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.
Skylar,
It is so interesting when we’re given these kinds of revealing songs, poems, stories, etc, by the paths.
What interests me is the seemingly complete, in a deep psychological sense, lack of awareness that is born of their pathologically elevated defenses- against such awareness.
He may have ‘thought’ it was a message about how foolish you were. And you may have experienced that too. But to look even further I see it as an unconscious manifestation of his effect on others, and that he has NO IDEA that he is part of this song that is the ’cause’, and what we read here is the ‘effect’.
In this case the level of despair they are able to manifest in those who get close to them. That they can induce the profound lack of self-preservation that we hear in these lyrics.
So this stuff kinda leaks out of them, and they don’t have any idea that they are ‘represented’ in what they reveal to us. They ‘believe’ they are ONLY revealing something to us about ourselves.
The fact of their absolute ‘defendedness’ against all awareness of their actual intentions and subsequent behavoirs is what is SO difficult for people to understand who have not been personally involved.
Leonard Cohen, a songwriter, wrote something about giving up perfection, that everthing has a ‘crack’, and that is how the ‘light’ gets in.
With these severly n/p types the ‘crack’ that we all have, that lets in the awareness, the light, and subsequent ability to know ourselves over a continuum of time/experience, is stuffed with epoxy. There is no place for real awareness to enter. And all their psychological energy goes to making sure that crack is NEVER opened. To ensure NO awareness is ever allowed.
And so, even if he was able to identify your desperation, he will never be able to identify his own. You actually didn’t ‘need’ him to point anything out to you. Because you have the human capacity for personal insight. And with our capacity for such we bear the feelings of regret, guilt, sadness, foolishness, joy, excitement, and possibility that come when we find ourselves awakening to our next level of personal awareness.
He has so very little, to no capacity, that it will never make a discernable difference in his life. He will always be on the hamster wheel of his pathology, causing suffering in anyone he can.
You keep your chin up, sister. And I’ll do the same.
Slim
Henry,
What you say is incredibly profound, that perhaps their dying is the only real thing they will do. And how much easier it is to grieve something real, huh?
This makes my heart rest a little easier
HP/JAH and All,
I still have the ‘headslap’ conversations too. Matter-of-fact I have been blathering away in my head for nearly two freaking years. Just the other day, in the middle of a doozie, I had a different kind of ‘thought reaction’ when I realized I was DOING it (again!), and it felt different.
I realized it was ALL in my head. I KNEW I wouldn’t contact him. I KNOW what I know, about him, or any other nastybadman. I KNEW what I was having was a tirade, not real, and would not happen. I did my best to breathe and just watch the thoughts go hither and fro. And then I felt more or less released from the worry about what I was thinking (as I have been nearly obsessed with trying to ‘control’ my thoughts these last 23 months), and just relaxed.
Don’t know if it will happen the same way the next time. But I felt pleasantly detached when this understanding came into view.
I figure, it is only my own brain at work, still trying to break the code to unfathomable. And though these thoughts certainly can create some painful feelings for me, they didn’t register as SO harmful, and that felt liberating. And feelings won’t, though they sometimes feel as if they could, kill me.
And I know the Law of Attraction fanatics would say ‘what you focus on you manifest’ (and I agree, in a dedidedly unfanatical way). Well, I am NOT focusing on getting him back, or hooking up with another crazy Assclown (THANK-YOU JAH for baggagereclaim.com!). I am filling my mind with lots more knowledge than fantasy…..So, I can relax on that account too.
I keep trying to remind myself that these are processess that take TIME. And that I am not a big fat loser for having ‘another talk’ in my head. And, it’s just in my head. It is not spread on the front page of the paper, or being flown behind a plane. It is my own juicy mix of neuro-chemical strengths and weaknesses at play, and I really wanna have it be OK, with ME, to do this however I need to. As long as I maintain no actual physical/email/text/etc… contact.
I am tired of rejecting me.
That is one of the beauties of LF. We can do our thing within a loving community. My gratitude for this is huge.
Slimone…love that post, it should help me! I’ll try that…letting the thoughts jus go by.
I’m with you on the unfanatical way….What happens if you accidentally run over your child? You get cancer? I went to India and saw all the suffering there and realized NO, I won’t accept that all these people attracted this into their life!
Sometimes the magic works, sometimes not. 🙂
JAH,
Yeah, I relate to your India trip, and your thoughts on the subject of attraction.
