BONUS EPI: The Difference Between Being Nice and Being Kind (And Why Nice Is Killing You)

This episode challenges the myth that being “nice” is the same as being kind abd I will explains why niceness often masks as performance, people pleasing, conflict avoidance, trauma response, control disguised as care and dishonesty that erodes self-respect and intimacy. 

I offer a step-by -step guide to help you shift toward kindness built on honesty, boundaries, and nervous system repair.

• defining niceness as performance, people pleasing, conflict avoidance, and dishonesty
• costs of niceness to identity, intimacy, energy, boundaries, and self-respect
• fawning as a nervous system adaptation and how it keeps you in survival
• why niceness attracts users and repels healthy relationships
• what kindness actually is and why it’s sustainable
• practical scripts to replace “I’m fine” and “whatever you want”
• tolerating others’ discomfort and letting go of control
• building self-trust and grieving relationships that don’t survive
• ten-step path from nice to kind with somatic tools and values

About Me:

I’m Autumn Moran, a Licensed Professional Counselor in Texas specializing in trauma-informed care for neurodivergent women and trauma survivors.

Therapy (Texas residents only):

I provide individual therapy in my private practice for women working through trauma, late diagnosis processing, relationship challenges, and healing from narcissistic abuse or toxic family systems. My approach is neurodivergent-affirming and focuses on helping you understand your patterns while building practical tools for nervous system regulation and authentic living.

Life Coaching (available anywhere):

For women outside Texas or those wanting support alongside therapy, I offer:

•Somatic Healing Coaching: Bridges the gap between cognitive understanding and embodied healing through nervous system work, movement practices, and practical integration tools. Perfect as a complement to talk therapy or for those ready to work directly with their body’s wisdom.

•Unmasking Journey Coaching: Specialized support for late-diagnosed neurodivergent women learning to reconnect with their authentic selves after decades of masking. We work on identifying your real needs, rebuilding your sense of self, and creating a life that fits who you actually are.

Whether you’re healing trauma, discovering yourself after late diagnosis, or both, my goal is to help you not just understand your story, but feel genuinely safe and at home in your own body.

Subscribe & Share:

New episodes drop every Wednesday and Friday. If today’s episode resonated, please share it with someone who needs to hear it or leave a comment—it helps other women find this space and know they’re not alone. Check me out on Apple Podcasts and many other platforms.

Work With Me:

Ready to start your healing journey?

Book a free 15-minute consultation: (http://linktr.ee/EmpoweringWellnessHub)

Listen to my DIVINE WOMAN Playlist (Apple & Spotify): Empowering songs for women healing through softness and strength - links are on the linktree link! 

