The Nice Girl Syndrome E-Book

Beverly Engel

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 421

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

How women can overcome the pressure to please others and feel free to be their true selves Are you too nice for your own good? Do family members manipulate you? Do coworkers take advantage of you? If this sounds familiar, read The Nice Girl Syndrome. In this breakthrough guide, renowned author and therapist Beverly Engel, who has helped thousands of women recognize and leave emotionally abusive relationships, can show you how to take control of your life and take care of yourself. Engel explains that women today simply cannot afford to be Nice Girls, because women who are too nice send the message that they are easy targets and are much more likely to be victimized emotionally, physically, and sexually. She identifies the seven different types of Nice Girls and helps you understand which type or types might apply to you. Engel helps you determine whether the Nice Girl Syndrome is keeping you in an abusive relationship or in manipulative situations and helps you change Nice Girl beliefs and behaviors that are holding you back. * Shows you how to confront the beliefs and behaviors that keep you stuck in a Nice Girl act as you replace them with healthier, more empowering ones * Includes inspiring stories of women Engel has worked with who have found the courage and strength to stop taking abuse and start standing up for themselves * "This book will challenge, entertain, and empower its readers."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) * Written by renowned author and therapist Beverly Engel, who has helped thousands of women recognize and leave emotionally abusive relationships Filled with wise advice, powerful exercises, and practical prescriptions, The Nice Girl Syndrome shows you step by step how to take control of your life and be your own strong woman.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART ONE - STRONG WOMEN AREN’T NICE

Chapter 1 - The High Price of Being Too Nice

What Is a Nice Girl?

How Big a Problem Is the Nice Girl Syndrome?

Is This Book for You?

You Cannot Afford to Be a Nice Girl

Nice Girls Aren’t Always Nice

The Seven Types of Nice Girls

Nice Girls versus Strong Women

How Do Nice Girls Become Strong Women?

The Four C’s

Chapter 2 - How Did We Get So Nice?

The Four Causes of Nice Girl Syndrome

The Fear Factor

Chapter 3 - The Ten False Beliefs That Set Women Up to Be Used and Abused

The Ten False Beliefs

How Do We Reverse This Brainwashing?

PART TWO - FROM FALSE BELIEFS TO EMPOWERING BELIEFS

Chapter 4 - Stop Putting Others’ Feelings and Needs ahead of Your Own

Self-Blame

Other Blind Spots

Nice Girls Also Become Resentful

Childhood Messages

Role Reversal and Parentified Children

Remedies

Chapter 5 - Stop Believing That Being Nice Will Protect You

Where Did We Get the Idea That Being Nice Would Protect Us?

Believing in Fairness Is Also Magical Thinking

Where Do Our Ideas about Fairness Come From?

Remedies

Chapter 6 - Stop Worrying about What Other People Think of You

Women and Self-Image

How Our Public Image Is Created

Pretending

If People Get to Know the Real Me, They Won’t Like Me

When What Other People Think Becomes More Important than Your Safety

Remedies

Chapter 7 - Stop Trying to Be Perfect

Parental Messages

The Legacy of Shame

Your Inner Critic

Our Shadow Self

Remedies

Chapter 8 - Stop Being Gullible and Naive

Pretending Can Be Dangerous

No More Mr. Nice Guy

It’s Time to Come out of Denial

Remedies

Chapter 9 - Start Standing Up for Your Rights

Societal Reasons for Women’s Difficulty in Standing Up for Themselves

Childhood Experiences and the Fear of Standing Up

How Fear Contributes to the Inability to Stand Up

Remedies

Chapter 10 - Start Expressing Your Anger

Societal Reasons Girls and Women Have Difficulty Expressing Anger Directly

When the Cause of Your Inability to Express Anger Lies in Childhood

The Truth about Anger

Why We Need Anger

Remedies

Chapter 11 - Learn How to Handle Conflict

Childhood Experiences and Conflict

Remedies

Chapter 12 - Start Facing the Truth about People

When One More Chance Is One Too Many

Why It Is Particularly Important to Not Give Abusers Second Chances

Remedies

Chapter 13 - Start Supporting and Protecting Yourself

Financial Insecurity

“I Can’t Make It without a Man”

Start Protecting Yourself

Even the Strongest Women Can Become Dependent

Remedies

PART THREE - FROM NICE GIRL TO STRONG WOMAN

Chapter 14 - The Four C’s: Developing Confidence, Competence, Conviction, and Courage

Confidence

Competence

Conviction

Courage

References

Index

Copyright © 2008 by Beverly Engel. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Engel, Beverly.

The nice girl syndrome : stop being manipulated and abused—and start standing up for yourself / Beverly Engel. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-17938-3 (cloth)

1. Women—Life skills guides. 2. Women—Psychology. 3. Self-confidence. 4. Self-esteem. 5. Psychological abuse—Popular works. I. Title.

