Its frustrating that no one else in this discussion actually understands your problem.
I do, and I sympathise and its driving me nuts that there is little discussion about this on the net. And solutions like 'install another dialer' are just as unhelpful, because there are some nice features about the new android dialer.
Given there is a search option up the top of dialer that searches all contacts by default, I don't see why there is not the option to change the contacts button from "all contacts" to "MY contacts".
(and for those that don't get it- maybe you don't manage your google contacts the way google first encouraged us to do, i.e. label regular contacts as 'my contacts')