Transcript

Welcome & Who This Is For

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Awaken Heart, a podcast for healing women. This is a place where your voice matters, your body is sacred, and your journey home to yourself is always honored, no matter how winding the road. I'm Autumn, and I am passionate about supporting women on their healing journeys. As a licensed professional counselor, I provide trauma-informed therapy for clients in my private practice, specializing in work with neurodivergent women and trauma survivors. For women that are looking for an additional support alongside with their therapy, I offer life coaching programs, including somatic healing coaching. And a new one that I have am offering is an unmasking journey for late-diagnosed neurodivergent women. It helps you bridge the gap between cognitive understanding and embodied healing through nervous system work, body movement, and integrational tools like um, what do I say, meditation, breath work, manifestations, kind of maybe reframing of the mind, thoughts. Whether you're working through trauma or discovering your authentic self after years of masking, or maybe both. My goal is to help you not just understand your story, but to feel genuinely safe and at home in your own body. New episodes drop here every Wednesday and Friday, so be sure to subscribe so you never miss one. And if today's episode resonates with you, I'd be so grateful if you'd share it with someone who needs to hear it or leave a comment because it does help other women find the space and know that they're not alone in their healing journey. All right, that's it. I jumped right on into a hello and then right on into my own little personal commercial. So there's my ad for the day. Let's jump into it, right? Because this episode may challenge you. It might make you uncomfortable, and it might completely reframe how you show up in your relationships. And today, that is, you've read the title so far, but I want to talk about the difference between being nice and being kind. And I know you may be thinking, aren't those the same thing, Autumn? Isn't nice good? Shouldn't I be nice? Nice is killing you. Nice is why you're exhausted. Nice is why you feel resentful. Nice is why people walk all over you. And nice is why you can't access your authentic self. Because nice isn't about being caring or compassionate. Nice is about performance, control, and about keeping yourself safe by making sure everyone else is comfortable. Kind, on the other hand, is different. It's honest. Kind can say no, kind can disappoint people. Kind can be authentic and have boundaries. And if you're someone who's been nice your whole life, you've been the accommodating one, the easy-going one, the one who never makes waves. If this sounds like you, this is what this episode is for. I want to show you what niceness is costing you and what it would look like to choose kindness instead. And when talking about nice, I'm not talking about basic human decency or politeness. I'm talking about something very specific. Nice is performance, people pleasing, conflict avoidance, trauma response, control disguised as care, and dishonesty. So I want to break that down. When it's in performance, when when nice is a performance, you're putting on a version of yourself that you think other people want to see. It's smiling when you're upset, it's saying, I'm fine, it's fine. When it's not, it's acting cheerful when you're exhausted, it's performing agreeability, accommodation, ease. It's not genuine, it's strategic. When it's people pleasing, nice is prioritizing other people's comfort over your own truth. It's saying yes when you mean no. It's going along with things you don't want, it's suppressing your actual opinions, feelings, and needs to avoid conflict or disappointment. Nice is asking yourself, what do they want me to do? instead of asking yourself, what do I actually want to do? When it's conflict avoidance, nice is doing whatever it takes to avoid disagreement, tension, or discomfort. It's agreeing when you don't agree. It's staying quiet when you have something to say. It's smoothing things over, making excuses for people, and minimizing your own hurt. Nice would rather betray itself than risk conflict. When it's a trauma response, nice is fawning. It's the survival strategy you learned when you couldn't fight, when you couldn't flee, and freezing wasn't enough. You learned that keeping other people happy kept you safe. And that anticipation of their needs, that that's part of the fawning process. You anticipated their needs and became what they wanted you to be, and that protected you from harm. Nice isn't a personality trait, it's a nervous system adaptation. When it's control disguised as care, this is a hard one to admit, right? Like nice is often about control. If I can keep you comfortable, you won't be angry with me. If I can anticipate your needs, you won't reject me. If I can be agreeable enough, you'll love me and I'll be safe. You'll like me. You'll choose me. Nice is trying to control other people's responses by controlling your own behavior. It's not actually about caring for them, it's about managing them so you stay and feel safe. When it is dishonest, nice lies. Nice says, I'm fine when you're not. Nice says, I don't mind when you do, in fact, mind a whole bunch. Nice says whatever you want when you have a freaking preference. Nice withholds the truth to maintain an image. People can feel the dishonesty even if they can't name it. When you're being nice, people know they're not getting the real you. They might not consciously recognize it, but there's an inauthenticity that creates distance. If you've been nice your whole life, it's probably because