HQ1221.E54 2008

155.6’33—dc22

2008008382

This book is dedicated to the many women in the world who still believe they have to be nice in order to be loved, accepted, taken care of, and safe. It is also for all the women’s advocates who work so diligently to help women understand that it is better to be strong than to be nice.

Acknowledgments

Once again, I wish to thank my agents, Stedman Mays and Mary Tahan, and my editor at Wiley, Tom Miller. Thanks also to production editor Lisa Burstiner, who always does a wonderful job of editing my work. I appreciate your thoroughness and your restraint. I am extremely grateful to all of you for making it possible for me to have a second life in publishing. This will be our eighth book together, and I think we make a great team!

My heartfelt gratitude goes to the women researchers who gave this book its backbone: Carol Gilligan, Anne Campbell, Susan Faludi, Mary Pipher, and Rachel Simmons.

I also wish to acknowledge the work of Laurel Mellin, who has created an incredible program for helping people to rid themselves of false beliefs. It is her concept of “positive and powerful statements” that I included in this book. I highly recommend her program and her book The Pathway: Follow the Road to Health and Happiness.

Last but certainly not least, I want to thank all the Nice Girls I have worked with throughout the years. Your courage and determination to become Strong Women inspired me to write this book.

Introduction

In this day and age, you would think that women would have learned enough about assertiveness, boundaries, and codependency that they wouldn’t continue to be used and abused. There certainly are enough books on the subjects. So why is it that women continue to be victimized and taken advantage of by lovers, partners, family members, friends, and co-workers?

The main reason certainly lies in the fact that we still allow abusive men to mistreat women. Although there has been some progress when it comes to exposing and treating abusers, there are still far too many men who believe they have the right to abuse “their” women.

We’ve come a long way since the time when men believed that their wives and daughters were their property and they had the right to treat them any way they saw fit. But there needs to be more pressure put on abusive men to get the treatment they need.

In spite of a great deal of public education, we are still dealing with a huge problem when it comes to the abuse of women. Statistics tell us that women continue to be abused in record numbers. For example:

• The American Medical Association estimates that over 4 million women are victims of severe assaults by boyfriends and husbands each year.

• Around the world, at least 1 in every 3 women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.

• Nearly one-third of American women (31 percent) report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or a boyfriend at some point in their lives.

• Approximately 1 in 5 female high school students report being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner.

• Three in 4 women (76 percent) who reported that they had been raped and/or physically assaulted since age eighteen said that a current or former husband, cohabitating partner, or date committed the assault.

• Nearly one-fifth of women (18 percent) reported experiencing a completed or attempted rape at some time in their lives.

• Annually in the United States, 503,485 women are stalked by an intimate partner. Seventy-eight percent of stalking victims are women.

In addition to there not being enough done to expose and treat abusive men, I propose that another reason women continue to be victimized is that they are too nice for their own good. This niceness attracts the wrong kind of people and sends the message that these women are easy targets to be taken advantage of, controlled, and even emotionally, physically, and sexually abused. It also prevents women from standing up for themselves and keeps them in relationships that are unhealthy or abusive.

During my long career as a psychotherapist, I’ve often heard clients describe painful, shocking, and even bizarre experiences. After thirty years of practice, specializing in abuse, I have become somewhat hardened to just how cruel we human beings can be to one another. And yet there is something that I never seem to get used to: how often women put up with unacceptable, often horrible treatment from others, especially men. Every time I hear a woman describe the mistreatment, abuse, even sadistic cruelty that she has endured, it saddens me. Although I know the answers, I often find myself thinking, “Why does she put up with this?” Even more upsetting to me is that often these women are worried about their abusive partners. “I don’t know what he’ll do without me,” they frequently respond when we talk about their getting out of the abusive relationship. Or, “I know that my leaving will kill him. He can’t stand to be alone.” In the midst of their own personal crises, they are more worried about their abusive partners than they are about themselves.

I’ve written numerous books, many about recovering from some form of abuse. In most of those books, in addition to offering survivors advice and strategies on how to cope with or get away from an abuser, I have asked them to look at their part in the situation. Always stressing that I do not mean to blame the victim in any way, I encourage them to look for the reasons they have stayed in an abusive relationship and why they chose an abuser in the first place. In this book, I will ask victims and survivors to go one step further—to look for the roots of their Nice Girl behavior.

It is my contention that Nice Girl behavior sets women up to be misused and abused. This does not mean that women cause men to become abusive. It does not mean that women are masochists. What it does mean is that by being too nice, women send a strong message to those who already have a tendency to use and abuse. The message is: “My need to be seen as nice (or sweet or innocent) is more powerful than my instinct to protect myself.”

The hard truth is that women cannot afford to be Nice Girls. It simply is not safe. Too many people (women as well as men) take advantage of any weakness they find in another person. Being too nice is certainly viewed as a weakness.

