People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

In her vulnerable follow-up to Becoming Free Indeed, bestseller Vuolo recounts how she began to change the approval-seeking mindset she internalized during her upbringing on the TV series 19 Kids and Counting. Raised in a “controlling, man-centered, and legalistic” religious system where her ability to follow rules was “at the core of how I saw myself,” the author recalls “doing everything I knew to avoid any kind of confrontation or failure... to be the most ‘perfect’ I could be.” Soon after she got married, those efforts grew stifling, and she decided to break free of “the fear of rejection, imperfection, and criticism.” Describing how God’s acceptance helped her serve others from a “place of genuine joy,” she explores how readers can own their flaws in order to build more genuine relationships, engage in productive conflict, and surround themselves with people who don’t judge them for their weaknesses. Candidly admitting that her struggle to abandon approval-seeking is ongoing (“I’ve come a long way but, my friend, I’ve got a long way to go”), she makes particularly salient points about how people-pleasing exacerbates loneliness—“You can be all alone in the midst of a crowd when you’re more worried about messing up than you are about making progress”—and how it undercuts faith in a God who “created you to... thrive in healthy community.” This inspires. (Jan.)