you grew up in an environment in an environment where your authentic self wasn't safe. You had volatile, unpredictable, or critical parents who learned to manage who where you learn to manage their emotions. Maybe you were punished for having needs, opinions, feelings, questions, confusion. Maybe you learned that love was conditional on being easy, accommodating, and agreeable. Maybe you learned to mask your authentic responses to avoid rejection. Maybe fawning became your primary survival strategy. Nice made sense once because it protected you. It helped you survive. But what once was protecting you is now imprisoning you. So, like, what do you think? What do you think the cost of nice is, right? What about the cost to your authentic self? When you're constantly performing nice, you lose touch with who you actually are. You don't know what you want, you don't know what you think, you don't know what you feel. Nice erases you slowly over time until you wake up one day and realize you don't know who you are anymore. What about it cost your relationships? Because nice prevents intimacy. Real intimacy requires vulnerability, vulner vulnerability. I think I said that right, authenticity and being seen as you actually are. But nice won't let anyone see the real you. Nice shows you, shows others the performed version of you, a managed, safer version of you. So your relationships stay surface level. People think that they know you, but they know the nice version, but not the real you. You may feel profoundly lonely even when surrounded by people, because no one actually knows you. And that niceness can also breed resentment. You're constantly giving, accommodating, saying yes, and nobody asked you to. You're doing it to manage your own anxiety, but you start to resent people for making, quote unquote, right? Making you do things you chose to do. You feel taken advantage of, even though you never set a boundary. What about the cost to your energy level? Because nice, being nice, pretending is exhausting. Constantly monitoring yourself, performing, suppressing, managing other people's emotions. That's that's that's draining. What about the cost to your boundaries? When you're nice, you can't have boundaries because boundaries would mean disappointing people, saying no, not being accommodating. So nice just but you can't, you can't have nice doesn't set the boundaries. You let people cross lines you're uncomfortable with. You say yes to things you don't want, you tolerate behaviors that hurt you, even on a small level, even if it doesn't hurt anyone else, even if you feel that you're making too big a deal of something, you tolerate it. You stay in situations that aren't good for you, all because nice can't risk the conflict that boundaries would create. What about the cost to your self-respect? Every time you say yes when you mean no, you are abandoning yourself. Every time you suppress your truth to keep someone else comfortable, you're betraying yourself. Every time you pretend to be fine when you're not, you are teaching yourself that your feelings do not matter. Nice erodes your self-respect because deep down you know you're not being honest. You know you're performing, you're people pleasing, and that knowledge it wears away at how you see yourself. Talk about the fawning aspect of it, the cost to your nervous system. If nice is a fawn response, then nice keeps your nervous system in survival mode. You are dysregulated more often than not. You're in constant threat detection, constant monitoring and adjusting. Your nervous system never gets to relax because it's always working to keep you safe through accommodation. You cannot heal trauma while you're still fawning. You can't regulate your nervous system while you're while you're still performing nice. What about attracting the cost of attracting the wrong people? Because what happens when you're nice? You attract users, it attracts people who are happy to let you accommodate them endlessly. It attracts people who don't respect boundaries because you don't have any. It attracts narcissists and energy vampires who can sense that you won't push back. And it does repel healthy people because healthy people can sense your inauthenticity, they can sense they're not getting the real you or they get uncomfortable being in a relationship with someone who won't be honest with them. So they're repelled. Healthy people like authenticity. Healthy people want the real you. They don't want the performance, they won't even take the performance. They'll try to call you out on your performance. They'll want to know the deep you. And then there's this invisible cost. And maybe that's one of the biggest costs of this whole thing is that you're living a half-life. You're going through the motions, playing a role, performing a character, but you're not actually living as yourself. You're not taking risks, you're not speaking your truth, you're not being seen, you're not even going to make a wave. And at the end of the life, at the end of your life, you won't regret the times you were difficult or disappointing or too much. You'll regret the times you made yourself small, easy, nice, when you could have been honest, authentic, and real. Okay, so let's jump into what kind is. I've beat it into you essentially of what I think that was a very not a right word to say. I have spent some time on niceness, what it looks like, what it does, and why it's bad for you. I mean, ultimately, because you're not living your life on your terms. And that is so crushing. I don't want anyone to live a life that's not theirs, that they can't be themselves and feel safe in their body and with their goofiness or whatever it is. Okay, so what is kind? What is kind? That's