In this book, I write about the difference between Nice Girls and what I call Strong Women. I teach women how to put aside their Nice Girl thinking and behavior and to instead adopt what I call Strong Women thinking and behavior. Although not every Nice Girl gets raped or is emotionally, verbally, or physically abused in her relationships, every Nice Girl is putting herself at risk by continuing to believe and act as she does. Nice Girls tend to put up with inappropriate or abusive behavior, to minimize the damage they are experiencing, and to make excuses for their partners. The Nice Girl Syndrome will help women to stop being nice and start being strong, to stand up for themselves, and to refuse to be treated in abusive ways.

The primary audience for The Nice Girl Syndrome is women who have been or are currently being emotionally, verbally, or physically abused by their partners; women who have been raped or date-raped; and women who are being or have been stalked by an intimate partner. But nearly every woman has some Nice Girl still left in her. While younger women (ages eighteen to thirty) will be especially attracted to this book, women thirty-one and older will also find the book interesting, provocative, and helpful. Unfortunately, Nice Girls don’t tend to grow out of this behavior all that easily.

This book is not about codependency or “relationship addiction.” The self-help plan for codependency, as outlined by CODA (Codependents Anonymous) and books such as Robin Norwood’s Women Who Love Too Much is for women to surrender. My treatment program, on the other hand, has more to do with the notion of standing up for your rights.

Susan Faludi, in her groundbreaking book Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women, noted that instead of encouraging women to become stronger, to defend themselves, and to challenge men to change, Norwood recommended that women “build [their] willingness to surrender,” and “let go of self-will.” Taking the initiative to improve one’s situation was not part of the Norwood plan. Instead, she advised letting go of “the determination to make things happen.” She further explained, “You must accept the fact that you may not know what is best in a given situation.”

You will not hear anything like this in my book. In fact, you will hear the opposite. I encourage women to trust their instincts more and to never allow anyone to tell them that they do not know what is best for them. I will encourage them to become more assertive, not more passive.

Norwood’s plan, modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous’s 12-step program, advised women seeking the source of their pain to refrain from looking beyond themselves, a habit she calls “blaming.” My plan encourages women to stop taking all the blame for the problems in their relationships and to begin to recognize that often they are putting up with intolerable behavior from others. Blaming an abusive partner, for example, in the interest of freeing yourself from an intolerable situation can be a healthy thing if it means that you stop blaming yourself. I encourage women to stop blaming themselves and place their righteous anger where it belongs: on the people, past and present, who have mistreated or abused them.

While I do address some of the same issues that books on people-pleasing do, such as discomfort with and fear of anger, hostility, conflict, and confrontation, I also name and focus on other factors that contribute to women’s victimization, such as the long history of female oppression, feeling powerless and helpless, being too gullible, being in denial about the current dangers in our society, being in denial about one’s own dark side, having an overly strong need to be fair, and having religious and spiritual beliefs that set one up to be used and abused.

In addition to covering the psychological reasons for niceness (guilt, shame, low self-esteem, fear of confrontation, fear of rejection, intense fear of being alone), I also focus heavily on the societal reasons, such as the fact that women and girls are conditioned to become Nice Girls.

I focus specifically on the beliefs and attitudes that set women up to be used and abused. I offer a specific program for unearthing and discarding these deeply buried false beliefs and attitudes and replacing them with the truth. And I offer remedies—exercises and steps—women can take to heal themselves of the brainwashing that created these false beliefs in the first place. Finally, I offer an empowerment challenge that will help women develop what I call the four C’s: confidence, competence, conviction, and courage.

In The Nice Girl Syndrome, women will learn that they can be kind without sacrificing their souls and that they can give people the benefit of the doubt without being pushovers. Most important, they will learn they can remain feminine without giving up their power.

Most women don’t want to continue their Nice Girl act. It has become too cumbersome. It feels dishonest. It keeps them from finding out what they really feel and who they really are. In the following chapters you will learn how and why women have been programmed to hide their true feelings behind a mask of sweetness and niceness. By learning the causes of the Nice Girl syndrome you will be taking the first step toward dismantling the false beliefs that are the underpinnings of the Nice Girl syndrome.

PART ONE

STRONG WOMEN AREN’T NICE

1

The High Price of Being Too Nice

When one is pretending, the entire body revolts.

—ANAÏS NIN

Are you a Nice Girl? Do people often take advantage of your patience, compassion, and generosity? Are you constantly let down because other people don’t treat you as well as you treat them? Do you constantly give others the benefit of the doubt, only to be disappointed when they don’t come through? Do you tend to give other people too many chances? Is being too nice becoming a burden? If you answered yes to some or all of these questions, not only are you not alone but you are in the majority. There are millions of other Nice Girls worldwide who think and feel exactly as you do. In fact, it is safe to say that every woman has some Nice Girl in her. Here are just a few examples from my practice.

