People Pleaser Quotes

“You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.”4”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“I can’t mess up because then people will think I’m a joke. I can’t mess up because then people won’t ever forget it, and they won’t let me forget it either. I can’t mess up because people will think that’s all I am—a mess. Once those lies are in play, these next ones follow: I have to do whatever it takes to not mess up. I have to do whatever it takes to cover up any mess I do make. It’s better to sweep anything I’m struggling with under the rug, out of sight. And then there’s the final lie of the Lonelies, the one that keeps you isolated and alone: Once I hide my faults and my messes, I will be at no risk of rejection, ridicule, or hurt. That’s probably the most epic lie of the Lonelies, because hiding doesn’t remove those risks at all and only keeps you alone and afraid, terrified of what someone might find out. Here’s another thing I’ve learned, and it’s not fun. Not letting you see me mess up is also about pride. I get it. It doesn’t feel like pride, does it? In many ways, it feels the exact opposite. I can’t let you see me mess up because I already feel plenty bad about myself, and I don’t want to give you any reason to pile on. But when you stop and think about it, there is a dose of pride mixed in there. I need you to think of me at this higher level. Not this lower level of being someone who doesn’t have her stuff together. It’s strange to realize that people pleasing and pride are birds of a feather. I didn’t see the connection for a long time, because I saw pride as being overly impressed with your own accomplishments and abilities, and I was nowhere near that.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“Jesus didn’t condemn her because He ultimately took her punishment upon Himself. Now, if her accusers couldn’t condemn her because they had their own issues, and if Jesus didn’t condemn her, did she have any business condemning herself? You probably noticed that there’s a word that comes up a lot in the previous paragraph. It’s that word condemn, and it means “to give judgment against, to judge worthy of punishment.”2 It’s a word we don’t like much in our culture. It’s what we hear when we watch a courtroom drama, when the defendant is “condemned” to their punishment after being found guilty. It’s the word we think of when someone is judging us. It’s a word that can make us uncomfortable because it’s so tied to punishment, loss, and failure. My inside critic was always condemning me, passing all kinds of judgment against me. And that was how I treated myself for a long, long time. Frankly, from the religious system I was part of as a child, I was trained to do it. It’s like I was willing to punish myself ahead of time so that no one else would have to. Somehow the math in my head was that if I beat myself up enough, maybe, just maybe, I could avoid any commentary from the outside critics in my life. I’d come up with harsh disciplines to run my life by. I’d get up earlier than everyone. I’d try to pray longer. I’d feel guilty if I felt good. If I was having a good hair day and liked what I saw in the mirror, then I’d beat myself up about that. I was so consumed with living in my glass house, and so worried someone would throw a stone, that I was hurling boulders at myself all the time as a preventive measure. Which makes no sense, not when I say it now. But that’s how I lived for far too long. And when I’m not careful, I go there again. Jesus showed that to this young woman who did deserve to die under Israelite law. She was supposed to be stoned. But Jesus gave her a way out: Him. He is the answer. He can forgive your sin because He takes the punishment for you. Jesus was not shoving her sin under the rug. He was showing her that He would be stoned instead of her. Why? So she could live in freedom from her sin—from being condemned and being controlled. She could walk in freedom because of Jesus. So can I. And so can you.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“when all you know of yourself is what someone else is telling you about yourself, it’s a cage like no other.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“Seeking acceptance or seeking to avoid disapproval are the two big mile markers on the people-pleasing path. And both of those will get you twisted in knots eventually.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“is built around accommodating those things for them in order to gain their approval, whether they’ve directly told you that’s what they expect or you’ve imagined it all on your own.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“a nutshell, people pleasing is when someone else’s approval, happiness, preference, or opinion comes before anything else in your world. And your whole world”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“But people pleasing at its core is this: when we put everyone else’s preferences and opinions above our own or above what we know is true and right for the purpose of gaining acceptance and approval or to avoid criticism. It’s when we feel like someone else’s approval is critical to our survival and our understanding of our worth. It’s when we lose the ability to stand up for ourselves in order to keep someone else happy. It’s when we’d rather just go along than have that tough conversation or confront harmful behavior in someone else.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“When you’re a people pleaser, all your thrashing to make your feelings smaller, all your managing, ultimately drags you down deeper into the waters of big trouble.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“Jesus wants me to move past my own discomfort to love others well,”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“You and I, we live in glass houses today. The glass of the screens and the devices we’re always on bring the idea of living in glass houses to a whole new level. Like never before, our lives are on display all the time. We present ourselves online. We interact with people across the globe on a regular basis. We travel to other cities and countries, and we meet more people along the way. There’s a statistic out there that says you and I will meet eighty thousand people in our lifetimes.1 That’s a huge jump from the number of people we would have met if we lived, say, a hundred or a thousand years ago.