what we're here for, right? Because that's what we want to do. Kind is honest, boundaried, authentic, respectful of everyone, including yourself, willing to tolerate discomfort, based in genuine care, not fear, sustainable, connected to your values, lots of good things, right? So I'm gonna break it down. When kind is honest, kind tells the truth, not cruelly, but clearly, I'm not okay with this instead of pretending it's fine. Kind says, no, I can't do that instead of overextending. It says I disagree instead of pretending to agree. Kindness, being kind, respects people enough to be honest with them. Kind knows that lying to keep someone comfortable is actually disrespectful. It treats them like they can't handle reality. When it's boundaried, again, you say no, you can disappoint people, you can prioritize your own needs sometimes. Kind understands that boundaries aren't mean, they're necessary for sustainable relationships. Kind says, I care about you and I have limits. I want to help and I can't do this. I love you and I need space. Kindness holds both care and boundaries at the same time. When kindness is being authentic, it shows up as the real version of itself, not performed, not managed, not filtered, not through a lens of what will they think. Kind is willing to be seen, flaws, struggles, opinions, needs, and all. Kind trusts that the right people will accept the real version. And the people who only want the nice version, kindness is willing to lose them. And I know that's hard when the people you're talking about might be family, might be a partner, might be a sibling. I've got plenty of episodes on how to make that space. But maybe it needs to be made. Boundaries are good. What about kindness being respectful of everyone, including yourself? Nice respects everyone except you. Kindness respects everyone, including you. You consider other people's needs and your own. You care about other people's feelings and your own. You want other people to be comfortable and you recognize you deserve comfort too. Kindness doesn't sacrifice itself on the altar of everyone else's ease. What about kindness willing to tolerate discomfort? Kind can sit with other people's disappointments. Kind can handle conflict, can let someone be upset without immediately fixing it or backing down. Kind knows that temporary discomfort is worth it for long-term authenticity. That a moment of difficult honesty is better than months of resentful accommodating. What about kindness being based in genuine care, not fear? Because nice comes from fear, the fear of rejection, anger, abandonment, conflict, right? But kind comes from genuine care. Care for the other person and care for yourself and care for the relationship. So nice asks, how do I keep them from being upset with me? And kind asks, what does this relationship actually need right now? Sometimes what the relationship needs is a difficult conversation. Sometimes it needs boundaries and honesty that creates temporary discomfort, but it how it's for long term health of the relationship. What about when kindness is sustainable? Because niceness, the truth about it, it burns you out. You can't just perform, perform, perform without having some sort of setback or illness or in the bed type of feeling. Nice can't be maintained long term without resentment or collapse. And kind is sustainable because it's it isn't betraying yourself. It's not constantly performing. It has boundaries that prevent burnout. Kind is honest, which requires less energy than constant management. What about kindness being connected to your values? Kindness asks, what's the kind of thing to what's the kind thing to do here? Not the nice thing. The kind thing, which might mean difficult honesty, which might mean being a creating a boundary, or maybe it might mean disappointing someone. Nice is being reactive. It adjusts based on what it thinks others want. Kind is rooted in your values. It's based on what you actually believe is right. So here are some examples. Nice. Sure, I can help you move this weekend. When you're exhausted, already overcommitted, and don't want to disappoint. So kindness would stay on those terms. I care about you, and I don't have the capacity to help with the move. I'm already stretched thin, but I can help you find movers or come by with food after. Nice. No, it's fine. I'm not upset. When you are genuinely upset but don't want conflict. Kind would say, actually, I am upset. Can we talk about what happened? I want to understand your perspective and I want you to understand mine. What about when you have a preference but don't want to be difficult? Whatever you want to do is fine with me, is the nice version. A kind version is I'd actually prefer XYZ. But if that doesn't work for you, let's figure out something that works for both of us. How about we brainstorm, right? Let's compromise. You give me the top three, I give you your top three, and let's see what we come up with. What about staying silent when someone says something offensive because you don't want to make it awkward? That's being nice. The kind way would say, hey, that comment didn't set right with me. Can we talk about it? Because you're caring enough about the person to give them feedback, enough for them to enough, but you're caring enough about yourself to speak up and you're caring enough about the relationship to address it instead of letting resentment build. What about being nice by texting back immediately every time, even when you're busy, because you don't want them to think you're ignoring them? Kind responds when you have capacity, trusting that healthy people can wait, setting the expectation that you're not always immediately available. Hello, it's a text message, it's not