Being too “nice” IS a bad thing!

I empathise, OP, and I think a lot of these comments are needlessly critical. After all, you have clearly identified the problem and are considering ways to address it, so I’m not convinced that calling you manipulative, a doormat or a wet wipe is especially constructive here.

I was raised to people please, and to believe that if my ‘no’ hurt or even inconvenienced someone it made me a bad person. That is incredibly difficult to unlearn as an adult. The hardest thing for me was learning to sit with the awkwardness I felt at asserting and maintaining a boundary, rather than trying to fix it. But that does get easier with practice, I promise. The problem with people pleasing is that we set the bar of expectation artificially high, so when we suddenly start saying no, the more opportunistic people around us may well kick. It’s testing. Sometimes we slip up and fall back into old habits. But it’s important to keep going with it. Try writing down specific examples of when your people pleasing has made you resentful, and be on the lookout for those things happening again. Think of them as opportunities to practice saying no. As others have said, resist the temptation to say ‘yes’ straight away. Take thinking time.

You’re not a bad person for having fallen into the trap of being a people pleaser.

Good post. I think of it as weaning yourself off a bad habit, like junk food, but you’re right — maybe better to think of it as acquiring a necessary life skill.

See if you can access any training via work. Ours has lots of soft skills stuff not just work related content.
How old are you? One positive of perimenopause is your nurture hormone goes and you generally give less of a shit.

@Animalmama 'Do on to others as you would have them do unto you' is a saying I live by. Problem being people are selfish, self-absorbed, using, and generally just shit.

I've had an epiphany this last year and I've cut so many people off.
I was in a time of need and I couldn't lend a fiver off anyone. I'd be here all day if I'd listing the amount of money I've GIVEN people. The amount of time and energy spent. Apparently none of it was worth a fiver until payday
😥

People pleasing and 'being too nice' is all very well until the tables are turned and you need somthing. I've said enough is enough...there was brilliant saying I learnt on here...'You can't set yourself on fire to keep other people warm'

It might help to think about it this way:
being able to say “no” and being able to have a reasonable, respectful argument with someone are basic Adult skills.

It’s not any different to being an adult and not being able to cook or not being able to ride a bike.

You can live your life without those skills but learning them will certainly make your life easier and healthier.

if you don’t have the skill, ask a friend who is good at those things to give you some advice and then Practice Every Day.

It might be hard to start with but eventually it will get easier and you’ll wonder why you didn’t start earlier.

Best of luck

Have scanned the thread, but sorry if I have missed it.

There is literally a book called "Not nice: stop people pleasing" search for it on Amazon. It's about exactly what you are talking about and I found it very very useful.

I still struggle but it definitely emboldened me to become more assertive, say what I want more, and have healthier boundaries.

OP I totally understand where you are coming from. I was brought up to think that unless I had a cast-iron reason to say no to something, then I have to say yes as it's unkind otherwise. It has ended up with me tying myself up in knots trying to justify why I'm saying no, when strictly speaking I could do whatever it is someone wants me to do. Saying no because I don't want to has never been a good enough reason.

I also know that mixed in with that has been a desire to fit in and be accepted. Unfortunately that has got me nowhere and those with good boundaries at the group I'm part of are much better liked. I've taken a step back and have put boundaries in place. No-one bothers with me now as they're not getting what they want from me. They're only interested when I'm useful.

This has taught me a valuable lesson and I'm not going to worry about saying no anymore. People like me just about the same, lol! Don't be scared of it, I always felt that if someone found out I'd said no but could've done x, y or z, I'd get grief for it. I have done before and then gave in. What a doormat I was! I'm still learning though and am early on in setting boundaries. Be kind to yourself and don't be afraid to say no!

You’re still not getting it, though. Read @Pinktartanjamjar ’s good post about therapy helping her understand the roots of her own people-pleasing again.

You need to let go of the ‘too nice for your own good’ idea, and see it as the character flaw that it is. Obviously, you didn’t pull this out of the air — you learned from somewhere, probably in childhood, that the way to make people like you was to be compliant and eternally helpful. That’s certainly what I learned. It’s an ingrained pattern of behaviour that’s difficult to shift, like nail-biting or comfort eating.

The problem is that it doesn’t work, it doesn’t make you happy, and you spend your life trotting around servicing other people’s needs while at some level, consciously or unconsciously, resenting the fact that your needs aren’t being met.

The typical pattern that ends up being described on here is that the secretly resentful people-pleaser finally cracks, and then comes on Mn to recount bitterly that their ‘friends’ never got in touch again after they ceased to be useful, and continues the narrative of ‘other people are CFs and users and I’m too nice for my own good’. When in fact they need to take some responsibility for creating the situation.

