- Introduction: Awareness and the Nice Guy
Awareness is my foundation for destroying the nice guy. In order to destroy the niceness in me I need to be aware of what I’m doing and thinking when I’m being nice. When I say “being aware” what I’m talking about is drawing out the mentality and beliefs I have that lead to me being nice. It’s making clear the instinct I have for being nice and how it shows up with people and in situations. I want to know what my reactions to specific types of people are and to clearly identify my nice mannerisms, my tone of voice, the words I use, all of it. It’s about shining a light on my unconscious and making it conscious, as Jung would say. By becoming more and more aware of how I am inauthentic with people I will naturally become more authentic.
I once had a panic attack every night as I tried to get to sleep. I genuinely thought I was going insane. And then the following day, after maybe a few hours sleep, I would wake up and go to university as if the nightmare of the previous night did not even happen. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t write about it. I didn’t talk to anyone about it. During the day it disappeared, even from me.
That is how Niceness has existed in my life as well. I do it every day and it has destroyed so much of my life but I have so little awareness of how and why I am nice. I have been consumed by anger and rage and shame and all sorts of depression and anxieties, but I have not made the connection between all that misery and being nice. All that weak and appeasing behavior has been invisible to me as cause for a life and personality I hate.
By intentionally looking at my interactions each day I can examine what I actually do when I’m around people. I can begin to recognise the physical manifestations of nice, the body language, voice and eye contact, the way I take up space. I can identify the people and situations that trigger my niceness. When I begin to look back on the previous day, I am able to see where fears and shame have dictated my behavior, where I have acted and reacted in ways that are not what I want, where my behavior has brought about the kind of responses I do not desire.
I have an instinct for niceness. As soon as I’m in contact with someone my nice persona is activated. The fawn response is automatic in me. There is a literal change in my demeanor, in my body and the kind of responses I am primed to make. Someone else takes over. It’s not just fawning, but Mal the Fawn. Like in a Shakespearean play where they list the characters at the start. Mal the Fawn is there. He’s one of the Players. He’s waiting to come onto the scene just as soon as the trumpets sound, in this case as soon as someone engages me.
And it is only when I start to look at these interactions that I can even see this Fawn in me as something distinct, as a character with mannerism, beliefs, and the cause of so much of the negative outcomes I get. As he takes shape from the examination I do of my days and interactions some of that automatic behavior gets weakened. I can cancel that sudden panicked flight into the safety that is Mal the Fawn and instead hold whatever imagined tension there is. I can do something different. In the beginning all I’m looking for is a little bit of space where I can do something different.
This self examination is a practice, much like meditation only much more beneficial for my goal. It is a form of shadow work. I really believe so much of this whole destroying the nice guy is simply being aware of the Nice Guy. Awareness, as is often said, is the beginning of change. Cliché and true. Having the courage to look at who I really am, looking at myself with honesty, and taking responsibility for who I am, what I do, my thoughts, me as cause of all that I think and feel and so much of how others treat me, that is the real step towards leaving behind the inauthentic. The practice, each day, is to review what happened. I have begun to see the water I swim in. The water is the habitual behaviors, showing up weak and submissive, the constant smiling and appeasing, the belief that I am fundamentally wrong and inferior. When I see it I can change it.
- Where It Comes From: Triggers and Trauma
There are certain types of people that will trigger niceness in me.
Confident people trigger niceness and fawning from me. I seek out validation from them, and I act small and soft and weak to try and get that validation. I back down and avoid them if possible for fear of confrontation with them. The fact is the majority of people I encounter appear more confident than me. I think confidence in others inherently leads to some kind of confrontation. If I’m being myself eventually a confident person will disagree with me. Not in a negative way, but in a healthy, challenging way. But this tension and fear still causes me to pretend or withdraw.
People I perceive as being in authority will trigger my niceness. I become a boy when I am around people with power. This childishness is an attitude and a feeling. I become the weak and incapable one, the one to be led. I defer to them and laugh and agree and look to them for direction, so far beyond what their authority might warrant. I become softer and more naive. I am subservient and compliant. I will do what they say as soon as they say it, without thought or hesitation.
I imagine this immaturity comes across in my face and eyes as I look to them when they speak, when they don’t speak, ready to laugh or obey or whatever I think they want. I am become that eager little boy desperate for guidance and commendation. And as much as I am ashamed of this and despise that part of me, it is such a sad reality. This response is no doubt from that little boy I was and am again, desperate for a father to show him and guide him and I am looking for him in random men of authority, ready to play the boy again if they would only play the father. There is so much sadness in that.
