Hi, welcome
People pleasers like yourself can have a delusional view of what life is with humans. I hope that doesnt upset you for I've been one myself earlier in my life. Even after 3 years in the RAAF then 3 years as a prison officer didnt harden me to the extent that I would move away from a pleaser to someone more normal. Now at 67yo I have learned my lessons the hard way and am in that normal sphere of the balance of self protection and measured charity.
The biggest problem with being a pleaser like yourself, you have highlighted, for whatever reason people respect you less. I think the reason for that is that people see pleasers as vulnerable, even foolish for being so kind, easily tricked and so on. Even bosses will over work a pleaser because the others are likely to complain and do inferior work. Pleasers please their bosses so their work is top rate.
Due to mania from bipolar I've had over 80 jobs and 15 professions. After 40+ years when forcibly retired, I had 3 friends from those workplaces, 3 out of hundreds. In those early days of employment, I tried helping others like you do only to be never repaid in any form. I realised some things about my mentality- that I should not be helping people to expect reward and non pleasers are rarely considerate to me the pleaser. Countless times I would help thee people, yet when they are free from workload they would help someone else that never helped them. So all this logic I'd ignore why? because being a people pleaser is in your nature and thats why its almost impossible to change without learning the lessons aver decades.
https://forums.beyondblue.org.au/t5/staying-well/accepting-yourself-the-frog-and-the-scorpion/td-p/1...
Accepting yourself as you are, the kind pleaser is great as long as you ADD an element of protection. How?
When you are asked to do something to help someone else get into the habit of saying "can I think about that?" or "I'll check my schedule and get back to you". This gives you time to plan and decide if helping that person is justified. Also the time given to that person could be limited eg a distant associate might only deserve 2 hours of assistance not 2 days. As a pleaser it takes as long as it takes eg moving house! Limit it.
That transformation into a normal method of thinking wont happen over night, and it might never happen completely, but your goal is better to be one that makes improvements rather than too much expectations of yourself.
TonyWK
