No More Mr. Nice Guy Treatise - Part 2
No More Mr. Nice Guy Treatise - Part 2
How to end your toxic shame and take ownership of your life
This is the second segment in my series on how to rescue you or others from the nice guy syndrome. The first part of the series introduced "What is a nice guy?" and the nice guy's foundational beliefs. Several aspects of this treatise are inspired by the book, No More Mr. Nice Guy. You can listen to it for free here.
Thank you to all my readers who made this past two weeks a record for my writing. My article on friendship and the first part of this series drove more views than all of my articles on COVID combined. The personal notes from men all around the world were truly inspiring. Over the past week, I met several men over coffee who wanted to discuss friendship and masculinity. They found reassurance and conviction in my writing and wanted a way out.
Be courageous and don’t give up. Other people are fighting with you and for you. Love the nice guys in your life. I certainly love mine and I care for all of them. This entire series is meant to help in a kind (but not nice) way. I’ve walked in your shoes before. Have hope and do not despair.
"Christ does not simply suggest that we endure, tolerate, and survive life's difficulties, but that we conquer them." - Neil L. Andersen
Before we start the second part of my series (The Distorted Self), I want to address one of the critiques of my first composition. I received feedback that it was “overly secular.” There is a reason for this, and I have a strategy:
Starting with natural theology -The first part of my series will cover natural theology (what is) over special revelation (should be). These are things that are true in nature and are independent of faith. To illustrate this point, the Bible doesn’t tell you how to build a chair, but chairs exist. This is a category mistake.
Relevancy - Our culture is consumed with secularism and scientism. I’m writing with the language and perspective of our time so that this will resonate broadly (1 Corinthians 9:20, Galatians 3:28, Acts 17)
Misunderstanding within the Church - “Big Eva” has redefined much of Scripture to perpetuate nice guy syndrome. Words and phrases from The Bible are falsely seized and create implicit mental and cultural debt in our minds in favor of the nice guy syndrome. Christian nice guys associate their faith with being nice. This is a false supposition I reject.
Hard pill to swallow - The nice guy disease is so formidable to eliminate that nice guys invent endless excuses to hide, lie about their desires, and perpetuate their idol worship of approval. Moving a man’s emotional center from people to God requires a sledgehammer.
Christian nice guys have made people and affirmation their emotional center. Their “faith” is truly based on unhealthy co-dependency, not Jesus. Shaking that idol loose is arduous and feels like an earthquake to their identity, but when they do, they will gain the confidence, respect, joy, and identity they seek, which can only come from Christ. I will write an additional fourth segment on “Christian nice guys” and elaborate further on these matters as the final post in this series.
The Distorted Self
When I was in high school, believe it or not, I was voted the nicest guy in school. Two years in a row, actually! My teams across my companies would be shocked to hear that fact today (Surprise, and don’t use it against me). This “honor” was given to me before I became a Christian. My faith and the church set me on a journey to view myself as worthy and to stop being nice, because God says I am worthy, and my approval comes from Him, not men.
If I can kill my nice guy syndrome, so can you. It is time to have the determination and courage to fix it. You can’t feel the love and care from others you want unless you know who you are and your identity. Other people want to love you, but you don’t love yourself. Stop being impressionable and gain trust in your own agency. Develop self-respect and walk with dignity. That is the focus of this part of my series. I want you to become a good man, the opposite of a nice guy.
Let’s break down how nice guys distort reality and themselves, leading to a constant sense of brokenness, shame, rejection, and destructive neurotic behavior.
“If a nice guy believes he isn’t worth much, his actions toward himself will reflect this belief.” - Dr. Robert Glover
Toxic Shame
The blood and self-destructive pathogen within a nice guy’s heart is toxic shame. Nice guys believe their needs are important enough to be met and fulfilled. Still, they try to satisfy them secretly with manipulation and covert behavior due to toxic shame. Because of unspoken expectations and their faux nice behavior, their needs are viewed by other people as not necessary or even noticeable. Nice guys are scared to stand up for their needs, and they believe their needs should be evident by their good works and being nice. Consequentially, nice guys view themselves as unimportant because others ignore their wants and desires; they think they are only worthy of shame.
Nice guys prostrate to the point their soul feels like it’s dying, creating a deep hole filled with anger and shame. Nice guys follow a simple pattern of self-destruction:
“I have needs that are not being met, probably because I am bad.”
“I have to be good to get my needs met in the way I want.”
“I have to do everything well to satisfy everyone else so that I get my needs met.”
