Your comment made sense, but I'm pretty sleepy today so my reply may not :)
It does sound like you're coming at this from the opposite direction, which I imagine gives a very different perspective.
This post was all about the downsides of niceness and none of it's upsides, since I started from a position of thinking niceness was always the best way of dealing with things under all circumstances, and I've slowly realised it's not. Which is not to say it's always bad, just that it has costs as well as benefits and it's important to be aware of them.
If (as for me, and from the sounds of things, you) niceness is almost always the best option then that's ok, but we have to be aware of the limitations that places on us and the fact that others work differently.
I still work best in low-conflict "nice" discussions, and that's ok. The point is that people who don't want to or can't talk that way (in a given context) are not necessarily in the wrong, I should just avoid engaging with them. And if I can't avoid it and am forced into a confrontation then that doesn't necessarily make the person who forced me into it bad, and there are some situations in my own life where, as much as I dislike confrontation, it really is the only way to deal with things.
For example, my ex boyfriend turned any disagreement into an emotional confrontation (he didn't get angry so much as twist things so that I came off as irrationally angry at him. He was such a prat) So I had two chocies: avoid confrontation and be "nice", or say how I felt and have a huge argument.
So I was "nice" for two years, went a little mad from all the repressed emotion, and then I dumped him, and then we had a three month long horrible nasty argument, and I am still venting all the bitterness I built up, over ten years later. And as horrible as that argument was it had to happen, and I came out of it stronger (if bitter)
Being emotionally repressed isn't better or worse than being unable to control your emotions, it's the flipside of the continuum whose happy medium is being able to express your emotions but not be controlled by them. I see it as a useful bandaid to my neuroses but not a perfect solution, and I'm trying to work towards a more balanced behaviour pattern where I'm mostly "nice" (since I like being that way) but am able to be "not nice" when the situation demands it, and don't freak out when people are "not nice" to me.
It's like having a fear of heights(*): on the whole you can just avoid going up towers etc and that's all well and good, but sometimes there's stuff in high places you can't avoid dealing with.
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It does sound like you're coming at this from the opposite direction, which I imagine gives a very different perspective.
This post was all about the downsides of niceness and none of it's upsides, since I started from a position of thinking niceness was always the best way of dealing with things under all circumstances, and I've slowly realised it's not. Which is not to say it's always bad, just that it has costs as well as benefits and it's important to be aware of them.
If (as for me, and from the sounds of things, you) niceness is almost always the best option then that's ok, but we have to be aware of the limitations that places on us and the fact that others work differently.
I still work best in low-conflict "nice" discussions, and that's ok. The point is that people who don't want to or can't talk that way (in a given context) are not necessarily in the wrong, I should just avoid engaging with them. And if I can't avoid it and am forced into a confrontation then that doesn't necessarily make the person who forced me into it bad, and there are some situations in my own life where, as much as I dislike confrontation, it really is the only way to deal with things.
For example, my ex boyfriend turned any disagreement into an emotional confrontation (he didn't get angry so much as twist things so that I came off as irrationally angry at him. He was such a prat) So I had two chocies: avoid confrontation and be "nice", or say how I felt and have a huge argument.
So I was "nice" for two years, went a little mad from all the repressed emotion, and then I dumped him, and then we had a three month long horrible nasty argument, and I am still venting all the bitterness I built up, over ten years later. And as horrible as that argument was it had to happen, and I came out of it stronger (if bitter)
Being emotionally repressed isn't better or worse than being unable to control your emotions, it's the flipside of the continuum whose happy medium is being able to express your emotions but not be controlled by them. I see it as a useful bandaid to my neuroses but not a perfect solution, and I'm trying to work towards a more balanced behaviour pattern where I'm mostly "nice" (since I like being that way) but am able to be "not nice" when the situation demands it, and don't freak out when people are "not nice" to me.
It's like having a fear of heights(*): on the whole you can just avoid going up towers etc and that's all well and good, but sometimes there's stuff in high places you can't avoid dealing with.
(*)Which I also have :)