immediate. Yes, I know that's counterculture, but I'm an oldie, I'm 45. And when we had texting, it was so we could communicate that we couldn't communicate because we were busy. So, like, I'll get to you when I get to you. Calm down. You're not, I'm just assuming you might be, but I don't think you're a heart surgeon. And if you are, they're not gonna call you at last minute or text you and be like, there's a heart on the table, come here now. Like, very rare if that happens, right? So, like, calm down, people. I'll respond when I respond. It's all my capacity, right? You're not at the whim of others. Nice. Never asking for help because you don't want to burden anyone or because they're gonna do it wrong or because they're gonna grumble. Kindness, ask for help when you need it, trusting that healthy relationships involve give and take. Give others the opportunity to show up for you. So kind still cares, kind is still considerate, but kind doesn't abandon itself in the process. If kind is healthier, why is it so hard to make the shift? I want to talk about those barriers. One, when you heard me say those examples, did at one point did you think shit she's rude or shit, they're gonna think I'm mean? It feels mean. When you've been nice your whole life, setting a boundary feels cruel. Saying no feels selfish. Being honest about your feelings feels like you're being a difficult person. Because your nervous system has been trained that nice equals good, safe, and anything that's not nice is bad and dangerous. So when you try to be kind, which includes boundaries and honesty, your nervous system screams, danger, you're being mean. They'll reject you. Stop. But you're not being mean, you're being honest. Your nervous system just can't tell the difference yet. And you've got to give it an opportunity to experience this new way, that this unfamiliar discomfort is going to be a better way. Maybe people don't like it. I mean, the people who benefited from your niceness will not like your kindness, they will get mad, they will make you feel bad, they will try to gaslight you, guilt trip you, make you feel like you know, oh man, it just makes you me. They may call you selfish, say that you've changed. You have, and that's a good thing. Don't let them gaslight you into thinking that change is bad. Change is good. They'll be confused, upset, or maybe even outright disappointed. And honestly, that's information. It tells you that those relationships were built on your self-abandonment, not on mutual respect. It tells you that they like the nice version because the nice version was easier for them. Healthy people, they'll respect your kindness. They'll even appreciate it, they'll adjust to your boundaries because they want an authentic relationship with you, not a performed version. Maybe it's hard to go to the kindness side because nice gives you the illusion that you can control how people respond to you. If you're accommodating enough, if you're pleasant enough, if you manage yourself perfectly, they won't be angry, they'll like you, you'll be safe. But that's all an illusion, Michael. That's my arrested development. Because it's all an illusion. It's an illusion, Michael. You can't actually control how people respond. You can reperform yourself into exhaustion, and they still will probably feel disappointed, angry, or rejected because they just want more, honestly. Kind gives up that illusion. Kind says, I'm going to be honest and authentic, and I can't control how they receive it. And that's terrifying if you've been relying on performance to feel safe. And to be kind means that you have to tolerate other people's discomfort. Nice fixes, soothes, accommodates the moment someone is uncomfortable. Kind can let people sit in their discomfort. If you set a boundary and someone is upset, kind doesn't immediately backtrack. Kind lets them be upset. Kind trusts they can handle their feelings. If you're honest and someone is disappointed, kind doesn't rush to fix it. Just let them be disappointed. Because kindness knows that disappointment isn't catastrophic. This is incredibly hard if you're trauma-bonded to other people's emotional states, if their discomfort feels like a threat to you. You may be punished passive aggressively, later mistreated, stonewalled, ignored, made to feel guilty, gaslit because you're trying to set a boundary. Keep going. Just keep going. These are this is information that you need to keep going. And also being kind may trigger your own rejection wounds. Because if you've been rejected for being authentic before, if childhood taught you that your real self was too much, not enough, weird, wrong, then being kind, aka authentic, will trigger those old wounds. Your system will say, see, this is why we perform nice. The real you gets rejected. Put that mask back on. Healing means sitting with that triggered wound while continuing to be authentic anyway. It means proving to your nervous system that adult you can handle rejection, and that rejection isn't alienation, that being yourself is worth the risk. And being kind requires self-trust. Nice just requires you to read the room and become what it wants. But kind requires trusting that your needs matter, your feelings are valid, your boundaries are reasonable, and your honesty is valuable. If you don't trust yourself, kind feels dangerous. What if my boundaries are unreasonable? What if I'm being too much? What if I'm asking too much? What if my feelings are wrong? Kind requires building trust in your own judgment, your own worth, and your own right to take up space. And being kind sometimes, which is the whole hard thing, is it means losing some relationships. And this is the grief work here. When you shift from nice to