Overly concerned about what people think of you? Every experience of the fear of man shares one feature: people are big. They have grown to idolatrous proportions in our lives, and they control us. Since there is no room in the heart to worship both God and people, Edward Welch argues, the problem is not low self-esteem but misplaced worship - and the cure is not thinking more of ourselves but learning to fear God rightly.

Welch works through peer pressure, codependency, the desire for approval, and the paralysis that comes from needing others to validate us, treating each as a symptom of the same root. He is a careful biblical counselor and writes for the person actually caught in this, with questions and application throughout. This second edition is revised and updated. One of the most widely recommended books in biblical counseling.