You have to have allowed yourself to be exploited. You had to have been trying to elicit a certain kind of response from others when you were taking annual leave to babysit your friend’s children, or taking daily hourlong phone calls from a hypochondriac windbag who never asks about you or invites you to her parties, because you’re not fun, you’re just a personality-free listening ear.

Those were choices you made. Own them. Think about why you made them. What did you think you were getting in exchange? Think about who or what taught you liking could only be bought by compliance and usefulness.

Apology accepted!

Let me break that paragraph down for you: I have very firm boundaries (subject of sentence) including the use of the word ‘No’ as a standalone response to requests when needed. Nowhere does it say that I actually utter the entire phrase (I refer to it as a boundary, rather than a response), but I accept that I could have used single inverted commas rather than quotation marks to help with your literal interpretation of what I wrote. I’m a former teacher of children with ASD, so I should know to be clearer. Many apologies for the confusion you experienced as a result of my lazy punctuation.

Those people aren’t going to say door mat, are they?

It’s nice when someone you know, someone who has boundaries and no problem choosing what they will do for others, helps you because you know they are choosing to do so. Indiscriminately agreeing to do anything for everyone, no so nice.

What type of therapy are you having? It sounds effective and it’s working.

And they’re wasting the time in which they might be evolving egalitarian, mutually-sustaining friendships with other people by trotting around after people they are trying to appease.

Being a mug/walkover/a wet blanket is not the same as being "too nice".

But no one can control anyone else’s actions, only their own. Whether or not people continually ask you for help, or extra work shifts, is not in your control. All you can deal with is how you respond. No one is coercing the OP, so the comparison with an abusive relationship doesn’t work. She needs to recognise that she is an equal partner in the dynamic. These friends she ‘cares so much about’ that she’s prepared to allow herself to be there only when needed as a listening ear — why? ‘Too nice’, or unprepared to deal with the consequences of requiring others to see her as anything other than compliant?

This is really true.

There's always a point at which you realise someone isn't saying yes to you because they care about you or like you. They would also say yes to their awful boss, to someone they'd met once, to a cardboard cutout. And finding out what they want is like squeezing blood out of a stone because they're so unrelentingly passive.

I have a colleague like this - we work in different time zones and part of our work overlaps. He will always, always start his day by asking what I need help with, as opposed to just starting something and telling me it's off my plate.

Why do you have to be nice?
I used to be ‘nice’ - it was in the hope people would like me as people generally didn’t.
Turns out I have adhd so engaging eye contact for example is difficult for me hence people avoided me. Could see I was different.

Work out why you are ‘nice’ -why the need to be superficially liked - was it your upbringing? Sibling rivalry? Work that out and life will be easier.

People who martyr themselves in this way are actually quite tiresome to be around. You aren’t being yourself when you are agreeing to whatever other people want/need. Hence, disingenuous.

This is key to it. “Niceness” is something which to many people comes across as a kind of fraud or manipulation.

Anyone who accepts and likes everything is obviously not being honest with themselves or others and it’s unsettling to be around.

It may be a reaction to trauma or anxiety but it’s impossible to build trust with people who are incessantly “nice”: it’s hard to believe they are who they say they are.

A lot of posters are being a bit harsh OP. I am a people pleaser too. Maybe not to the same extent as you but I hate confrontation and I'm not very good at speaking up for myself. Probably something to do with the way we were brought up. Nature and nurture plays a part. It is very hard to change your personality, years of ingrained thought. I agree with another poster with responses like maybe and let me think about that and I'll get back to you. I'm much braver via text so take time to think and then send the person a message. Also if a friend hasn't been great towards you make yourself unavailable for a while and hopefully they will appreciate your worth.

As soon as you start standing up to people and being firm, you will feel better. And oddly, people seem to like and respect you more for it.

The only time I’ve said to someone “you’re too nice!” Is when I’ve been feeling up to the back teeth of their endless whinging and martyrdom about doing pretty basic stuff for people ie picking up a friend’s daughter when friend broke down on motorway . Once. Once!

Extra shifts? And you donate your earnings to them too?

But that’s not ‘nice’ at all. That’s being a people-pleaser. Doing things you don’t want to do on a regular basis because you’re too afraid of the consequences if you say no (that people will cease to regard you as terribly ‘nice’). As a result, some people regard you as a service human while others are put off your lack of boundaries and poor self-esteem, as you scramble around ‘helping’ and actively sponsoring your own exploitation.

That is what I asked because you said you’d learned expressions you’d read on mumsnet like “no is a complete sentence”

I have verrrrrry firm boundaries, many of which I learned to uphold on here. “No is a complete sentence”, for example.

so you can surely see why one might think you’d said that