By Ox Drover
When I picked up and started reading The Disease to Please—Curing the People-Pleasing Syndrome, by Harriet B. Braiker, Ph.D., not everything resonated with me, though I have always tried to “please people,” especially those close to me. There was a great deal of the book, though, that did resonate and validate the similarities between “women who love psychopaths,” as described in the book by that name by Dr. Liane Leedom and Sandra Brown, and “people-pleasers.”
Dr. Braiker is a practicing clinical psychologist with 25 years experience and is author of several books. This one defines “people-pleasers” as:
not just nice people who go overboard trying to make everyone happy. Those who suffer from the Disease to Please are people who say “Yes” when they really want to say “NO.” For them, the uncontrollable need for the elusive approval of others is an addiction. Their debilitating fears of anger and confrontation force them to use “niceness” and “people-pleasing” as self defense camouflage.
This book is divided into three main parts, as Dr. Braiker sees people pleasers as people who have “People pleasing MINDSETS,” people who have “People-pleasing HABITS,” and people who have “People pleasing FEELINGS.” The fourth part is a 21-day action plan for curing this “disease.”
Though in several instances Dr. Braiker describes a relationship with a sociopath, she labels this person a “controlling” person.
It is imperative that you recognize how dangerous and self-sabotaging your people-pleasing tendencies with men can become so that you can change the unhealthy dynamic of your relationships. Otherwise, the Disease to Please will serve as a veritable mating call to men who have a perverse need and desire to control nearly every aspect of your behavior. Worse yet, you will allow them to do so.
Nothing is out of bounds to a controlling man with a people-pleaser whom he can mold at will—from your appearance to your opinions, your performance in bed to your performance at work, your relationships with friends to your bonds with family. And, in no time, your ego and self-esteem will deteriorate from modeling clay into silly putty.
When he is done playing with you or you are done being played with (whichever comes first), you will have some serious reparative work to do on a self that you may hardly still recognize as your own.
Unless you repair the damage by during the Disease to Please that produced it, you will limp away from the relationship with the brand “damaged goods” on your ego. Then, issuing the familiar mating call, you will continue to present yourself as the people-pleasing victim to the next controlling man that recognizes your vulnerability to his power.
The controlling man will always keep you off-center and feeling anxious. Since he needs to change you to demonstrate his control, you can never feel comfortable or secure with the thought that he cares about the person that you truly are—or used to be before he started chipping away at your identity.
While this book is not about psychopathic relationships per se, the focus on how many people end up sacrificing their own legitimate selves, to try to “please” the one who will never be pleased, does describe the “traditional” relationship with a psychopath.
I think the self-affirming statements at the end of each chapter are excellent guides in changing our thinking, habits and our feelings about ourselves.
An few examples of these are:
If you have to compromise your own values, needs, or identity as a special and unique individual, then the price of nice is just too high.
It’s okay not to be nice.
Saying “yes” when you want to say “no” in order to protect your emotional, physical health or well-being should make you feel guilty—not the other way around.
Your value as a human being does not depend on the things you do for others.
Though I think Dr. Braiker seems to be applying the term “Disease to Please” in place of the older term “enabler,” her descriptions of the thoughts, feelings and habits practiced by the two are pretty much the same. Her description of those who will take advantage of someone else she calls “controlling,” which seems to be the primary motivation of many psychopaths. I personally would have preferred that she “call a spade a spade,” but at the same time, I think her target audience might be more apt to read the book with the labels that she did choose to use.
There were helpful reinforcements for positive changes, and over all, I liked the book very much. It isn’t difficult to understand and her advice is reasonable and realistic.
The Disease to Please—Curing the People-Pleasing Syndrome is available on Amazon.com.
Sounds like an interesting book, thank you!! I’m happy to get a summary before I shell out the $$$$. Yesterday I felt completely absolved of any responsibility when I read “It Wasn’t You”, but that didn’t really feel quite right… now this author seems to be saying “It Was You”. I personally feel a lot of it was me. I’m confused, as usual.
thanks Oxy, I like the confirmations at the end especially:
Your value as a human being does not depend on the things you do for others.
Since I have a savior complex, no boundaries and no self-preservation instinct, that confirmation is really important to remember. I’m a sitting duck!
Shabbychic,
Both statements are right. It IS us, who have these big red signs on our foreheads that say, “People pleaser, predators welcome here.”
And it is THEM, the predators, who are trolling for people pleasers to eat.
They say there is a perfect match out there for everyone. I guess we have to work at being the perfect match for what we want, not for a predator.
I’m so mentally messed up that I can’t stop thinking about “saving” the xp.
Here is a link to Anna’s blog that explains why it won’t work. It is really very persuasive, but my fiendish “savior complex keeps trying to come up with ways around Anna’s perfect logic.
http://narcissists-suck.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-07%3A00&updated-max=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=50
Dear skylar and Chic,
I think Skylar is right, it is BOTH us and them…we because we ALLOWED them to abuse us, but THEM for doing it.
Just because we are vulnerable to them and their abuse, does NOT give them the right to do it, or make them any less culpable for doing it, but we do NOT DESERVE to be abused just because we have not protected ourselves. We should NOT have to protect ourselves from another human being, but the FACT IS that in the REAL WORLD there are abusive people.
