Dr. Mike Bechtle - The People Pleasers Guide to Loving Others without Losing Yourself

The Quest for Freedom

I was always going to let someone down, so I decided it wouldnt be me anymore.

Unknown

I wrote this book because I was tired.

Ive spent my whole life being a people pleaser. I didnt realize it was happening because it had become so much a part of my lifemuch like water goes unnoticed by a fish. I wanted people to like me, and almost all my decisions were based on how to make that happen.

When I was in high school, I felt insecure about myself (doesnt everyone?). So when I first started working, I picked jobs that were different from what my friends were doing: working in a morgue, selling sheet music, running a commercial printing press, presenting a drive-time radio show, doing wedding photography, and so on. I figured that people would notice what I did and would be impressed.

It worked; they were impressed. But it didnt help me. Deep inside I knew that they were only impressed with what I was doing, not with who I was on the inside (or so I thought). I never gave them a chance to see who I really was because it was too risky.

I also made it a point to be nice. I was attracted to people, especially adults, who were kind and agreeable and never got upset. They were consistent, and everybody liked them. I wondered why they never got angry about anything, and I assumed they just werent angry people. So when I got angry, I learned to stuff it inside so nobody would know. I might be irritated at someone on the inside, but Id say, Oh, thats OK.

I wasnt OK. I became a counterfeitbut I believed it was essential to survival.

In other words, I was never my true self; I was a distorted mirror image of myself that I had created for others to see. This took a lot of work, because I could never let my guard down. My faade required constant vigilance. It had become my identity, and I was focused on keeping up that image.

I was a serial people pleaser.

Searching for a Solution

Eventually, I started running out of fuel. I realized I was living for others instead of myself, but I felt trapped and didnt see a way out. I had trouble sleeping at night because my mind was racing with anxiety. I knew this wasnt sustainable and that at some point I would crash and burn.

I went to a bookstore to see what was available that might help and found a number of books to choose from. I flipped through most of them and found three common messages:

1. People pleasing is bad.
2. You need to stop being a people pleaser.
3. The way to stop is to focus on pleasing yourself, not others.

It kind of made sense but somehow didnt ring true. I felt like these books were telling me to become irritating and obnoxious to others and just pay attention to me. This seemed foreign to the person I had been my whole life. I wasnt an irritating person; I was a nice person. Did I have to stop being nice?

I read those books, then checked out different articles and websitesand found much of the same advice: I needed to change my focus from meeting the needs of others to taking care of #1me. The more I read, the more I saw the same perspective. If this was true, my lifelong focus on others had been robbing me of myself.

I apparently needed to become more selfish.

But deep inside, nagging thoughts kept rising.