Overcoming the People-Pleasing Syndrome: A Guide to Curing The Disease To Please

Jay: Need to please to continue to accept what is giving to you. Informative information and easy reading. Great, to help all types of people.

United States on Oct 29, 2023

Luke: Its a really really good read i do recommend reading it

United States on Sep 21, 2023

Barbara Friesen: It's not very pleasant to pick up a book that has notes and highliter all over it! Yech!

Canada on Jun 15, 2023

Fernanda: You, as many women may be a people pleaser. This book will definitely change your life. Serious and also easy to read.

France on Mar 27, 2023

Jillian L: I found Dr. Braiker's books by reading <Who is Pulling Your Strings>, out of desperation to understand all the pressure I felt from others. I really appreciate Dr. Braiker for writing this book and let the "good people" see how their people-pleasing thinking and behavior have undermined themselves as a person of value. If you suffer from anxiety, it probably comes from pressure you felt from other people and your people-pleasing mindset.

If you do not fix the faulty thinking of people-pleasing at all costs, you would be permanently thinking your life's value is depending upon others, and you would not have the courage to face conflict, anger and would avoid confrontation at all costs.

As a nice person, I have been a target for manipulators, some of them are family members and friends. Those people use words to give approval and then use me. This have to change to de-stress myself. I found this book about how to cure the off-balanced situation of putting others first at the expense of self, and it's just the beginning of setting things right in face of all the self-entitled others, including bosses, co-workers, relatives, spouse and friends. I'm glad while...

United States on Jul 27, 2022

Petra: Als Geschenk gekauft, daher etwas unpraktisch, dass, entgegen der Angabe, doch einige Stellen bei dem gebrauchten, ansonsten neuwertigen Buch drin waren, habe sie aber ausradieren können.
Lieferung aus den USA hat ein paar Wochen länger gedauert, war aber ok
Ansonsten gutes, empfehlenswertes Buch !

Germany on Jun 06, 2021

Sixtus: The Disease to Please is a helpful book to promote positive behavior change. Most people to some extent have difficulty with pleasing others, conflict, and saying no assertively. Braiker does a nice (to use her least favorite word) job in explaining the difficulties people have in over pleasing others and under valuing the self. She covers in detail how overworking to please others really ends up harming everyone because in the end the people pleaser gets spread too thin to be of help to anyone. The book is based on the premise of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) using the three pillars of feelings, thoughts, and behaviors covering the different ways people struggle with people pleasing. I like that she covered topics such as the fear of anger/conflict, romantic addiction, and not being able to say no to requests of friends/relatives. Everyone can benefit in some way from the information and advice she gives in the book- as CBT has shown to be beneficial across the board. If more people were proficient in ways to say 'no' to requests in a empathetic and caring way but without guilt and apology, people would struggle less with conflict and arguments.

She also provides a 21...

United States on Sep 30, 2019

Limiting Factor: This is a good book if, like me, people pleasing is in your make-up. I was recommended this by a counsellor.

I didn't find it necessary to read the whole thing; there is a quiz near the beginning which points you towards the most relevant sections for you. I found this really helpful, and the book chimes with other work I've been doing with transactional analysis etc.

Overall very much worthwhile. It didn't get 5 stars because here and there I found it a little heavy going. It is also interesting that the author assumes early on that most of her readers will be female. I'm not challenging this at all but it's interesting what it says about our society. Anyway, some of us blokes are prone to people-pleasing too, and the book is just as useful for us. (Probably does us no harm to have the boot on the other foot, given how patriarchal our society still is, but I digress.)

United Kingdom on Jan 31, 2018

The Power Hour: Braiker's book is helpful in several ways. She breaks down the people pleasing syndrome into three categories and provides studies that help explain how and why they develop. Although she provides ample questionnaires to help the reader uncover his or her feelings and thoughts, I found that many of these questions can be misleading or appear irrelavant to the reader. For example, many of her questions are posed with black or white thinking such as "I need to have everyone's approval before I can make important decisions true/ false" (74). I understand that this can be a possible feeling for some, but it may be overlooked by the individual who consistently feels that way with certain relationships such as in parent/child, friends, romantic partners, co-workers etc. To make the book useful to me, I began to exchange "everyone" to " certain individuals" as I read. This helped me pin point the relationships where I am struggling with these issues and apply her recommendations.

United States on Jun 25, 2017

Elfin: This is an interesting read even if you are not a chronic 'people -pleaser'-just a 'mild case'. At the very beginning she puts people into three groups: 1) Cognitive people-pleasers ; 2) Behavioural people-pleaser ; 3)Emotionally avoidant people-pleasers. (You don't need to do the quiz if you haven't got time or do not consider yourself chronic people-pleaser.)As you proceed she will give you an energetic explanation : What is the core of this 'niceness'? (Fear of rejection; fear of abandonment; fear of anger - fear of negative emotions in general manifesting in this defence mechanism.) After the 'diagnosis' she focuses on the cure. I would suggest to read the LOOK INSIDE to see if the writing style is for you or not before you purchase this book.
I read this book a while ago and also read other self-awareness books and I can honestly say it does help if you get into the mindset of a more self-focused person (without being self-centered!) as relatives and friends are often trying to impose on us things we don't want to do - just pause for a moment, re-group and think twice before you say Yes, but in order to do this you need to be self-aware enough not to depend on other...

United Kingdom on Jul 15, 2014