I am nice to attractive women. To women in general, really. I want their validation and approval. I want them to like me and to approve of me. I want beautiful women to want me, especially, but I think I want all women to want me. And so, as I believe being nice will make that happen, I am soft and non threatening and non sexual. If I’m really attracted to a specific woman I might just shut down. I won’t speak much and I fade into the background. I become the quiet weird guy that either creeps her out or is invisible.
When someone, a woman, shows me that they’re attracted to me that triggers my niceness.
Groups trigger my niceness and shut me down. I fear groups and when I’m forced to be in one I cannot function. The anxiety turns into panic and I fear most of all being singled out. I go red and the anxiety on my face is so out of the ordinary, so beyond what could be appropriate, I’m even amazed by it. I cannot talk properly, I cannot engage in the conversation, and I certainly cannot express myself honestly. Being in a group is like being surrounded by multiple confident people in positions of authority, and at any moment one might call on me to prove myself and all the others will stare and wait in judgment. I have never seen anyone as anxious and embarrassed as I have been in a group.
Masculine men will trigger me. Any man who is stoic, strong, or who seems in charge will bring up in me a desire to be the good little boy. He is in charge and I am 12 years old waiting to be told what to do. And often that only repulses such a person.
Actions
Beginning with women, without a doubt the habit of approaching women, especially women I find attractive, will directly contribute to destroying my niceness and the inaccurate beliefs I have about women. I think this act alone will have secondary effects across the board as far as my people pleasing and fear of rejection goes. I can get more comfortable talking to women, seeing them more accurately as “flawed human beings” as Dr. Glover would say.
Reducing my fear of confident people and groups, as well as people in authority, ultimately comes down to having a more solid sense of self, more self respect, and more authenticity. I fear the rejection because I value these people so much. I fear the encounter because I give them power over me, superiority and a position of judgment. I fear their power because I fear being exposed as weak and fake. Becoming the judge of others will improve this dynamic. And of course being more authentic with people in general, speaking my mind, not trying to maintain an image, all this will reduce the niceness that is triggered.
- Embodied Niceness: Smile, Voice, Eyes, Space
When I think of the physical sensations I experience when I am being nice I think of how I react when I’m ashamed or embarrassed, which is interesting.
Eyes
My eyes are nice guy eyes. That is to say the way I look at people screams nice. My eyes are so soft and weak and infantile. They plead “help me” and “be nice to me”, and perhaps worst of all “I am not a threat to you”. I have seen it in others. I saw it in my father. That look of niceness, the lack of mature masculinity, the lack of strength. It’s repulsive. The message is so off putting, so disgusting that there is a physical withdrawal from that look and that face. It must feel dangerous to most people. It is as if I am saying, are you my mommy? Or at best, are you my friend? And as sad and tragic as that is – and it truly is – I am now responsible for it.
My eyes are a focal point for my niceness and my shame. I have become aware of how little eye contact I will make when I talk to someone. I’ll mostly look at their mouth. And if I do try to make eye contact with someone it’s like I’m on a timer and the pressure increases the longer I hold. Literal fear builds until I have to look away. I clearly have a deeply held belief that I am not supposed to look people in the eyes. That it is an affront to the other person, an act of aggression especially. I am crossing a social boundary by doing it. It is as if eye contact from me is an act of aggression and will lead to confrontation. This was the literal case with my father and I can only assume that is where I learned it.
I’ll consistently look down when I’m walking past people in public. If I’m approaching someone I’ll pretend to look to the side as if I’ve found something interesting. I don’t know where to look. I want to look at the person but again, the eye contact. It’s as if everyone else knows what to do with their eyes and I never got that lesson.
Something that would frequently happen when I was in public is my eyes would become very sensitive. I would need to blink and look down and close my eyes when I was around people, especially when I was walking past a lot of people. I would want to squint out of sensitivity and look down in order to protect my eyes. I would get paranoid that I looked upset when this happened, that my sensitive eyes made me look like I was crying, like I was emotional. And so I would try to hide as I walked, to hide my eyes and face, which was impossible, by looking down and away. This sensitivity and the fear that I looked like I was crying would become a vicious circle until walking past people in public would be a nightmare. The sensitivity would increase and the desire to hide my eyes even more would follow.
Space
I take up as little space as possible. I see it as a sign of my subservience, to please people and manipulate them into being nice to me, going easy on me, ignoring me. The smaller I am the less chance there is for confrontation. There is an element of martyrdom. There is an element of inferiority. But it’s mostly fear.
I squeeze into small spaces so that everyone else has more room.
I’ll hang back or go somewhere else and miss out instead of putting myself in a position where others might be inconvenienced.
