Let's take a moment to talk about nice guy narcissism might
sound like a paradox, but the irony of people pleasing is how
self centered it is. What on the surface looks like it's about
everyone else is actually only about the person doing it, it's
gonna be hard to see if you are one, it was certainly hard for
me to see it. Because you constantly call yourself a nice
guy, maybe even call yourself a people pleaser. You can see
patting yourself on the back about how good you are to other
people compared to how others are to each other. You're always
focused on being good to others. So it makes sense in your head
that you're the good guy, and that this is about other people
and you're doing it for them. It's very easy to turn people
pleasing behavior into a story about how you're altruistic and
self sacrificing. And you know that you're just empathetic and
caring and loving and compassionate. The idea that
you're narcissistic, that this is all ego, this is all about
your own needs being met, regardless of the harm you do to
others. It doesn't even occur to you. Why would it? Everybody
else is telling you how nice you are. You're never getting
feedback that you're a bad person. So why would you even
look in that box? Right? Well the reason you're getting such
good feedback is because you are manipulating people into giving
it to you see what classic narcissists get wrong so a
malignant narcissist is there out in the open they're how
awful they are. They don't try to make people like them with
pleasing they try to make people like them with guilt tripping
and gaslighting and all these sort of like nasty obvious.
Negative manipulation techniques are nice guys are far more
devious. Nice guys will make you love them. Well, they'll make
you love what you think they are. And it's all an act. So
what you don't see when you're a nice guy narcissist is how
manipulative you are, and how every interaction you have you
adjust gears turning and calculations and forecasting and
anticipation. You're highly vigilant for how people feel all
the time so that you can cater what you are expressing to meet
their needs, and control them. And it's all about control. nice
guy syndrome. The one thing all nice guys have in common is the
primary purpose is controlling people, controlling people so
you can control their feelings about you, which helps you
control your feelings about yourself. Everything you do as a
people pleaser is aimed at controlling other people. And if
that means they must suffer, then you'll do it still don't
believe me? Let's have a look at some of the classic manipulation
techniques used by Nice Guy narcissists. Self sacrifice
kinda sounds like the opposite of narcissism, doesn't it? Like
I give my life for yours. Like the ultimate heroic act said
what it really does as a school social points. So you're forcing
people using their psychology against them into feeling that
they owe you something that you're a good person. Because on
the surface, it looks like you're suffering for other
people's gain. And it's impossible for someone to hate
you for that. Actually, you're not suffering at all, you enjoy
this ship to get pissy. So you're going for there like the
weakest form of approval possible where someone feels
sorry for you, you're constantly kind of subtly dropping hints
about how much you suffer in your mission to help other
people. You're not doing this quietly ie letting everyone know
that this hurts causes guilt. Like I said, people feel like
they owe you something, it will feel like they're holding you
back. People feel like they need to repair the damage they're
doing, even though they never fucking ask for your help. And
of course, it prevents intimacy, you still want to be a god
living by yourself. And by sacrificing yourself for others
that creates a wall between the two of you, they owe you
something, you're better than them. They are worse than you
they bear the burden and you're the strong one you can never
connect when there's an imbalance, humor and
entertainment this was my specialty is a nice guy
narcissist, and makes people like you. As much as I love
stand up comedy. There's something inherently
manipulative about someone forcing you to laugh, we can't
help but laugh. And some comedians talk about this, how
they start to resent the audience because they can just
basically push a button and make everyone laugh. They call it
killing, you know, they can just commit murder just anytime they
want. And they start to sort of look down on their audience like
look how easy you are to control. I used to feel this
when I was doing the pickup artists thing as well. I could
so easily entertain girls that I could predict when they would
say certain responses when they'd be disgusted when they
would laugh and they would jokingly punch me on the
shoulder I can make it happen with like the push of a button
and I started to resent them for it being humorous and
entertaining steals a spotlight maybe there's somebody else
who'd like to have the glory for once maybe somebody else has got
a funny joke or an interesting idea the team meeting too bad