We need in our healing, to learn to value ourselves above all others, and that does not mean being “selfish” or “narcissistic” or “bad” because we value ourselves, if we do NOT value ourselves, we can’t truly value another human either. It is by loving ourselves that we can truly love another.
No one should have to defend themselves from those they care about, but the fact is, that there is a part of the human race which is UNABLE to love, which is ONLY able to abuse. They learn th ewords to say to make us think that we are loved, but their ACTIONS speak louder than their words. We must learn to look at actions, which speak the TRUTH.
The way they treat is shows that their words are FALSE.
The way we tried to treat them showed that we did love them, but we forgot to love ourselves as well, we forgot to be good to ourselves and to insist that anyone else be good to us as well.
Our healing road starts off recognizing that they are EVIL, and then once we realize that, we have to start on our journey about US, about our healing, about takign care of ourselves and valuing ourselves.
We are not able to save anyone except ourselves. We can support others, like we do here at LF, but in the end, each of us is responsible for saving ourselves, for healing ourselves.
Those of us who tried to “please” others at the EXPENSE of ourselves need to learn to value ourselves and save ourselves.
Unless you repair the damage by during the Disease to Please that produced it, you will limp away from the relationship with the brand “damaged goods” on your ego. Then, issuing the familiar mating call, you will continue to present yourself as the people-pleasing victim to the next controlling man that recognizes your vulnerability to his power.
OMG. This is sooooo true.
If I leave my very expensive covetted car in a crime ridden neighborhod, with the windows down and the keys left in it,
and my car is stolen, am I to blame? Was I wrong, immoral or bad? NO! But perhaps there’s an issue if I continue to park my car in that neighborhood, with the window down and the keys in it.
Sometimes I think instead of becoming wiser, the “damage” makes us weaker. We have to “prove to ourselves” that neighborhood is okay, that humanity is okay, that we were right, and our car won’t get stolen again. But thst, right there, is where our woundedness makes us victims, and why we need tolook at ourselves. There’s something in us that makes us easy targets.
Kim…not always, I don’t think (that something is in us that makes us easy targets.) Except yes, the ability to love! the ability to care! the ability to really commit! Sometimes it is our STRENGTHS that made us “targets” and the problem is really THEM, not us.
but given that they live in this world too, we do need to do things to protect those strengths from being abused.
And after ANY kind of bad thing, if you can learn a lesson on how to better prevent it in the future, you are on your way to getting over it and moving on.
I like your car analogy.
I read on Holy Water’s blog I think…that the P became the Rosetta stone to help understand evil. Or that is my interpretation of it.
Anyway, I love that, and for me it is so true. I really didn’t understand evil until a really horrible p took me for a horrible ride. But now I understand so much about the world that I didn’t before, and I’m reaping the benefits over and over from that. What a cost though! A very expensive lesson.
I also agree that for some of us (me included) there was trauma repetition going on, that sort of thing, that we do need to become really aware of and make different choices in the future. Be aware of our weaknesses, our vulnerabilities.
Everyone has vulnerabilitis that can be exploited. But if we’ve had trauma in our past, I think we are especially fine fodder for a P. But we also have some special strengths. My “graciousness” (which is just a high tolerance for crap, LOL) is very useful in my job, for example.
so we not only need to see how our traits made us targets …very important….but to give ourselves credit too and see how those same traits sometimes serve us well.
Of course I had a few traits I just needed to throw out! Like wishy washy ethics and boundaries. I realize too, though, that stress played a role in those traits coming up, when esp. the ethics always were pretty strong before. I was burned out from Katrina and ….oh, there was a lot going on. Not excuses, but helps reassure me that I’m much stronger now.
Sklyar….thinking about saving the p was a big hook for me too….but then I realized part of the appeal was it was a way of still engaging, of still needing contact. I also realized it was a way of trying to hold back the pain of realizing yes, it was all a waste. All of my time, all of my efforts, all of my love. All a waste. Words were wasted on him. Time was wasted. I might as well have been speaking Chinese to him the entire time. Wanting to save him was a way of not admitting all that to myself.
yup, might as well have been speaking Chinese! or Marsian. Or whatever. He can’t comprehend emotions, having a conscience, none of that.
And part of it is still seeking validation from them….wanting them to realize how right we are, how worthwhile love is, how wrong he was, blah, blah blah.
Barking up the WRONG tree on that one!
you are right JAH, I know that you are.
Perhaps it’s my inner p’s delusions of grandeur:
I CAN SAVE HIM! I WILL, THRU THE POWER OF MY SUPERIOR INTELLECT, CONVINCE HIM TO COME TO THE LIGHT! riiiight.
Maybe it’s laziness again, I just don’t feel like starting over.
Well, as much as the reading helped me, it was Dr. Hare’s book that got me on to the idea of “saving the P”. Although I read that it is highly unlikely that he’d changed, I read also that “Families push them into treatment”. I was a family, right? So, I pushed and pushed. What is amazing is that lay people who had no idea of his diagnosis and even his relatives/ family said to me: “run, no contact, forget him, move on”. That’s when I had to be righteous, that’s when I had to prove to them that My P is a “Good P” of the Changeable Kind. A bit narcissistic on my part to think that I was more deserving than his other victims and that my sense of loyalty and responsibility to him would make a dent. Just got the bull angry and vicious. Yeap, JAH, you are right: “All a waste”