Dr. Aziz argues that chronic people-pleasing erodes your boundaries and leaves you vulnerable to being used. Suppressed resentment from never saying no can trigger chronic pain, heart problems, and cancer. Authenticity suffers when you're always accommodating others, leaving you isolated despite constant effort to connect.
But Dr. Aziz, what's wrong with being nice? Doesn't that make me a good person and everybody like me? Well, being too nice and people pleasing will make others take you for granted, take advantage of you, treat you in ways that are not healthy. Because you don't have boundaries. You're afraid to say no. So you end up in situations that don't work for you. You're afraid to ask for what you want, so you don't really get what you want in relationships, so you feel resentful. But then you're so nice, you're not supposed to be resentful as you push it down. That pushing down of resentment, plus the emotional suppression that's required for niceness, makes you have problems. Chronic pain problems, heart problems, cancerous problems. And on top of that, you're afraid to go approach people because you don't upset anybody and offend anybody. So you are more isolated, more health problems, more mental health problems, more anxiety. And then on top of that, the person that you're trying to be so nice to ends up choosing somebody else who's more authentic and real than you. So now you're left and you're alone and you don't like who you are. You're not even being yourself. You've lost who you really are in the world and who you're supposed to be. But other than that, it's great.