kind, some relationships won't survive. The people who needed you to be nice, who couldn't handle your boundaries, who wanted the performed version of you, they might leave. Or you might need to leave them. And that is so incredibly hard. Even when intellectually you know it's right, emotionally, it's loss, it's grief, and it's scary. When you think about grief, depression, anger, denial, acceptance, numbness? I don't know the fifth one. Why do I always forget the fifth stage of grief? They're not in any order. They can come sporadically. I just forget the other component. But what's true? The relationships you lose were built on false pretenses. They weren't with the real you. And making space for them meant you couldn't make space for relationships with people who actually wanted to know you. So, how do you shift? How do you make the shift from nice to kind? Step uno, step one, notice when you're doing nice versus kind. Always start with awareness. Awareness is an information gathering stage where you're not judging, you're not scolding, you're not changing. You are noticing the performance, the people pleasing, saying yes when you mean no, suppressing the truth. I just want you to notice it. Oh, I'm being nice right now. I'm saying I'm fine when I'm not. I'm agreeing when I actually disagree. Build the awareness first. Step dose. Step two, ask yourself, what would kind do here? When you're in a situation where you'd normally default to nice, I want you to take a moment and ask yourself, what would kind do in this situation? What would be honest and boundaried and caring to them and to myself? You don't have to do it yet. Just imagine it, okay? What would the kind response be? Just imagine it. Step three, trace. Start small and practice. Don't try to overhaul everything at once. Pick a low-stakes situation to practice kindness. Start with people who are safe and start with tiny truths, tiny boundaries. Some examples. You can say, I need to think about that before I commit. That didn't feel good to me. Can we talk about it? Actually, I'd prefer to meet at this time instead. Small practices build the muscle. Step quattro, step four, tolerate the discomfort. When you're kind instead of nice, you will feel uncomfortable. Your nervous system will freak out. You will feel guilty, mean, selfish, ugly, bitchy, whatever. That's normal. That's your system adjusting to a new way of being. Feel the discomfort and do it anyway. The discomfort is information that you're doing something different, not information that you're doing something wrong. Step cinco, step five, notice who responds well and notice who doesn't. I want you to pay attention to how people respond when you are kind instead of nice. Healthy people will appreciate your honesty, they'll appreciate your boundaries, and they might even say, thank you for telling me the truth. Thank you for being so real with me. Unhealthy people will push back, guilt trip, call you names, call you selfish, demand you go back to the old way. This gives you information about who's safe and who isn't. Believe what you're seeing, even if it's very close people. It sucks. I know. I'm sorry. Step six, CS. Work on your nervous system. If nice is a fawn response, you need nervous system work. This means therapy, especially a neurodivergent affirming, trauma-focused therapist, somatic practices. These are body movements, these are stretches, these are things you can do. Shake, wiggle, jiggle. Learn to regulate yourself without managing others. This can also tie into executive functioning and trauma responses. Build distress tolerance, tolerating others, people, other people being upset with you. There are distress tolerance skills. This is a dialectical behavior therapy thing, but you can use them in any form. Distress tolerance skills are very helpful. It's a way to calm the racing mind down quickly. In reparenting work, please teach yourself you're safe even when others are disappointed, especially your creators, your caregivers, your people that raised you. Because you cannot think your way out of a trauma response. You need body-based healing. CTA step seven, build self-trust. And this can happen in therapy too, or life coaching, right? Practice trusting yourself. Your feelings are valid, your needs matter, your boundaries are reasonable, your truth is valuable, and you always deserve to take up space. I want you to write these down. I want you to say them aloud. Challenge the voice that says you're too much or not enough. Your feelings are valid. Your needs matter. Your boundaries are reasonable. Your truth is valuable. You deserve to take up space. Step eight, Ojo. Grieve what you lose. Some people will leave when you stop being nice. Situations will change. You might lose things that felt important. Let yourself grieve. Do not minimize the loss just because intellectually you know it's right. Feel the grief. Honor what you're releasing and trust that what's real will remain. And what's real is worth having. Step nine, nueve, find your people. Surround yourself with people who value kindness over niceness. These people exist. They're often other people who've done this work, and they're often in spaces focused on healing, authenticity, and growth. Find them, build relationships with them. Step 10. DS. Be kind to yourself throughout this whole process. This isn't going to be perfect. You'll slip back into nice sometimes, you'll overcorrect, you'll be too harsh, you'll wobble as you learn the new way. And that is all okay because you're unlearning decades of conditioning. This takes time, practice, and it is hard, sacred work. But give yourself grace no matter what stage you're at, no matter what step you're in. So what happens when kindness