Why Being “Nice” is Killing Our Relationships—and the Radical Power of Authentic Connection

What the hell are we doing, really?

In our modernized world, many treat social rituals — like “how are you?” or “¿Cómo estás?” — as superficial politeness, which can quietly work against genuine connection. Reflecting on these habits might help us reconsider their role in authentic relationships.

As a humanistic consultant and NVC enthusiast — NVC being the nonviolent communication system of living authentically — I observe this daily: an “internalized culture” of being “nice” that acts as a mask, hiding what is truly alive in us. Recognizing this helps us move beyond cultural training and embrace NVC’s radical honesty for real connection.

What may all come down to is: what do we want? Really want? To believe that others will respect us more if we fake being as tender as soft teddy bears, or do we want to believe that real, authentic presence is what actually makes the difference in our everyday lives, and especially in professional environments?

1. Your Anger is a Gift (If and When You Stop Suppressing It)

Society teaches us that anger is “bad” — something to be managed or eliminated. In reality, anger is a vital alarm system, a warning light on the dashboard of our lives, providing essential information about what the engine needs.

Disconnecting the warning light doesn’t fix the car; it only postpones the inevitable: the engine will eventually fail. Repressing anger is a psychologically dangerous strategy. Consider how often neighbors describe serial killers as “such a nice person” who “never raised his voice.” This is the result of life-alienated thinking, where needs are so suppressed that they eventually erupt in violence.

NVC is not about “calming down” and “being nonviolent” — it is about using the energy of anger to mobilize for need-fulfillment. In Rosenberg’s words:

To me, killing people is too superficial. To me, any kind of killing, blaming of other people, punishing, or hurting other people is a very superficial expression of our anger.
(Rosenberg, 2005, p. 16)

Anger serves a specific, life-enriching purpose. In Rosenberg’s framework, it functions as an alarm signaling that we are disconnected from what we value and that our needs are not being met — a guide rather than a problem to suppress (Rosenberg, 2005, The Surprising Purpose of Anger).

More on the subject of anger in the article Anger isn’t the enemy, ” here

Being nice, kind, polite, and always joyful is the fastest way to burnout in everyday life. More about that kind of “kindness” in the article on Idiot compassion, here

2. The “Nice” Person vs. the Authentic Person

There is a profound distinction between mechanical politeness and the naked honesty of authentic NVC. Most people operate under what Rosenberg (2005) calls “vicious concepts of duty and obligation” — the sense that we must be pleasant, agreeable, and accommodating regardless of what is actually alive in us. Over time, this leads not to harmony but to deep-seated resentment.

Authentic connection, by contrast, is a manifestation of love — something we do rather than just feel. Rosenberg said, drawing on Joseph Campbell: “Don’t do anything that isn’t play.” What we do should be a willing contribution to life, not a response to fear of punishment or hope for reward.

Authenticity also means revealing our vulnerability without using it as a weapon to blame or punish others. It is the precious gift of presence — showing what is alive in us at this very moment with no other purpose than to say: Here I am, and here is what I would like.

In practice, this can look very simple. A person who is authentically present stops performing and starts making contact. Instead of asking “How are you?” on autopilot, they pause, look, and actually wait for an answer. As Rosenberg put it: “Don’t just do something, be there.” That shift — from social ritual to genuine attention — is where NVC begins.

3. We Are Never Angry for the Reason We Think

A critical pillar of NVC is the distinction between a “trigger” (the stimulus, outside us) and the “cause” (within us). While someone else’s actions may spark our anger, our own inner dynamics — the judgments and images we hold — are the actual cause.

Rosenberg illustrates this with the “elbow to the nose” story. One day, he was hit in the nose during an altercation and felt furious, because he had already judged the child as a “spoiled brat.” The next day, he caught another elbow from a different child — but because he saw that child as a “pathetic creature” in need of support, he felt pain but zero anger. The trigger was identical; the cause — the internal image powered by unmet need — was entirely different.

To move from life-alienated thinking to genuine connection, NVC offers four options for receiving any difficult message:

1. Taking it personally — accepting a right/wrong judgment and feeling hurt or rejected.
2. Judging the other person as “wrong” — the root of all anger and the core of life-alienated thinking.
3. Focusing on your own needs — identifying the values and requirements currently not being met for you.
4. Focusing on the other person’s needs — connecting empathically with what is driving their behavior.

