
What is it that is important about what I’m giving to them?
And start from that place.
When we stop and ask ourselves these questions, what we do is stay with ourselves. We often buy as though we are the gift receiver even though we are the gift giver. This is what is SO powerful about being an ADHDer and giving gifts. But it is easy to lose sight of this power we have. We are wonderfully sensitive and responsive givers and this can get lost because of the RSD.
Why gift giving is such a challenge
And so part of the challenge is that this sets up a lot of anxiety and the gift becomes a real effort and effort is one of the 6 executive functions that we find really difficult. If it is too much effort, we just don’t buy the gift. It might be the case that we were thinking about buying the gift in October, but now it’s a week before the Christmas party and we still haven’t bought them the damn gift.
What happens then is we even reject ourselves in that moment. It’s so important to understand that the turmoil that goes on in our minds can be just the thing that stops us buying that gift that we know that person would love to receive. There is a huge process happening here that is a lot of effort for us.
What can be helpful before we start buying gifts (whether it’s Christmas or not!) is to take a moment and decide on the people that matter to us most and systematically think about what kind of gifts would reflect that. Trust me, that’s a far less overwhelming place to start from… you might even find that it’s not a physical gift that they would like to receive. It could just be some quality time.