is what's possible with kindness? Authentic relationships, better energy and capacity. That energy now can go toward things you actually care about, toward healing, creating joy, building a life that fits who you actually are instead of performing who you think you need to be. It increases your self respect because the self respect becomes the foundation of everything else. You heal your nervous system, you learn boundaries that work. And you live as yourself. Maybe that's most importantly. Kind makes it possible to actually live as yourself. Not as the version you think people want. Not as the performed, manage, nice version, but as the real, messy, imperfect, authentic, glorious version of you. You get to have opinions. You get to take up space. You get to be difficult sometimes. You get to be too much for some people and just right for others. Honestly, you get to be a human. And that's not selfish. That is sacred. And that is what we are here for. We are here to break up this conditioning. We are here to stop this bullshit of all this parading around and performing. If you've been nice your whole life, I know this episode might be challenging. I know part of you might be thinking, but being nice is good. It keeps me safe. And people might not like me if I stop. The people who only like you when you're nice don't actually like you. They like what you do for them. They like how easy you are. They like that you don't have needs or boundaries. But they don't know you because you haven't let them see the real you. And you deserve to be known. You deserve to be loved for who you actually are, not for how well you perform agreeability. And being kind is how you get there. You don't have to choose between caring for others and caring for yourself. Kindness does both. Your nervous system will definitely protest, and some people will definitely push back, and you will almost definitely doubt yourself. All this is normal. It is not a sign that you're doing wrong. It is a sign that you're doing right. Because on the other side of nice is a life where you're actually freaking present, where your relationships are genuine and real, where you have energy, self-respect, and you're living as the person that you're actually, that you actually are. That's worth the discomfort and the risk. That's worth disappointing people who preferred the performed version of you. You are worth being honest. You are worth having boundaries. Choose kind, choose yourself, choose a life where you're actually living, not just performing. What do you think? Got a 10-step process. Go through it again if you need to. But step one is acknowledgement. Step two is noticing and imagining what you would do. Step three is starting that small process practice with safe people. Step four is tolerating the discomfort, using it as a sign of growth, not as a sign of wrongdoing. Step five, notice how people respond, who responds well and who doesn't. That's information. Step six, that's nervous system work, that's nervous system regulating skills, that is humming, singing, vibrating, shaking, wiggling, cold therapy, yoga, meditation, all of it. Step seven, build that self-trust, work with your life coach or your therapist. Step eight, grieve what you lose. Again, use a helping professional to get you through the grief because it can be heavy. It could come out of nowhere, even when you know you're doing the right thing. Honor that. Step nine, rebuild, find your safe people. Step 10, and it's a step that lasts always from step one to step 10. Be kind to yourself in the process. I'd love to hear from you. Got a question? Message me. I got feedback today from a client that my podcasts take a lot. Take a lot of thought, take a lot of reflection, maybe take time to listen to more than once. And I don't mean it to be heavy, but I want to be real and I want to give information and I've got a lot to give. So, like, give me some feedback. Would you like me to break it up? Would you like to hear a certain topic or maybe just one piece of a topic? I love feedback. I love to hear what other people want to hear or what resonates. Leave me a comment, send me a message. I'd love to hear from you. Not only because I want feedback and to help you get what you need, but also this helps other people, other women see this podcast and know that they're not alone. Want to work with me in private practice? Private practice therapy in Texas. It's I work through it with clients, through their healing journey, through evidence-based therapy. And I offer life coaching programs for women nationwide outside of Texas, including my unmasking program for late diagnosed neurodivergent women and a somatic healing program designed to complement your existing talk therapy, especially if you're going through trauma-informed therapy. If you're already working with a therapist on trauma recovery, my coaching can help you integrate that work into your body through movement, breath work, and nervous system regulation. Because healing isn't just about understanding your story, it's about feeling safe in your body again. Find the Link Tree link in the show notes. Click on that. You've got some options. You can schedule a 15-minute free consultation for us to meet to see if we're a good fit. You can choose your Apple, Spotify, women's playlist, Divine Women's Playlist of music that's nothing but good, empowering music for your ears. Until next time, my dears, I want you to know that you were never too much and never too late, and you do not have to figure it out all alone because I am right here every Wednesday and Friday. May you be happy and free. May our healing ripple outward to bless the world with happiness and freedom. Take care of you, and I'll see you soon.