I hunch over and inwards so as not to appear too big, too imposing. I fold my shoulders in as they are bigger than most, to hide my masculinity.
I put my head down and fold at the neck. I try to be much less upright, much less proud.
I will stop working out at a certain point, when I feel I am too big, when I am getting noticed and attracting attention for my size. I’ll eat less, injure myself, hold back, and stop training all together so as to not get bigger, more imposing, so as to not show too much pride, too much health, too much presence. I don’t want to be a threat. I don’t want the competition.
Taking up space could be re-framed as standing out. I try to be small and easily overlooked physically. Becoming muscular and healthy makes me more attractive and attracts more attention. Standing my ground and pushing into places where I am entitled to be also causes me to stand out, to be seen. This idea of taking up less space is a tactic I use to hide.
Actions
I can become more attractive.
Dress better.
Workout to become more physically imposing.
Stand tall and upright.
Walk with more confidence, more self assurance.
I can go into spaces and places I would normally leave to other people.
Voice
My voice is nice. And more specifically, stifled, weak and subservient. My voice expresses my desire to be validated, to please, to avoid confrontation. Sometimes I can’t speak. When I speak people can’t hear me. I will speak and others will ask “What?” or else they will not even hear it. Or they hear me but I speak with such a lack of assurance I am so easy to ignore.
I don’t really want to be heard.
My voice becomes feminine when I talk to people that trigger me, or when I am anxious. The pitch is higher, and goes higher at the end of sentences. I can hear myself and I often sound like a child. The tone, the naive positivity. And yet normally I have such a deep, masculine voice.
In this too I reduce myself. I can feel myself and hear myself taking away from my voice. Taking away the authority. Taking away what I perceive as harshness, a tone too dominant, too forceful. I weaken my voice for others. I weaken my character and confidence coming through my voice for others. I will add filler words, “Oh” and “Ah” to be less firm, less direct, to make me less certain and clear and for what I perceive will make others more comfortable.
Actions
I can become more conscious of my voice when I am speaking as often as possible.
Beyond this I can take voice and singing lessons, to learn to use my voice correctly.
Smile
A major physical attribute of my nice guy persona is smiling. One reason I smile so much is because I do not want to be seen as depressed and sad. I was often very depressed and noticeably so. The response from people was not pleasant. I began to smile so as to not turn people off and drive people away, or to be seen as weak and burdensome. I smile to avoid being ostracised.
I smile to attract people with what I think will make them like me and accept me.
I smile to put people at ease, so that I don’t scare them with my too serious and too intense face and demeanor.
I smile so that they will think well of me from feeling good about themselves.
I want people to smile at me and I get anxious and withdrawn when people don’t smile, when they’re too serious or stoic let alone upset or angry. I want everyone to just be nice to me and so I smile at them to try and make that happen.
When I was in high school other kids use to mock me for smiling so much. They would make a big smile on their face and hold it and then laugh at me. There have been times in my adult life when other people commented on the fact that I would just smile when they talked to me. I did it back then and I do it now.
I simply smile whenever I’m uncomfortable, and I’m almost always a little uncomfortable around people. I probably have a permanent little smile on my face in some interactions, desperately trying to show attentiveness and my idea of being welcoming and receptive. It’s not a real smile of course. In the past I’ve fake smiled so much that my mouth literally hurt from the strain. It’s a movement of the muscles, like flexing, and often not much more. I imagine my smile muscles have become twice a strong as the average person.
Actions
I am trying to get the tension out of my face with myofascial massage and some bioenergetic exercises.
I can work on smiling less by simply being more conscious of my face in interactions.
- Manipulation: Nicing People
I use niceness to try and manipulate people. I try to trick others into perceiving me in a certain way, and to get them to like me and be nice to me. I am trying to shape my image when I am nice to people. I want to write their opinion of me. In short I am trying to control other people. I believe I can manipulate them into thinking positively of me. It’s a very immature and naive perspective on other people. The idea that I can trick them and that I can use these tricks to push them into particular positive impressions and beliefs, and that they won’t be aware of it. The idea that I am smarter than them, more clever, and that they won’t be able to see what I am doing. They can’t tell I am faking it. They can’t tell that I am insincere and just out to take something from them. It’s as if I think they are children and I am the adult. It’s quite psychopathic really, or else very childish.
What I’m manipulating them into believing is that I am better than I really am. I want to convince them that I am a different person. Different to who I really am. I am not just trying to hide, but trying to hide in plain sight by wearing a mask and trying to project that mask into the perceptions of others. I am trying to wipe away my shameful self in other peoples minds, the only place it has mattered to me. I am trying to pretend and convince others to pretend that I am normal and valid. I believe that the perception of others is more important than reality.
If I am nice to others then they will be nice to me out of some desire to reciprocate. I am playing on human fairness and decency. If I’m visibly non threatening and agreeable, if I don’t project strength or challenge them, if I give them extra space and maybe do something for them seemingly wanting nothing in return, then the way they will repay me is to be nice back to me. There will be no confrontation. They will be reluctant to ever doubt me or disparage me. And I can tell you that this, for the most part, does work. I have avoided confrontation on average. I have been seen as someone who is innocent and to be given the benefit of the doubt. It of course comes at a cost. I begin to disappear. I am not considered as someone to give much thought to, both by others and myself.
I use niceness to try and manipulate women into giving me validation and approval based on the idea that what they want me to be is a nice guy. I believe they will approve of the nice ways I behave and talk to them. Within my niceness is an asexuality, a softness, nonthreatening, subservient, and behind this is the belief that women want this. “He’s such a nice guy” is the best compliment I could possibly get from a woman. The manipulation exists because I am not this guy. How I behave with women is an act, a manipulation designed to get something from them. I am hiding my true self because I think that is shameful and replacing it with a character I believe is acceptable and attractive.
Mirroring is something I have used unconsciously as a manipulation tactic. It is sometimes comical how quickly I will copy someone, especially someone in authority. Recently, someone put their hands above their head, an unusual position, and almost immediately I did the same thing, and I saw it just after I did it. I quickly then put my hands down. It showed me how desperately and overtly I am trying to get others to like me, to have them feel in charge and see me as agreeable, and doing this unconsciously. This is something I did naturally before I ever heard that it is a good thing to do to make others like you. This came to me naturally, unconsciously, out of instinct. I want to be safe and I am using mirroring and a hundred other unconscious tactics to achieve my aim.
I think manipulating people through niceness is a hard behavior to break. It is very deeply ingrained in me. It is also born out of fear. What is required then is to work on it over time and to put myself in a position where I can offend people, where I can cause confrontations. I have very little skill in handling confrontations so there is naturally some awkwardness.
I have begun to develop some healthy shame around using niceness as a social strategy. I am more aware of the lack of respect people have for me as a result of how fake and insincere I am. The majority of women find my niceness repulsive at worst and tolerable at best, and the fact that the kind of validation I am fishing for with these people mean nothing to me and will not change my life at all leads to less effort. It is like seeing a hot girl on the street as I drive by and no longer making the effort to turn and look. It means nothing and has no value for me at all.
I am much more concerned with what I value and what is real about me. This is a painful and slow process but it does reduce the validation I seek from others as I begin to get it from myself.
Actions
I am essentially hiding when I am with other people. Hiding and acting. By being more honest, giving my opinion, revealing details about myself – with consideration and care – will make manipulation redundant.
- Forgiveness, Grief, and Power
Confronting the niceness in my behavior and in my body is shame inducing. I am deeply ashamed by my cowardice and failure, and my continued failure to be a man and stand up for myself.
It is difficult to face my Nice guy behavior. That is an understatement of course. Especially my past, with my father, with any kind of bullying or humiliation. Where I acted with cowardice and weakness and let someone have power over me. Facing my own compliance is enraging. The shame it brings up and the anger. I do not want to have been that person. That boy. And of course that is where the real value and the opportunity for real change lies.
When I am confronted with a memory of my past I would rather ignore it. It could literally ruin my day and take me out of all that I want to do, take away my momentum and drop me down into a hole for days. I want to hide from it and consider it unimportant. I want it to go away so I can just live my life without having to be aware of who I was and what I’ve done.
I do not want to have to feel those feelings, and so I will feel anger and rage instead to cover it all up. I do not want to feel the shame of it, but I do. I still feel this shame even when I don’t consciously remember. The shame is in my body and in my character. I never get to hide from it.
I do not want to forgive myself for the mistakes I’ve made. I let my own father emotionally abuse me. I played along as he manipulated me and lied to me. I colluded with him and made myself small and weak and gave him all that I had so that he could pretend to be a man and so that I could pretend to be a son. I wasted myself and I betrayed myself and I wish that I hadn’t. Still today, well after his death, I play through imagined scenes in my mind where I fought back and called him out and forced him to see his own cowardice and shame.
And yet I did do this. I confronted him and criticised him in real life many times. None of it landed on him or me. I can hardly remember the instances but there were many. There was no healing for me in that confrontation. I still continue to fantasize and daydream of returning the shame, making him suffer with the awareness of his own cowardice and weakness. I have never forgiven my father for his betrayal.
