Preview
  • The Disease to Please

  • Curing the People-Pleasing Syndrome
  • By: Harriet Braiker
  • Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
  • Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (108 ratings)

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The Disease to Please

By: Harriet Braiker
Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
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Publisher's summary

Who are people pleasers? They are the people who say yes, when they want to say no - the perennial nice person whose resentment is concealed behind their public “happy face”. Now best-selling author and frequent Oprah guest Dr. Harriet Braiker offers help for anyone who has ever felt the resentment of giving 100 percent of themselves to others and getting nothing in return.

The Disease to Please explodes the dangerous myth that “people-pleasing” is a benign problem. It is the first book to treat people pleasing as a serious psychological syndrome, and it breaks new ground in its approach to offer a cure.

Dr. Braiker offers a 21-day action plan for curing The Disease to Please. A daily psychological workout and skills-training program, it will help listeners replace the compulsion to comply with a more conscious and reasoned choice to care. The Disease to Please includes:

  • Extensive case studies
  • Diary and journal formats to help recovery
  • An effective three-stage short-term therapy approach
©2001 Harriet B. Braiker, PhD (P)2005 McGraw Hill-Ascent Audio
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What listeners say about The Disease to Please

Average customer ratings
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  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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Very helpful advice

I liked how the author used real life examples to back up each positive and negative trait expressed

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Informative

The writing was paced very well. The stories were very relatable. This is my first audible book and it was a great first pick.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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Very Insightful

This is the book for all my people-pleasers! This book would be very beneficial for those who are going into the mental health field too. It was kinda boring to read but it was very informative and explained quite a bit to me even about myself that I never fully realized. Everything just kinda made sense and the pieces just fell into place.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

VERY THOROUGH!

Soothing voice, very thorough and lots of information about the whole dynamics of people pleasing and avoidance that people pleasers do. As a people pleaser I can relate to a lot of this and also implement the language to stand up for myself in a calm assertive way. This author went very in depth and you can tell she has a lot of of experience and knowledge about human behaviors and why we do what we do based on our past experiences in life. Well written!

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Hard to balance usefulness

The book is structured in a way that makes people pleasing behaviors out to be almost a pathology or a syndrome. That’s not always the case. While it’s helpful to understand some of the behaviors and backgrounds, I personally felt the ability to manage my relationships were not well served with this book. It’s more interpersonal relationships for couples versus the overall concept that many of us focus on others instead of our selves.

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1 person found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Good but doesn’t feel finished.

I like to book but I was hoping for more tips on how to heal. It felt like the whole book was about the issues from every angle and nothing on how to solve.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Never before.

I have never before been so pulled awake.
I am listening to it again.
The reader,
the statements,
the directness,
even the repetition;
everything is true and what I needed and not a single sentence wasn’t.
It was hard to hear without wondering what life could have been like, had I only known it 4 years ago.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Best book for People Pleasers

As a licensed counselor, I’ve been on the hunt for a deep, helpful book I can recommend to my clients…. I finally found it! This is it!!! I highly recommend this book for anyone who thinks they may have a people pleasing mindset.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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very informative and targeted

a out of the info here was not new to me but framed specifically around people pleasing it brought a me awareness and helped me really target the areas I need to work on.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Excellent Narrator and Message

My only gripe is she read the book a little quickly so I had to bump the speed down a hair to really try and absorb and think about what was being read. Loved the narrator’s confident tone though and overall great performance.

The messaging in the book I found very helpful with no wasted stuff. There was a lot of examples where the male party was the aggressor against a female party. I know thats the Norm, some of us guys have people pleasing issues issues as well.

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