Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > What Helps?

Epidemic Nice-ness

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Bella_French:

--- Quote from: Certain Hope on August 22, 2007, 10:10:31 AM ---Hi, Bella,

You're welcome!
I hear what you're saying... and I agree that "too nice" is not always packaged together with what we may consider traditional passive-aggressive behavior.
But please note that passive aggression is not always acted out...
for instance, we're not told that Joe did anything in this little story to punish Sally, nonetheless he retains (and accumulates) passive aggression.

The whole point here to me is that the anger is passive, as opposed to active, and I also believe that it's cumulative... often resulting in disease.
 
So I think that if a person is not getting angry about being used by others, then that person is probably not "too nice"... unless he/she is so caught up in enabling that it's become a lifelong role. I don't really know anyone like that, though. "Too nice" always results in plenty of anger and resentments, from my experience with people. From what I've seen (and done!), that anger often results in a person playing a martyr/victim role.

And that's how it was for me, which is why I really identified with Joe.
I stored up the anger and continued to chalk up little gold stars on my internal scoresheet.
I don't think that I really acted out against those people for whom I'd accumulated resentment as they'd taken advantage of my "niceness".
What I did was to judge other people by my standard of niceness and find most other folks lacking... and that made me far from a genuinely wonderful person. It also continued to attract me to other "too nice" people who were actually just as boundary-less as I... as well as some really bad abusers.

It's hard to explain, but now I understand that the people I used to view as good and helpful, but less than completely caring (they didn't have as many gold stars as I), are just exactly the ones who were genuinely "nice", without being "too nice". I was too nice out of fear, not out of any real understanding of what it meant.

Anyhow, I don't feel that I was very genuine or wonderful then, but things are looking up considerably these days :) It's so good to feel real!

Thanks, Bella, for the opportunity to talk this through more thoroughly! I knew there was something here that I was missing, but couldn't quite express it.
Hope I haven't made you dizzy... lol. Hugs.

With love,
Hope


--- End quote ---

. Thankyou so much for replying, Hope. I'm really enjoying the opportunity to chat about this with you.

Something that I wonder about, after reading your post, is whether or not all people necessarily get angry at the same things? And is harboured `anger' pre-destined because someone is nice by nature? For example, is it possible that `giving' may feel like `being used' to one person, and they would harbor resentment because they `gave' , but for another person it could be a legitimate source of joy or have some other payoff?

I am probably more like Joe than sally, but I think where I differ to him is that I have a strong sense of `ownership' over my decisions,  so I do not hold others accountable for my `niceness' or giving too much (which i do sometimes, in some ways).  I also differ to Joe in that if I didn't think it was fair of my partner to go camping, I would still regard it as my responsibility if I lacked the skills or confidence to say so.

When it comes to negotiating my needs, I know I lack confidence in some areas such as negotiating a good salary in the workforce. And yet, I do not feel that I should blame anyone for this. Its just something I need to work on.

Does that sound kind of suppressed? I hope not, lol

X Bella

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