Heather’s boyfriend had an old car that continually broke down. She worried about his having to drive his old clunker into the city every day to work, so she let him drive her car. After all, she rationalized, she didn’t have to go as far to work and could easily take the bus. One day, Heather went out to her car only to find that a tire boot had been put on it. It turned out that her boyfriend had been getting tickets and then not paying for them. But this wasn’t the worst part of the story. Instead of realizing that her boyfriend was not responsible enough to drive her car, Heather allowed him to continue to do so. Two months later, he totaled her car. The insurance company paid her only for what the car was currently worth, which wasn’t enough for her to buy a new car. Did Heather’s boyfriend help her pay for a new car? No. Did he even agree to drive her to work until she got a new car? No; he said it would make him late for work. Most important, did Heather say anything to him about his irresponsibility and inconsideration? No.

Mandy’s husband, Jason, puts her down a lot. He corrects her whenever she mispronounces a word. He rolls his eyes in exasperation whenever she has a hard time figuring out how appliances work. He even makes disparaging remarks about her in front of other people. Mandy’s friends tell her that Jason is a jerk and shouldn’t treat her like that, but she explains that that is just the way he is. She knows Jason really loves her. He gets like that when he’s stressed or tired.

Whenever Gwen’s boyfriend, Ron, drinks too much, he starts treating her very disrespectfully in public. He talks loudly to others about how “stacked” Gwen is and what a great ass she has. He touches her inappropriately in front of others. And worst of all, he encourages other men to flirt with and dance with her. Gwen, a rather shy person, is very embarrassed and uncomfortable with all this. She quietly tells Ron to stop these behaviors, but her request has no effect on him. So instead of getting up and walking out, she just silently continues to take it for the rest of the evening.

Carolyn didn’t like the way her manager at work looked at her or the fact that he often told her off-color jokes. She wondered if she had given him the wrong idea, so she started dressing more conservatively. Nothing changed. She thought of saying something to him, but she was afraid that he would be insulted, which could cause even more problems at work.

Heather, Mandy, Gwen, and Carolyn are all Nice Girls. Like many women, they are afraid to speak their minds either out of fear of hurting someone’s feelings or out of fear of being rejected or hurt themselves. Unfortunately, they almost always end up paying quite a price for their silence. Heather lost her car to an irresponsible, uncaring boyfriend; Carolyn was constantly being sexually harassed; and the self-esteem of Mandy and Gwen is constantly being diminished.

What Is a Nice Girl?

Being a Nice Girl doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with morals. Monica Lewinsky was a Nice Girl because she was naive enough to believe that President Bill Clinton loved her and was actually going to leave Hillary for her. She was a Nice Girl because she put his needs ahead of her own and was willing to continue lying for him, even after they were caught, and because she kept hoping they had a future together even when it was clear he had dumped her.

Neither does being a Nice Girl necessarily have anything to do with being kind or generous or respectful. Oprah Winfrey is all those things, but I don’t believe anyone would describe her as being “nice.” As warm as she is, she also sets very clear boundaries, letting people know what she will or will not put up with. And she is a person you wouldn’t want to cross.

A Nice Girl is more concerned about what others think of her than she is about what she thinks of herself. Being a Nice Girl means that a woman is more concerned about other people’s feelings than she is about her own. And it means she is more concerned about giving people the benefit of the doubt than she is about trusting her own perceptions.

According to the dictionary, synonyms for the word nice include careful, pleasant, subtle, agreeable, likable, delightful, good, admirable, pleasing. These words describe a Nice Girl to a T. In fact, many Nice Girls have an investment in being perceived in all of these ways. But I also think of other words when I think of the word nice, namely compliant, passive, wishy-washy, and phony.

Nice Girls are compliant; they do what they are told. They’ve learned that it is easier to just do what someone asks than to risk an argument. Nice girls are passive; they let things happen. They are often too afraid to stand up for themselves. They are walking doormats who are easily manipulated and controlled. Nice Girls are wishy-washy. Because they are so afraid of confrontation, they say one thing one time and another thing another time. They want to please everyone all the time, and because of this they agree with one person and then turn right around and agree with someone else who has the exact opposite belief. Because they are afraid of telling others how they really feel, Nice Girls can be phony; they pretend a lot. They pretend they like someone when they don’t. They pretend they want to be somewhere when they don’t.

I realize that it may sound harsh to call someone phony—or compliant or passive or wishy-washy, for that matter. But I prefer to tell it the way it is, and in this book I am going to pump it up a notch or two because Nice Girls can also be something else—stubborn. Many Nice Girls firmly believe that their way of operating is the right way. They are convinced that it works for them. And they tend to think they are taking the moral high ground and that others could benefit from being more like them. I am going to be firm also, because I know that for some of you it’s going to be an uphill battle to get you to let go of your Nice Girl mentality.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t have compassion for those who are stuck in the Nice Girl syndrome, because I do. I understand all the reasons that you act as you do. I understand that it is not your fault. I understand that due to cultural conditioning, parental messages, and childhood experiences, those of you with the Nice Girl syndrome are simply doing what you have been conditioned or taught to do. I understand because I have been a Nice Girl myself.

How Big a Problem Is the Nice Girl Syndrome?

Surely in this day and age we must be talking about only a small number of women, right? Unfortunately, we are not. There are far more Nice Girls out there than you can imagine. Even the most empowered women have some Nice Girl in them.

Most women have tolerated unacceptable behavior from friends, family, or lovers for far too long in their attempts to be understanding, tolerant, and compassionate. We’ve all known women who are too nice for their own good. When someone does something to them that is inconsiderate, offensive, or even cruel, instead of getting angry they try to “understand” the other person. They spend more time asking why the person did what was done than in telling the other person how unacceptable his or her actions were.

If we didn’t have so many Nice Girls, the rate of domestic violence and emotional abuse would be much lower than it is. We would not have so many women who stand by while their children are being emotionally, physically, or even sexually abused by their husbands and boyfriends. We would not have so many women staying in relationships in which they are being manipulated and taken advantage of. And we would not have so many women remaining silent when they are being sexually harassed, date-raped, or sexually pressured by their partners.

Is This Book for You?

This book is for all women who have yet to learn that if they don’t take care of themselves, no one else will. It is for every woman who puts her own needs aside on a regular basis to either attract or keep a man. And it is for all the women who are beginning to learn that being nice doesn’t pay off in the long run. Most especially, it is for all the women who are currently being emotionally, verbally, or physically abused.

If you are uncertain whether you are a Nice Girl, the following questionnaire will help you decide.

QUESTIONNAIRE: ARE YOU A NICE GIRL?

1. Do you have a difficult time asserting yourself with service people? (For example, sending a plate of food back, telling a salesperson you are not interested.)

2. Do you get talked into things, including buying things, because you can’t say no?

3. Are you overly concerned about what people think of you?

4. Is it overly important to you that people like you?

5. Are you afraid to say how you really feel out of fear of making someone angry?

6. Do you apologize too much or too often?

7. Do you have friends or acquaintances you don’t really like or have much in common with but feel obligated to continue seeing?

8. Do you often say yes to invitations because you don’t want the person to feel rejected?

9. Do you tend to give in because it makes you feel selfish if you refuse to help someone?

10. Are you afraid people will dislike you if you’re not cooperative?

11. Do you have trouble speaking up as soon as something or someone is unfair to you?

12. Do you hesitate telling someone that he or she has hurt your feelings or made you angry because you don’t want him or her to feel bad?

13. Do you avoid telling someone he or she has upset you because you don’t think it will do any good or will only cause a big problem between you?

14. Do you have people in your life who take advantage of you?

15. Do you often take the blame for things just to avoid an argument or to avoid rejection or abandonment?

16. Do you often make excuses for people’s poor behavior, telling yourself that they didn’t mean it or they didn’t know better?

17. Do you avoid conflict or confrontation at all costs?

18. Do you get a terrible feeling when someone is angry with you?

19. Do you give someone the benefit of the doubt even when others tell you this person is trouble?

20. Do you give people another chance even when they continue with the same hurtful or inappropriate behavior?

21. Do you tell yourself that you don’t have a right to complain about a person’s behavior if you’ve ever been guilty of the same behavior?

22. Are you attracted to bad boys or people with a large dark side?

23. Do you strongly believe in being fair even when other people are treating you unfairly?

If you answered yes to two or more of these questions, you have some Nice Girl in you no matter how assertive, successful, or self-actualized you think you are. This book will help you to shed whatever vestiges of niceness you still have.

If you answered yes to more than five of these questions, you still have some work to do in terms of changing the way you view yourself in the world.

If you answered yes to more than ten of these questions, you have an extreme version of the Nice Girl syndrome and will need to do some serious work to rid yourself of the negative and false beliefs that are basically dictating your life.

You Cannot Afford to Be a Nice Girl

Why should you let go of your Nice Girl thinking and acting? Women today simply cannot afford to be Nice Girls. What do I mean by this? First and foremost, Nice Girls are far more likely to become victimized—emotionally, physically, and sexually—than are those who are not so nice.

For example, Karen agreed to go out with a man from work because she felt sorry for him. “I didn’t like him, but he kept asking me out and I felt bad about constantly turning him down. He seemed so awkward around women. I thought it would be nice if I offered to make him a nice home-cooked meal.” That night, after dinner, the man from work raped Karen. Not only did she blame herself for being so stupid as to invite him to her home, but she didn’t report it. “I was just too embarrassed. I didn’t want everyone at work to find out about it.” And so every workday, Karen lives in fear that she will run into the man who raped her.

Karen’s niceness had actually put her life in jeopardy. She allowed her concern for someone else to blind her to the dangers of dealing with a stranger. Nice Girls often are targets for con artists, rapists, and other attackers. Because Nice Girls tend to be focused outside of themselves—helping others, worrying about not hurting others’ feelings—they don’t focus enough attention on protecting themselves, their feelings, and their very safety. In Karen’s case, she was so busy being nice that she didn’t pay attention to her instincts and did not check out how others felt about the man. She was so concerned about her image—another common Nice Girl trait—that she didn’t report a man who was dangerous to other women.

Because Nice Girls tend to be gullible and to give others the benefit of the doubt, they are far more likely to be taken advantage of, cheated on, abused, or abandoned by their partners than are not-so-nice girls. Cindy suspected for quite some time that her husband was having an affair. He started having to work late and was no longer interested in having sex with her, and she even thought she smelled perfume on his shirts when he came home. But each time she confronted him, he swore to her that it was not true. He seemed so sincere and so deeply wounded by her accusations that she always doubted herself. “I decided I was just a suspicious person and that it was unfair for me to accuse him when I had no proof,” she shared with me during her first session. The reason Cindy had begun seeing me? She found out that her husband was, in fact, having an affair and that it was only one of a series of many.

Nice Girls are also far more likely to be taken for granted, overworked, underpaid, and passed over for promotions than are not-so-nice girls. For example, Kendra was passed over for a promotion two times. Each time, her boss explained that the reason was that he needed her too much where she was. “I just can’t function without you,” he’d tell her. “You’re my right arm.” It felt so good to Kendra to be needed that she didn’t recognize she was being manipulated. It never occurred to her to ask her boss for a raise since she was so indispensable.

In addition to being targets for abuse and manipulation, there are other reasons to give up your Nice Girl image, namely:

• People don’t respect Nice Girls.

• If you don’t tell others what makes you angry, upset, unhappy, or disappointed, there is little chance of fixing the problem.

• People don’t really know you unless you tell them how you really feel.

• If you don’t tell people how you honestly feel, you are being dishonest.

• Unless you are honest about who you are and how you feel, there is little chance of your experiencing true intimacy in your relationships.

Nice Girls Aren’t Always Nice

Another reason for giving up your Nice Girl act is that Nice Girls aren’t always nice. In fact, they can often be conniving and mean. They often complain about people behind their backs because they are too afraid to confront them to their faces. They can be passiveaggressive—meaning that even though they may be angry at someone, they smile and pretend everything is okay and then do something underhanded to get back at the person. In the past few years, we’ve been exposed to how girls and women tend to gossip about and backstab one another.

The female gender may be hardwired to be more cooperative and to value connection over confrontation, but these very tendencies often cause girls or women to take their aggression underground. As Rachel Simmons, the author of Odd Girl Out, found after interviewing three hundred girls, there is a hidden culture of female aggression. Girls may not be as physically violent as boys are, but there is a silent, often equally destructive form of bullying that occurs between girls. This behavior includes name-calling, snide remarks, dirty looks, gossiping, and starting rumors. Because women value connection so highly, to be excluded from the group may be the ultimate form of revenge or punishment. In some cultures, such as many in the Middle East, women learn a very poignant yet nonviolent way of wielding power with dirty looks, body postures, and silence.

Nice Girls often end relationships without notice when someone better comes along. Nice Girls can be too nice in some areas of their lives and not so nice in others. For example, some Nice Girls put up with unacceptable behavior from their lovers or mates but are impatient, angry, and unreasonable with their children. Some are overly solicitous at work but are rude and demanding at home. Often, Nice Girls put up with unacceptable behavior for so long that they finally blow. Then they feel horribly guilty, apologize profusely, and overcompensate by being super nice to the person in the future.

The Seven Types of Nice Girls

Every woman has some Nice Girl in her, but some have more than others. For this reason, this book will be of particular interest to the following types of women:

1. The Doormat. This is the stereotypical passive female who allows others to walk all over her. She suffers from “terminal niceness” and never seems to learn her lesson no matter how many times she is taken advantage of, manipulated, betrayed, or abused. Women with Doormat syndrome are often the victims of unscrupulous salespeople and con artists. Many are also emotionally, verbally, or physically abused, and they tend to take the abuse for months and even years.

2. The Pretender. This type of woman has a powerful investment in appearing to be nice, cooperative, and charming (when in reality she may be angry and resentful). She pretends she agrees when she actually doesn’t. And she often pretends to be interested in what others are saying or doing while in reality she is bored.

3. The Innocent. This type of Nice Girl is very naive and gullible. She is quick to believe what others tell her and is therefore easily manipulated or conned. An Innocent often continues to defend partners or children who are selfish, deceitful, or blatantly abusive, even when everyone around her tries to tell her she is being used or abused.

4. The Victim. This type of woman feels hopeless and helpless to change her circumstances in life. In her attempts to be nice she has repressed her power to such an extent that she has lost touch with it completely. Those who suffer from this type of Nice Girl syndrome have been known to stay with a physically abusive man even after being hospitalized several times.

5. The Martyr. This type of woman sacrifices herself for others—her parents, her partner, and/or her children. This includes sacrificing her time, her own financial security, even her health in order to help or rescue others. Often the martyr will devote her life to helping others, and then she will feel that these people owe her because of her sacrifices.

6. The Prude. The prude has a strong need to be perfect or moral. She adheres to rigid standards (for example, no sex before marriage, no alcohol) and is often active in a conservative religious church. She strongly disapproves of certain behaviors and is very judgmental of others who engage in activities she disapproves of. But she hides her disapproval behind a wall of niceness.

7. The Enlightened One. This type of woman believes strongly in tolerance, compassion, and forgiveness to such an extent that she represses her anger and doesn’t allow herself to express such normal feelings as sadness, envy, anger, or resentment.

Anita and Donna: A Martyr and an Innocent

Anita hadn’t been happy with her husband, Edward, for a long time. Over the years, he had grown distant. He seldom talked to her about anything of import and was rarely affectionate toward her. Their life together seemed empty and boring. She begged him to go to counseling, but he refused.

Whenever Anita thought about leaving Edward, she would remind herself that he had some good qualities and, after all, he was sweet and generous with their two children. “I wanted to end our marriage, but I just couldn’t bear to hurt him. I thought it would devastate him if he ever lost me and if he couldn’t see the kids every day. I imagined him in some dark apartment just fading away.”

So Anita stayed with Edward month after empty month, year after boring year. She became deeply depressed and began taking a prescription drug to lift her moods. Then one day she got a phone call. It was a woman begging Anita to let Edward go. “She told me she and Edward had been in love for a long time and that he’d been promising to leave me for years, but he couldn’t abandon me. I was absolutely shocked. All those years wasted. All those years when I could have been happy with someone else, and here he was the one with someone else! I felt like such an idiot.”

Anita is a good example of a martyr. Like many women, she sacrificed her own happiness for that of someone else. She felt it would be selfish to think of her own needs first. She couldn’t tolerate the idea of being responsible for someone else’s unhappiness. Like many women, Anita believed strongly in being fair. She always tried to balance out any critical feelings she had of someone (in this case, her distant husband) by trying to also see the person’s good points.

Donna’s husband is emotionally and sometimes physically abusive toward her. “He doesn’t beat me or anything like that. He just pushes me around a little. And he’s always sorry afterward,” Donna explained. When I told Donna that her husband’s abusive behavior would likely escalate, she said, “Oh, no. He’s not a batterer or anything. He’s just under a lot of pressure right now at work and, frankly, I think I sometimes provoke him. I need to learn to keep my big mouth shut.”

Donna is what I call an Innocent. Women like Donna jeopardize their happiness, their safety, and sometimes their very lives because they are naive. Their gullibility blinds them to the manipulations and harmful behaviors of others. They want to believe that other people are good no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary.

Why do so many women like Anita and Donna think and behave in these ways? In this book, you will find the answers to that question, as well as to the following:

• Why can’t many women bear to hurt another person, even when holding back means hurting themselves?

• How does the need to give others the benefit of the doubt make some women blind, deaf, and dumb when it comes to spotting unhealthy behaviors in their spouses, children, and others?

• Why do some women prefer to see only the good side of others?

• Why do some women always blame themselves?

• Why is it that so many women have difficulty confronting those who hurt or anger them?

• Why is it, in these enlightened times, that women continue to sacrifice themselves for their mates, their friends, and their bosses?

• Why is it that females who are abused as children often end up being revictimized as adults, whereas males who are abused as children often end up becoming victimizers?

• How do women, in some ways, play a role in their own victimization?

You’ll learn the myriad ways that being nice prevents you from achieving the success and happiness that is rightfully yours. The Nice Girl Syndrome will show you how girls and women are socialized to be nice and how this socialization sets them up for failure, unhappiness, and even abuse. Most important, it will show you how to transform yourself from a Nice Girl to a Strong Woman.

Nice Girls versus Strong Women

Strong Women are not girls at all. The word girl is supposed to be used to describe young females—not grown women. Yet the word girls is often used to describe even mature women. This may serve to make women feel younger, but it also takes away their power. For this reason, apart from our term “Nice Girls,” we will use the word woman exclusively when talking about any female over the age of eighteen.

So how do we differentiate a Strong Woman from a Nice Girl?

• Strong Women have learned that niceness does not guarantee that others will treat them fairly or with respect. They know that by being too nice, they actually encourage others to walk all over them. They’ve learned they have to earn respect by first respecting themselves and then by demanding the respect of others.

• Strong Women never put their safety or their self-esteem aside to please someone else or to keep a man. If someone acts inappropriately or abusively in any way (including becoming emotionally abusive), Strong Women stand up for themselves and make it abundantly clear that they will not tolerate the abuse. If this doesn’t work, they walk away.

• Strong Women want men in their lives but not at the price of their safety, their children’s safety, their self-respect, their self-esteem, or their peace of mind.

• Strong Women know what they want and believe they have a right to have it and can figure out by themselves how to go after it. They don’t walk over anyone along the way, but they don’t let anyone walk over them, either.

• Strong Women respect the rights of others, but if their own rights are not honored and respected, they know how to stand up for themselves.

• Strong Women realize their voices have power, so instead of remaining silent to avoid displeasing someone or hurting someone’s feelings, they let people know where they stand on important issues. They understand it is far more important to be true to themselves and their beliefs than for someone to like them.

• Strong Women work toward making themselves the best version of themselves they can become and then expect others, especially men, to accept and appreciate them the way they are. They aren’t willing to change just to please someone else, and they have the wisdom to realize that if someone doesn’t accept them there is always another who will.

• Strong Women have learned that a lot of feminine behavior and attitudes simply no longer work (for example, that women need men to support and protect them). They’ve had the courage to discard these outdated beliefs and ways of acting and to embrace an entirely different way of life. For example, in the past being nice could get a woman pretty far. If she was a Nice Girl, people looked upon her fondly and went out of their way to treat her well. If she was a Nice Girl, she gained a good reputation in her community. Boys treated her with respect and protected her from danger—including from the lurking eyes and lurching hands of those unscrupulous types who would dare to take advantage of a Nice Girl. If she was nice enough and pretty enough, she would probably get herself a man.

Today, all that has changed. Being nice no longer guarantees that you will be treated with kindness and respect. Having a good reputation can’t protect you from the tremendous backlash that is occurring against women. While books like The Rules still teach women that they need to be nice to capture a man, the men Nice Girls capture are usually not worth having.

• Strong Women have learned that they can’t depend on others to save or protect them. They’ve learned that few chivalrous heroes or supermen exist to pluck them from the arms of danger. Consider the occurrence several years ago in New York City’s Central Park after the Puerto Rican Day parade. Many women were harassed, taunted, and even attacked while bystanders of both genders stood by and did nothing to protect them. By many accounts, the police refused to help, even when women specifically asked them to intervene. With the exception of one man who quietly led a woman to safety, other men either stood idly by while women were being molested, or they joined in the melee. Because of this lack of support from others, Strong Women have learned they have to save and protect themselves—physically and emotionally. They have become their own heroes.

• Strong Women have learned that being too nice can have dire consequences, that there can be no room in their lives for being naive and innocent. It simply isn’t safe, since it invites others to take advantage of them. And it isn’t honorable, since it is often used as an excuse for women to avoid taking responsibility for themselves.

How Do Nice Girls Become Strong Women?

Being too nice can be a difficult habit to break. Because this unhealthy behavior is instilled in women at a very early age, some women have an easier time shedding it than others do. Letting go of the need to be seen as fair, understanding, or even selfless can be a painful process. Some have a fear of confrontation, most often brought about from having experienced constant conflict in their childhood homes or having been emotionally or physically abused as children. More than simply becoming more assertive or learning to establish boundaries, the process of letting go of niceness involves unearthing and then discarding deeply buried false beliefs and replacing them with the truth.

In this book, you will get help in unearthing these often illusive false beliefs. You will then learn to replace these unhealthy and false beliefs with healthy ways of thinking about yourself and others.

So how do Nice Girls become Strong Women? By confronting the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that keep you stuck in your Nice Girl act and by replacing these beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors with others that will empower you.

I’ll start out by encouraging you to examine your beliefs and attitudes. Once you have come to recognize how they contribute to your unhappiness and to negative patterns, you will need to take action. Some of the action steps you will be encouraged to take include the following:

• Stop playing sweet, gullible, and naive. It’s outdated and it invites people, especially men, to take advantage of you.

• Stop giving people second (and third and fourth) chances. If someone shows you who he or she is, pay attention and act accordingly.

• Stop being fair and start being strong. Women’s need for fairness often gets them into trouble. Their tendency to want to look at both sides of a situation often blurs the real issue and allows them to be easily manipulated.

• Learn that setting limits and boundaries and expecting others to take care of their own needs can be the greatest act of kindness you can perform. You don’t do anyone a favor by allowing people to take advantage of you.

• Let others know when they have hurt or angered you. By not speaking up when someone insults or mistreats you, you are inadvertently giving permission for him or her to continue to treat you in the same way in the future.

• Confront your own anger. Sometimes under all that niceness lies a huge storage bin of repressed and suppressed anger.