The shift from options 1 or 2 to options 3 or 4 is at the heart of the NVC practice. It doesn’t require pretending nothing happened — it requires getting underneath the judgment to the need it is covering.

4. Stop Apologizing and Start Mourning

In a radical departure from conventional psychology, NVC views apologies as potentially doing more harm than good. Apologies are rooted in moralistic judgment — the static idea that you were “wrong” and therefore deserve to suffer or feel shame.

As the anthropologist Ernest Becker observed in The Revolution in Psychiatry (1964): “Depression results from cognitively arrested alternatives.” In Rosenberg’s reading, this means that moralistic self-judgments like “I’m a failure” or “I’m a terrible person” block our capacity to see a path toward meeting our needs. The thinking stops us before the healing can begin.

While apology is static and shaming, mourning is active and mobile.

Mourning means identifying the unmet need and feeling the deep sadness that naturally arises when our actions don’t align with our values. That sadness is life-serving — it mobilizes us to change without the self-hatred that prevents growth.

Rosenberg put it directly:

Apology is a very violent act. It is violent to the person receiving it and violent to the person giving it… Nobody will ever apologize or want an apology if they have experienced sincere mourning instead.
(Rosenberg, 2005)

Oddly enough, this is something most of us sense but rarely act on. When someone truly understands and feels the impact of what they did — without performing remorse — the need for an apology simply dissolves. What we really want is not the ritual. It’s the understanding.

5. Don’t Carry the Raft on Your Back

While the NVC process can be very powerful, there is a trap in becoming dependent — or even addicted — to the mechanics themselves. Rosenberg illustrated this with a modified Buddhist parable (2005, Practical Spirituality):

A sacred place lies on the far side of a river. To cross, you build a raft — a useful, practical tool that gets you there. But once you reach the other bank, it would be foolish to strap the raft to your back and carry it for the rest of the journey.

NVC is the raft. It is a tool for overcoming cultural training, not the destination itself.

When the process becomes “touchy-feely” or mechanical — when people rely on cheat sheets just to remember the steps — it has stopped serving its purpose. The mechanics must eventually fall away to reveal what Rosenberg always considered the real foundation: a deep desire to contribute to wellbeing and a living connection with what he called “Beloved Divine Energy.”

(More on that in the article Spiritual basis of NVC, here »)

The cheat sheet is not the problem — it is a fine place to start. The problem is staying there. Real NVC is not a script. It is a quality of attention, arrived at through practice, that no longer needs the steps because it has become the way we naturally move toward another person.

6. Seeing Ahead: Beyond Right and Wrong

Authentic power is the shift from meekness, timidity, and role-playing a polite person to a consciousness that asks: What are you needing, and what am I needing? By transforming judgments into needs, we reach the place described by the Sufi poet Rumi: a field beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing. That is where NVC is trying to take us.

Rosenberg shared this story in workshops: during the battle of Lebanon, a young man was killed wearing a T-shirt that read “Take Your Time.” His commanding officer later admitted the tragedy happened because they hadn’t taken their time. A small pause. A moment of real attention. It might have changed everything.

The choice between being “right” and being in genuine contact sounds simple. In practice, it asks a great deal — patience, a willingness to look foolish, and the courage to slow down when everything in the situation is pushing you to react.

To ponder: Are you willing to be “silly” enough to take your time, pull out your cheat sheet, and choose a deep, real connection over the virtual safety of being “polite,” “kind,” and “right”?

— Edmond Cigale, PhD
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References

Becker, E. (1964). The revolution in psychiatry: The new understanding of man. Free Press. [No stable link available]

Rosenberg, M. B. (2005). Getting past the pain between us: Healing and reconciliation without compromise. PuddleDancer Press.

Rosenberg, M. B. (2005). Practical spirituality: Reflections on the spiritual basis of nonviolent communication. PuddleDancer Press.

Rosenberg, M. B. (2005). The surprising purpose of anger: Beyond anger management: Finding the gift. PuddleDancer Press.