How To Get Your Fierce Back And Stop Being Nice

Sep 5, 2011 by Tamarisk

Sugar and spice and all things nice…that’s what little girls are made of.

Hello. My name is Tamarisk and I’m a recovering Nice Girl. I’ve been in recovery for years now but it’s my Achilles Heel and I know I’ll always be working my “nice” edge.

I can’t quite pin-point where the “niceness” started, I think it was a slow evolution over time, constantly being rewarded and praised and loved for “being a nice girl” or conversely that what I’d said or done wasn’t “nice”.

Perhaps it was the repeated exposure to Sandi in Grease. I’m not kidding, my sister and I rented that movie and that movie only for about two years straight. My mom had to start going to the video rental place without us just so that something, anything else would grace our VCR.

So begins the linking up in my little girl mind of being nice = being loved.

The result was an adult me that was so conflict averse is was hard for me to ever admit that someone else had done something that had pissed me off. I’d always wonder how it was my fault. I’d always be letting them off the hook. At worst, they got a “nice” dollop of the silent treatment from me while I earnestly beamed a “you should know what you’ve done” vibe at them.

Turns out my carefully cultivated tendency for being nice (read: not EVER wanting to be thought of as a diva or high maintenance) is not only counter-productive, it harmful.

2007 was my annus horribilis. It kicked off in February with what should have been an amazing holiday with my then boyfriend to South Africa. He was revolting about the whole trip before we even left and then things got worse when we arrived. He mocked me, shouted at me, took his frustration about getting sunburned out on me and then proceeded to be openly cruel about my family over dinner one evening.

I was “nice” about all of it. All he got was extended silence from me. Inside I was seething with rage.

It wasn’t until we got back to London that I decided the “nice girl” needed a time out. Letting her run the show was turning me into a doormat.

Out came the Fierce Girl.

Fierce Girl is a million miles away from the meek and mild nice girl who’d been running the show for far too long. Fierce Girl demanded that I became a warrior for truth and freedom, a warrior for my life. Fierce Girl demanded that I actually start taking my liberty seriously. She demanded my liberation.

My Fierce Girl showed me how much of what I’d thought of as ‘me’ was actually a series of socially conditioned roles and responses, ‘stories’ about myself that were based layers and layers of crap. She also showed me that being “nice” was a fear response.

Deep down I was terrified that if I stopped being “nice” and stopped taking it I’d end up lonely, abandoned and unloved. My Fierce Girl showed me what a lie that was. Going pretzel with my politeness, my niceness…I was more lonely in the relationship that I have ever been when single.

Being nice is stifling. Being nice suffocates. Being nice isn’t being honest.

Being nice is a form of manipulation and control. It’s being agreeable and behaving a certain way because you surmise that there’s something in it for you.

Life is full of give and take.  But nice has something unscrupulous about it.  Exploitative.

I was being nice, taking it, not being a diva in the expectation that I’d get love back in return. That’s how is works right? I mean, I’d been shown over and over again as a kid that when I was nice I got loved.

But this is NOT how relationships work. As adults we need to be accountable. And accountability requires honesty.

Being nice is fake.

It’s not real.  And it’s not possible to have meaningful, truth-filled relationships, imbued with integrity, when your nice girl is in charge.  Nice barely scratches the shiny, sparkly surface.

I was faking my way through this relationship. Silence can be the purest form of a lie and by grinning and baring it, I was faking it. Prizing “nice” over everything else meant I never got to be me. I silenced and censored myself and that’s the most total type of abandonment there is.

In failing to let my Fierce Girl run the show, the real me never quite came out to play. The wild, passionate, full-on, vibrant, brilliant person that is me was hemmed in, caged, gagged and bound up by the pretty ribbons of “nice”.

But bondage is bondage whether it’s chains or ribbons.

I’ve found my Fierce Girl. I’m not scared of being called a Diva or High Maintenance any more because I know the difference between boundaries, setting limits and how lovingly holding people accountable in their relationships with me is are the keys to having relationships that nourish both of us.

“Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.” –Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You

My own life has been an evolution into my darkness, that has resulted in a revolution into my own light. I’ve seen firsthand the power of looking at, turning over, getting curious about, confronting and being with all that is difficult within me.

I’ve created Relationship Finishing School to teach YOU how to create your own revolution, how to find your own Inner Fierce Girl. She’s waiting to meet you, I’d love to introduce you {because she’s amazeballs, I promise!}

Join us inside Relationship Finishing School now.