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“The Bible tells us to fear God—a right and holy fear, a reverential awe and love for Him. It’s because of the combination of both His all-powerful nature and His grace He gives us through Jesus. The right fear of God is because He is in control of everything, and, at the same time, kind, compassionate, and loving. To have a fear of the Lord is to trust Him, to believe His Word, to know that He will do what He has promised. That place reserved in our hearts for a reverential fear of God can get traded down for a fear of man. What do I mean by the phrase fear of man? It means to make your concern about others’ opinions, reactions, judgments, and responses bigger than anything else, even bigger than God. A distorted form of people pleasing is another way of saying a fear of man.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“When I’m in an unhealthy people-pleasing mode, I’m always in my mind. I get tunnel vision about what I’m feeling. My nervousness. My anxiety. My desire for comfort. And when my focus is primarily on me and when your focus is primarily on you, we miss all the ways we can authentically engage in the community we were created for, where we serve others from a pure heart and receive the blessing of being part of the family of God.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“Esau was furious. Jacob gained a reputation for being something of a con artist (well deserved). And their relationship, for many years to come, was one filled with anger, suspicion, fear, bitterness, and resentment. All from trading down. Now, make no mistake, Jacob and his mom for sure did an end-around to gain the bigger blessing for the younger twin. But Esau was the one who put the whole thing in play when he traded down his rightful inheritance, when he allowed the value of his birthright to be traded for a bowl of bean soup. Esau did it because he was tired and hungry. And in a moment, he lost everything. He chose a bowl of soup over an inheritance and a blessing. His life was never the same. I’ve done the same thing. Not because I was hungry for food, but because I was starving for approval. I have done it to protect a carefully crafted image. I’ve done it to keep people at arm’s length so they wouldn’t be able to see my flaws and rough edges. I’ve long been willing to trade true relationships for something more surface level. I’ve traded joy for instant approval. I’ve traded down, exchanging genuine peace for avoiding conflict. All that trading down adds up, and not in a positive way.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“If a friendship, relationship, or community makes you feel so desperate to be a part of it that you must perform and produce and perfect in order to be accepted, can I just tell you? Run. It’s an electric fence not worth scaling. Any relationship that begins on that basis is likely to fail. At the very least, it will always make you feel small. You’ll get zapped when you least expect it—and even when you do, I’m here to tell you that more than you want to be part of that sorority of the electric fence, you want to be known. To be loved. To be treasured. To be appreciated for just who you are. And when you let go of desperate, you’ll find the freedom that’s just on the other side of that fence.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“That’s when I realized that there was something I wanted even more than a polished reputation. I want real. Real relationships. Real freedom. Real conversations and real connection.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“It’s such an incredible example of the bone-deep need we have as humans for companionship and the lengths we will go to to create those relationships, even when all we have available is a volleyball. It shows that we can have the basic sustenance we need to support our physical lives, like food and water and shelter, but that we can’t live, truly live, without others in our lives. The list of ways we’re wired for human connection goes on and on. People who aren’t connected to others have higher rates of depression and cardiovascular disease. They grapple with anxiety and are at greater risk for strokes.3 When we have healthy relationships with others, we feel like we belong. We get bursts of happy brain chemicals when we help other people, share our resources, give hugs. To be human is to seek out other humans, to break bread and share life and shoulder each other’s burdens.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“Have you heard of super-agers? These are people who live into their eighties and nineties and beyond with vitality and spark. Their memories and cognitive skills remain sharp, far better than many of their same-age colleagues. Researchers and physicians have been looking at these people, trying to understand what makes them stay so vibrant in the face of aging. And guess what they’ve figured out? Yep. Super-agers are super social.1 It’s one of the top things researchers find when they look at the similarities of super-agers. Not their daily diets. Not their histories. Not their finances or medical care or vitamin regimen. It’s their connection to other people. They remain very engaged in their communities. They have people over. They have deep conversations. They care for people, and people care for them. And somehow, all the way to the cellular level, it makes a difference in not only how long they live but how they live.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“in addition to wanting to have peace and joy, we want love. Our challenge is that we have such a distorted view of what love is. We confuse people pleasing for love; we think, on the one hand, that if we can just make people happy with us, they will feel loved, and we’ll feel loved in return. That’s a disastrous road.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“My understanding of my own worth was so wrapped up in someone telling me I was doing a good job or that I was so easy to be around.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“In a nutshell, people pleasing is when someone else’s approval, happiness, preference, or opinion comes before anything else in your world.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“But people pleasing at its core is this: when we put everyone else’s preferences and opinions above our own or above what we know is true and right for the purpose of gaining acceptance and approval or to avoid criticism. It’s when we feel like someone else’s approval is critical to our survival and our understanding of our worth.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations

“that religious system and its requirements were at the core of how I saw myself and how I judged myself. The echo of that system’s demands would ricochet off the fragile edges of my soul for years, inflicting damage that, at some level, I could feel but couldn’t see until I experienced the healing medicine of gospel grace.”
― Jinger Duggar Vuolo, People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations