“Nice” Is a Costume and It’s Making Everyone Sick.

✨ Content is free—but crows like snacks.

How False Guilt, Fawning, and Fake Connection Got Confused With Love

☠️ Let’s start here:

Being “nice” is not the same as being kind.

Kindness is real. Kindness is present. Kindness has a spine.

But “nice”?
Nice is a social survival strategy.

Nice is what you wear when your nervous system says:

“Be agreeable or you might lose connection. Or safety. Or love.”

Nice is the smile you tape to your face so no one notices you’re anxious, grieving, or pissed.
Nice is the way we hide our truth to stay digestible.

And here’s the kicker:
Nice people are exhausted.
Nice people are secretly furious.
Nice people break down in the shower after another phone call where they listened for 45 minutes and said “mmhmm” but weren’t asked a single question.

Being nice isn’t virtue. It’s a defense mechanism dressed in a cardigan.

🧠 “But What If I’m Just a Caring Person?”

You are.
That’s not what we’re talking about.

This is about the difference between:

• Genuine care = “I see you and I have the energy to show up right now.”

• Fawning = “If I don’t show up for you, you might abandon me. Or explode. Or make me feel like a bad person.”

Here’s how Dr. Aziz Gazipura puts it in Not Nice (life-changer book, by the way):

“Nice is about avoiding conflict, managing others’ perceptions, and staying comfortable at the cost of being real.”

So if you:

• Struggle to say no

• Feel guilty when you rest

• Answer texts even when your soul says “I’m done”

• Feel responsible for how others feel around you

You're not just nice.
You're codependent-conditioned to fear disconnection.

😶‍🌫️ FALSE GUILT: The Parasite That Comes With People-Pleasing

False guilt is when your body punishes you for honoring your needs.
It’s when you feel bad for saying “no,” even though the “yes” would’ve wrecked you.

It’s not real guilt.
Real guilt is “I hurt someone.”
False guilt is “Someone might be disappointed that I didn’t self-abandon.”

You feel it after:

• Cancelling a hangout to rest

• Saying “I don’t want to talk about that”

• Taking up space

• Saying “I need time to think”

False guilt is a trauma echo.
It’s your nervous system trying to predict rejection.

🩹 TRAUMA BONDING = Connection Built on Shared Pain (Not Shared Truth)

Most of us grew up thinking “closeness” was:

• Gossiping about someone else

• Trauma-dumping without consent

• Watching bad news and agreeing that the world is doomed

• Rehashing physical pain, fear, and struggle

• Eating garbage food and calling it a treat

That’s not intimacy.
That’s trauma bonding.

Trauma bonding is when the shared emotion is pain—but not healing.
Struggle—but not growth.
Pity—but not presence.

It’s why people get uncomfortable when you say you’re doing better.
It’s why no one wants to hear about your healing.
It’s why you're not invited to the group anymore when you stop playing the pain ping-pong game.

📺 WHAT OUR CULTURE CALLS “NORMAL” IS ACTUALLY NERVOUS SYSTEM DYSFUNCTION

Watch TV for 20 minutes and here’s what you’ll see:

• Bad weather causes illness

• Illness is “random”

• Sugar is a reward

• Rest is laziness

• “Unconditional love” means tolerating abuse

• The most caring character is always the most exhausted

Then you grow up and wonder:

• Why does my body hurt all the time?

• Why do I feel guilty when I say no?

• Why do I think love = suffering?

Because the culture trained you to believe:

If it’s not heavy, it’s not real.

🕊️ WHAT IS UNCONDITIONAL LOVE (ACTUALLY)?

Let’s un-screw this up.

The old definition we were fed:

“Unconditional love means always being there. No matter what. No matter how they treat you.”

NOPE.

Here’s what Abraham Hicks says instead:

“Unconditional love means: I choose to feel good, no matter what’s going on. I choose to stay in alignment with love itself—not dependent on your behavior.”

Let’s go even further:

Unconditional love is NOT unconditional access.
You can love someone deeply and still not give them your time, energy, or space.

Real unconditional love sounds like:

• “I love you. And I won’t sacrifice myself to prove it.”

• “I hold love for you, but I’m not here to be used.”

• “I wish you peace. I’m choosing mine.”

• “I’m not rejecting you. I’m protecting me.”

Unconditional love isn’t “always yes.”
Sometimes it’s the most loving thing in the world to say: “This connection isn’t healthy for me right now.”

✂️ SIGNS YOU MIGHT BE NICE (BUT NOT WELL)

• You feel guilty for needing time to reply

• You rehearse your “no” and still feel bad after

• You over-explain or justify basic boundaries

• You feel invisible in conversations

• You leave social situations feeling drained

• You stay in rooms where you’re not being met, just to avoid discomfort

• You laugh at jokes that actually hurt

• You feel selfish when you choose joy over duty

None of that means you’re broken.
It means you were trained to be manageable instead of honest.

💌 SO WHAT’S ACTUALLY HEALTHY?

Here’s a new checklist.

Healthy connection looks like:

• Equal curiosity

• Space to feel without fixing

• Sharing joy and struggle without competition

• Being asked how you’re doing—and being listened to

• Feeling seen without needing to perform

• Trusting that if you say no, the relationship won’t collapse

And here’s the wild part:

When you start creating relationships like that, the old ones will call you cold.
Let them.

That’s not your coldness.
That’s their confusion meeting your clarity.

🪶 A NEW DEFINITION TO CARRY FORWARD:

Kindness is honest. Niceness is strategic.
One feeds connection. The other feeds exhaustion.

🌀 EMPATH VS. COMPASSIONATE (AND WHY ONE WILL DRAIN YOU DRY)

We confuse these all the time:

“I’m an empath.”
“I just absorb everyone’s energy.”
“I can’t help but feel everything.”
“I’m exhausted but I care too much.”

But here’s the truth Loui’s feathers been itching to spell out:

Being an empath is not the same as being compassionate.

✨ An empath feels everything, all the time, with no filter.

They soak up pain like a sponge, often unconsciously.
They get overwhelmed, overstimulated, overcommitted.
Their nervous system goes into survival mode just walking into a crowded room.

But here’s the thing:
Empathy without boundaries becomes enmeshment.
And enmeshment isn’t love. It’s self-abandonment in the name of care.

🕯️ Compassion, on the other hand, is a choice.

It’s conscious. Directed. Sovereign.
Compassion says:

“I see your pain. I hold presence. But I don’t become it.”

It has edges.
It knows where you end and they begin.
Compassion can offer warmth without catching fire.

🧠 If you’re thinking:

“I feel too much. I can’t protect my energy. I’m always exhausted from helping…”

You’re not “too sensitive.”
You were never taught how to differentiate feeling from responsibility.

💬 Try this Loui Crow reframe:

“I’m not just an empath. I’m a compassionate channel.
I feel—but I don’t drown.
I witness—but I don’t carry.
I care—but I choose how I offer that care.”

That’s not cold.
That’s the difference between being a sponge and being a lantern.

Let’s be lanterns, baby crow.
Let’s stop confusing empathy with martyrdom.
Let’s stop calling burnout a gift.

🖤

🔮 Ready for a new story?

You’re not a bad person for saying no.
You’re not selfish for stepping back.
You’re not mean for molting out of fake connection.

You’re just becoming the version of you that doesn’t need a costume to be loved.

Welcome to The Other You.
We’ve been waiting. 🖤