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I Used to be Nice but I Gave It Up
My therapist once told me that being nice was overrated. It took me awhile but I ultimately saw the light and I’ve given up being nice, thinking about being nice, or even caring whether I am nice or not. Nice has become irrelevant to me.
Kindness, though, is a different matter. Kindness is very important.
On the surface, kind and nice are similar. Kind people avoid being cruel, say kind things, do not shame or dismiss or humiliate other people purposefully. Those seem like “nice” behaviours too. I see a lot of “nice” people in my psychotherapy practice. They are also very unhappy.
Kind and nice might look alike, but the sources are different. The foundation of niceness is what other people think of you. The foundation of kindness is compassion.
Be Nice!
“Be nice” always means to be mindful of how other people are perceiving you. Don’t do anything that might disturb, and, in fact, if you can do something that influences someone to think that you are a nice person, that’s even better. Being “nice” includes using manners that you have been trained to use, adding value to conversation, using praise or compliments to make other people feel good, and doing things for other people.
Niceness, however, can go beyond these behaviours to include putting yourself out for people, trying to get inside another person’s head to fix how they are feeling or how they are thinking, extending yourself even to your own detriment in order to “help” someone else or to “make them feel better.” It can move into ignoring truths that are obvious but that would create conflict or distress if named. There may be lying involved. Often the nicest people are the most conflict averse.
Additionally, people who are extremely “nice” may operate under an unspoken assumption of give-and-take. That is, I do so much for you, why can’t you do what I want you to? When do I get to have someone bend over backward for me? This is a…
