Why I Strive to Be Kind, Not Nice
I was watching Women of the Hour, starring the fabulous Anna Kendrick, and there’s a scene that hit home for me.
Anna’s character is in a casting meeting. The casting team are rude, misogynistic, and condescending. Despite this, Anna’s character is agreeable. Pleasant. Nice. She nods, smiles, and laughs politely. She doesn’t challenge anything, and she certainly doesn’t say what she really thinks.
The scene then cuts to her alone in the car on the drive home. It’s only here that she says everything she wanted to say in that meeting. The frustration. The disagreement. The truth.
I felt it in my body.
Have you ever left a situation, replaying it in your head while thinking, “Why didn’t I say that?” or “Why did I agree to that?”? If yes, then you know this experience all too well.
That moment captured something many of us (especially women) are deeply familiar with: the frustration with our almost automatic response of being “nice”.
Kindness vs Niceness
On the surface, kindness and niceness can look similar — they both appear considerate, generous, and empathic. But psychologically and physiologically, they are very different.
Kindness is rooted in genuine care and empathy, directed both outward and inward. It tends to align with our values and supports healthy relationships. Kindness is associated with greater psychological well‐being (PMID: 42186976).
In contrast, niceness (i.e., people pleasing) is rooted in submission, fear, and suppression. Niceness prioritises others’ comfort over our own needs and/or authenticity, often driven by fear of conflict or rejection.
Niceness and the Fawn Response
From a nervous system perspective, niceness is often described as the fawn response. Fawning — a term popularised by renowned psychotherapist Pete Walker — is a stress response alongside fight, flight, and freeze. Within trauma-informed frameworks, appeasing others becomes a way to reduce perceived threats of rejection, conflict, or danger. The fawn response isn’t about generosity; it’s about threat and safety.
This pattern often develops early in life. If love and approval from caregivers — which the nervous system experiences as essential for survival — are conditional on being “good”, the nervous system may learn to prioritise others’ comfort over asserting your own needs. Over time, you may become highly attuned to others’ feelings, consistently putting their needs first, and neglecting your own.
Fawning can also arise in response to trauma or systemic pressures, including living within contexts of oppression. For individuals from marginalised groups — including women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and LGBTQI+ people — appeasement may reduce the very real risk of interpersonal harm or violence. For example, women are socially conditioned to be “nice,” reinforced by societal norms. Historically and even today, women who express anger or strong emotion have often been labelled as “hysterical” or unstable — a diagnosis shaped by the patriarchal foundations of psychiatry and health care.
If niceness is your default strategy, you’re not broken. Niceness can serve as a protective, adaptive strategy. Your nervous system is doing exactly as it is designed to do.
The problem is not the response itself, but its chronic use. When niceness becomes a default mode of relating even when there is no longer a real threat, the nervous system begins to interpret everyday social interaction as a persistent state of threat. Over time, this chronic activation can negatively impact health, well-being, and relationships. This is then compounded by the self-neglect seen in chronic niceness (anyone else ever offered to do something when what they actually needed was a break?), where we don’t allow ourselves enough recovery to cope with this chronic stress.
Why Chronic Niceness is Costly
When niceness becomes chronic, it can affect health and relationships in several key ways:
– Chronic stress and the nervous system
A healthy nervous system (aka the brain and the nerves of the body) is resilient and adaptive. When it perceives a threat, it will become appropriately more vigilant to protect us from a potentially dangerous situation. However, when the stress response stays switched on, such as associated with chronic niceness, over time, it can result in an imbalance of neural circuitry and maladaptive plasticity (PMID: 29276740). In more simplified terms, this means that the nervous system can get “stuck” on high alert, affecting our anxiety levels, emotions, thinking, decision making, and behaviour.
– Mental health
Large-scale longitudinal research (N = 1,480) found that habitual niceness — especially constantly holding back emotions like anger — was linked to experiencing more negative emotions and fewer positive ones, struggling more in relationships, and lower well-being (PMID: 12916575).
– Immune system dysregulation and physical illness
We have all heard that stress is not good for us. The problem isn’t short-term stress – in which our body was designed to handle beautifully – but rather chronic stress, such as that associated with chronic niceness. Chronic stress results in a cumulative burden on the body’s physiological systems (termed ‘allostatic load’), mediated through its effects on the body’s multiple regulatory systems (neuroendocrine, autonomic, immune and metabolic; PMID: 29276740). Meta-analytic research supports this as it indicates that chronic psychological stress has long been identified as having a detrimental effect on our immune system, which increases vulnerability to illness (PMID: 15250815). One condition particularly relevant for women is autoimmune disease. Well known clinical psychologist Dr Gabor Maté highlights that approximately 80% of people diagnosed with autoimmune conditions are women, which he theorises is partially due to their social conditioning to be agreeable and suppress anger.
– Self-neglect
Niceness often comes at the expense of one’s own needs, including rest and recovery, further compounding stress and reducing the body’s capacity to regulate and repair.
– Weakened relationships
While chronic niceness is often intended to preserve harmony, it can erode connection over time. Gottman Institute research shows that suppressing needs and avoiding honest communication allows resentment to build, leaving people feeling unseen, unappreciated, or emotionally distant. Have you ever said “that’s fine” to your partner while raging inside? (No judgment, I’ve done this too).
Why I Choose Kindness (and Hope You Will Too)
Kindness allows honesty.
Niceness requires silence.
Kindness allows space for boundaries.
Niceness dissolves them.
Kindness is about values.
Niceness is about survival.
Choosing not to be nice isn’t selfish. Being kind, rather than nice, allows us to care for others without erasing ourselves, supports our health, and preserves our ability to give over time.