He was incapable of remorse. He was not aware of who he really was. In so many ways what was so frustrating about him was that he was incapable of self awareness. He could not see himself or reality. It would have been much too painful for him, to see his own cowardice and failure, to see that no one respected him and that no one liked him. No one trusted him.
He never did what I am trying to do now and so remained a delusional, cowardly boy.
- Rewriting Myself: Awareness in Action
An examined life becomes a much more conscious life. I become a subject through this process. This deliberate practice of awareness, of review and examination, puts me in my life as an author. I have greater control. I am no longer simply bracing for the hit that keeps on coming, or no longer hiding from the hit that will eventually connect. I am actively taking part in my life. What was once a hit may no longer be a negative. It might be good for me. It might hardly effect me at all. It might be the very thing I’ve been looking for. Awareness and some self examination has the potential to change everything.
Practicing awareness increases awareness. It begins to spread and grow.
I do it in writing at the end of the day, at night, sitting at my desk. And that slowly deepens my sense of self. There are revelations. As I write I see more clearly what I am doing and why. I see more clearly who I am, what I value, how I am existing in the world.
I begin to become more aware during an interaction. There’s often a delay, like my awareness of what I am doing is trying to catch up to the me doing it. I do the usual nice guy behavior, say the nice guy thing, and as I’m doing it I am aware I am being nice. Eventually my awareness does catch up and gets in front until sometimes I am doing something different, no longer smiling as soon as I meet someone.
Instead of speaking to try and release the imagined tension I say nothing. Instead of smiling I simply hold eye contact. Instead of feeling insulted by someone’s less than nice behavior I say or do what I need to do and move on.
I have become more aware of my emotions and what triggers them. I feel, am aware of what I feel and I know why I am feeling something.
I have become aware of my values, of what is important to me. I discover my beliefs, fears and patterns.
And with all this awareness comes the possibility for intelligent action. Not the kind of action that comes from some self help book written by someone who became aware of what was running them and how they could fix it. I can act from my own needs. Instead of making up values that sound cool, I can see what I value based on experiences of acting for and against what I value. By examining my life I can see who I am being, why I do some of the things I do, and it opens the door to real change.
- Journaling and Daily Practice
A daily practice of reviewing your day, a “Social Journal” as I call it, is essential in destroying the nice guy.
Handwriting
I mostly write by hand in a notebook. In the past I have written a journal, and wrote about general things, thoughts and ideas, and would quite often touch on social interactions and my nice guy behaviors. But I was not focused on it. It can be such a difficult and confronting task, reviewing those events where I might display cowardice and weakness, interactions that are embarrassing and infuriating. Without focus and intention there is a greater chance that I will avoid that which is painful and instead look at something easier.
Video Journal
I have also done video journals in the past where I would sit in front of a camera daily and just talk about my day, and again thoughts and ideas. I enjoyed this. It was hard to start at first as it felt unnatural, but once I broke that awkwardness it became routine and I built a listener somehow, an approach to talking to myself in a screen. I started to have a sense of speaking to someone. I think this is quite an effective approach. It especially lends itself to the retelling of interactions, those stories that have nuance and require vague and sometimes confusing details and explanations.
To speak aloud of the days interactions feels easier, less taxing than writing. Writing, however, is more exact, more direct. When I write I try to get to the point and make it clear. I don’t want to write too much, especially doing it by hand, so I will not waste details. This can be a good thing. It can also lead to me leaving things out, ignoring things, revising in my head before I even write. Speaking it, taking much less effort, I can speak and pause and make half sentences and vague details and so add a lot more in. I can also say a lot and not say what is important. There’s a trade-off.
Talking to AI
I have talked to an AI in the past, although I was not talking specifically about interactions I’ve had, nor my nice guy behaviors. There is potential in this technology to use AI as a psychologist of sorts, someone that’s comfortable and potentially safe to talk to about shame and weakness, and to have it ask questions and then comment back with observations and ideas. I’ve gotten some pretty good action recommendations on nice guy problems from AI.
The point of all these methods is to have a medium where I feel comfortable enough to push through the self judgment. Whenever I do write or talk about an experience what comes up is judgment of myself, shame and embarrassment, and I instinctively want to pull away from that. That is, of course, the very thing I need to go into and to explore.
- Conclusion: The Path Forward
Journal about your interactions each day.
Use voice and video recording if this helps.
Experiment with talking to AI, if not a non-judgmental counselor.
Deliberately practice awareness and develop the courage to confront who you are. If you want to destroy the nice guy and become more authentic start with this practice and commit to it.