for them because you're going to jump in there first, aren't you
and you're going to steal their glory and you also force
happiness on people got a nice guys will die on the Hill of
believing that making other people happy as a good Think
that you see, when you make someone feel an emotion, you're
preventing them from feeling other emotions. You cheer
someone up when they're grieving, they don't get to
process the grief properly. You make someone laugh when they're
trying to be angry, they don't figure out what their boundaries
are properly, cheer someone up, when they're sad, they don't
process whatever kind of lost they were going through. You
make someone feel better, when they're frustrated, they don't
get motivated enough to make a change. You're stealing helpful
emotional processes away from people by forcing happiness on
them for your own benefit. So they feel good around you and
they like you so that you can like yourself, that's not
helpful. Counseling and supportiveness. There's nothing
nice guy Nasus loves more than to be a pseudo therapist, you
come and dump your problems on him. He likes even pat himself
on the back and call it self sacrifice, because they are he
has to hear everybody else's problems. And nobody will listen
to him as if he's not engineering the situation to
create codependency, you know, I used to get so much guilt. When
I look back on this, I'd see the girls that I dated, and they
came to me as basically strong, independent woman. And then they
became needy. And suddenly, they couldn't do anything without me.
And took me a long time to see that I was making that happen. I
was making them lead me by being so supportive, that they
actually got rusty and didn't know how to solve problems by
themselves. It also means you're doing this impression
management, you're constantly creating this reputation of
being a good, helpful person. Now it's an act, it's a forced
behavior on your part. But you're making so that people
really just can't dislike you. They can't even measure you
accurately, because you just come with this goal and
reputation all the time. And this extends to being helpful
and available all the time. Again, it's very hard to think
of yourself as a narcissist, when you're always putting
yourself out there for other people. It's like narcissists
don't do this, do they? Well, they do when it racks up social
debt they do when it creates even more codependence. They do
when it's unsolicited advice aimed at making people more
convenient to you rather than doing what's right for them. It
prevents uncomfortable emotions that you can't be bothered
dealing with. And you get disappointed if you don't get
recognition and thanks. All of that sounds pretty fucking
narcissistic. To me, the thing that we can't see when we're in
our system, nice guy is the victim hero story, which I've
talked about in other podcasts and such. And that is that we
are the main character of our story. And we're actually
superior to others because we're the victim, because we're self
sacrificing. And we're the only good person and we're the most
helpful, and we're the one entertaining everyone and
keeping everyone happy. It's a story like I'm the hero gives up
everything for everybody else. So I'm actually the victim and
the hero. I'm the underdog and the winner. I am just fucking
amazing. And I get to complain about it. How good is that? Say
true giving generosity of spirit. altruism, there's no ego
when it doesn't matter if people notice doesn't matter if they
appreciate it. That's not relevant to somebody's truly
giving, you know, you do it to align with your core values
rather than to get an outcome of approval from another person. So
just doing it is rewarding. It doesn't matter how people react,
uncomfortable emotions are welcomed. Sometimes true giving
means hurting someone's feelings. Sometimes true giving
means provoking anger, outrage, disappointment, letting someone
process some real shit so that they can improve in their life.
You talk to people who are actually giving her work and
like rehabilitation services and stuff like that. They're not
around making people happy ever. Making people happy doesn't help
them grow. It doesn't improve. So if you think giving is making
people happy, then you don't know what giving really is. When
you're giving you encourage others to become more
independent, you're constantly pushing the responsibility back
on them. If you are mentoring or teaching, you want that to be
short term you want them to take off without you to do better
without you than they did with you. And truly giving people
lead by example, rather than living a double standard. So
rather than trying to like self sacrifice, and make things
easier for everyone else, they show what it's like to lead.
They show what it's like to live a healthy life. They let you
copy them and get ideas from them rather than doing it for
you. So if you'd like to stamp out the narcissism in your life
so that you can become a truly generous and giving person
without the nice guy yucky stuff attached to it. Get in touch
dan@brojo.org And we'll talk about how you can build your
integrity