They shut out opportunities to make themselves happy and fulfilled by believing their lack of self-respect narrative, replacing it with endless people-pleasing and compliance. Nice guys expect other people to satisfy their needs because they are “good boys” and “did the right thing”. When it doesn't happen, nice guys become resentful and frustrated. Nice guys try to earn what they want through approval and appeasement, which never pans out.
Nice guys constantly strain to manage their anxiety by doing everything right so nobody gets mad, criticizes them, or leaves them. This is a consequence of toxic shame developing in childhood that carries on into adulthood. The anxiety about themselves is formed from the lack of ability to move on from the past and learn from mistakes. Toxic shame prevents nice guys from having a positive and healthy view of themselves. They grew up believing they were unlovable, defective, inadequate, or worthless. From this detrimental mental foundation that resists positive reinforcement (compliments, praise, and love), nice guys struggle and regularly stumble to generate a healthy and redemptive sense of self-worth in adulthood.
Nice guys will gravitate towards broken and immature relationships that need constant attention and fixing because they know they can gain more approval from unhealthy individuals than healthy ones. The unfortunate but true reality is that you can never fulfill the expectations of impetuous and immature adults, so nice guys are destined to fail. Narcissistic and controlling people are drawn to nice guys to perpetuate their cycle of appeasement and compliance. Nice guys want to submit from shame and inadequacy, while the dominant personality desires to control and achieve comfort. This leads to nice guys feeling increasingly inadequate and shameful. The malevolent feeling of inadequacy prevents them from changing their situation or creates decision fatigue. Nice guys feel stuck and incapable of change. They believe that change is impossible and they deserve their situation, not seeing that they made the problem in the first place and have a way out. Nice guys don’t respect themselves, so others don’t respect them. Nice guys constantly appease and debase themselves despite immoral treatment and abuse. They hate their situation but also hate any reminders from others that being stuck is their choice.
Nice guys try to compensate and hide their inadequacy by doing everything “right” and appearing “above board”. They hope no one ever finds out how inadequate they are at winning an impossible situation with approval-first, self-effacing relationships.
Solution
Get out of your own head. Journal. Pray. Say what you are thinking and feeling out loud to yourself. Don’t bottle it up, or it has nowhere to go but down into your existing pit of self-despair. A good test is to write out what you want to believe and what you actually believe. If your wants are always your beliefs, you have a distorted self-image. Accepting what is true about the world is independent of your self-view and self-worth. If both are identical, something is wrong with how you view yourself. A clear mind acknowledges the fundamental conflict between what you want to believe and reality. You can’t fix what you can’t see (or choose to ignore).
An excellent journaling exercise is analyzing your behavior in a hard situation as objectively and truthfully as possible. What did you think, feel, or believe about that past situation? Is it even accurate historically? Observe these things without harsh judgment. Just observe and say, “Interesting.” Reframe the situation by asking, “Would I say these things about my best friend? Would I say this about my partner? Would I say things about other people?” Lovingly remind yourself that you’re not just a bad person but also a lovable, imperfect human being. Don’t defend yourself; just accept yourself. Defending will restart the cycle of shame you are trying to stop.
Find safe people to show your true self to. It is masculine and good to be vulnerable. Surround yourself with loving, supportive, positive people. Negative people will feed your shame, and you won’t make progress. Negative and never-repentant people should be removed from your life until they want to change. Make no exceptions. You aren’t ready to carry another burden yet.
“This man handles his toxic shame by repressing his core belief about his worthlessness. He believes he is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. If he is conscious of any perceived flaws, they are seen as minor and easily correctable. As a child, he was never a moment’s problem. As a teen, he did everything right. As an adult, he follows all the rules to a ‘T.’ This Nice Guy has tucked his core toxic shame into a handy, air-tight compartment deep in his unconscious mind. He masks his toxic shame with a belief that all the good things he does make him a good person.” - Dr. Robert Glover
A False Reality of Victimization
The highest life objective for nice guys is to have a peaceful and stress-free life where all their needs and goals are met through subversive and covert contracts with no conflict and continuous approval from others. In reality, nice guys can’t achieve their dream because this contradicts what they learned in childhood, and their actions build resentment towards others ending with self-caused victimization. This creates a self-destructive neurosis which includes a weighty everpresent helplessness while constantly seeking to escape it by getting validation that they are fixing other people’s problems and ignoring their desires. At the same time, nice guys refuse to take ownership and responsibility for their situation. It is a false reality and a tragic prison they locked themselves into.