Personally, I feel the current ‘rendition’ of this recycled ‘spiritual’ principle, is representative of our collective, American, narcissism. Our need to believe that WE are really in control of the great beyond, and that it is our influence that generally regulates whatever infinite beingness may be at cause for all existence.
I could write a novel on this subject. I will refrain!
Slimone, I think your perspective sounds really interesting. I’d like to hear more.
Slim – You are profound in the way your feeling. You are right there with alot of us. I think we are on the brink of the top of the hill of recovery – just now seeing how futile it is to hang on to anything about them. We have had to learn how too unlove them when we discovered the truth. And learn how too live with the truth.
Slim, Now that is some deep stuff, your 6:06 post…that could be an all nite conversation – glass of wine?
Kim/Henry and All,
First off, Henry, I would love to have a glass with you and talk the night away. But, sadly, after the second glass and the clock hit eleven, I would fall asleep in mid-sentence. But seriously the invitation is well received. I would LOVE it!
And I agree with your sense of where many of us are. I hadn’t thought of it, but there are a bunch of us getting ready to do a tobbogan (how in the world do you spell that?) ride down the other side of the mountain, and really let go. It is an absolute honor to be a witness to so much beautiful humanity, isn’t it? Especially after the you-know-whats.
Kim,
I am not sure my ‘novel’ will be so interesting, though I appreciate your interest.
That said I believe I could say a bit, and hopefully not offend anyone’s spiritual beliefs. I really don’t want to upset anyone. These are my ideas, and that’s all.
In my opinion this idea of focusing one’s attention and applying energy to that focus has been turned into something entirely different than it’s essential truth and scope.
I believe focused attention and intention has been interpreted in a manner that has stripped it of it’s fundamental practicality and application, by turning it into a ‘practice’ that promises to feed the masses of egos want-what-they-want-when-they-want-it…. in the quanitity and color they want it in. And gives the false impression that we merely need to collage, affirm, and INTEND our way to whateverwewant. OH, and we have to CONTROL OUR THOUGHTS. And the reward of controlling our thoughts is, you guessed it, we can have ANYTHING we want.
Any devout practitioner of spiritual endeavor would tell you it is crazy to believe you can control your thoughts, let alone give your ‘order’ to the universe by doing so.
I am sure, if this were so, the the Dahli Lhama would have managed to get China out of Tibet, long ago. (sorry if I butchered the spelling of his title).
Many great leaders have encouraged their followers to shift the WAY they think about something to bring about change that requires the belief and cooperation of many to succeed. And we all here encourage each other to drop our self-hating blame so that we can come back to ourselves and find our lives again. And certainly healthy self-loving/knowing/thinking will assist anyone in successfully navigating their life.
But in this current incarnation of the LOA one need not apply elbow grease, none is needed. And what you desire need not be anything other than personal whimsy. Just apply WILL, stubborn inflexibility, and grandly believe that one is in total charge, and can control one’s own thoughts to the degree that the moon and stars will align to meet our desires.
And, if a Tsunami wipes out your village, or your child is murdered….well you must have attracted that to yourself, by the way you live your life and think your thoughts. You need to take responsibility for your shoddy mind control, and mixed messages to the universe. You just send confusing messages, so this is what you get. Sucker!
Sound like the philosophy and mindset of any folks we know?
Sounds like more narcissitic rhetoric to me……. wash-rinse-repeat.
Oh, I don’t usually rant off topic. So forgive if I am a bore.
slim
http://www.reviews.ctpdc.co.uk/lasch.html
Slim,
I know none of us intended to attract an N but we live in a world of them and it’s only going to get worse. Our responsibility is to educate ourselves and others. Stay vigilent.
I agree with so much of what you say, but I must disagree on your take on my Lovefool song. My P is not oblivious to what he is doing. His entire goal in life is to serve the devil. He believes he is possessed. He knows he loves to hurt others. He wanted to brag about it to me but he couldn’t so he gave me the song instead. He knows he will go to hell and his goal is to take as many souls with him as he can. He will take the evil ones by making them do more evil and he will take the good souls by pushing them to despair and commit suicide. It is all a calculated plan based on his delusions of being the special one of satan. I’m not kidding and I’m not exagerating because I hate him. I don’t hate him, I feel sorry for him.