I help Christian Nice Guys — men who on the surface are nice and pleasant but, deep down, are really secretive and manipulative. They hide their fear, passivity, and inability to love behind a deceptive smile and fake demeanor. Their struggles often result from bad childhoods that are not dealt with, but ignored. Many CNGs use Christianity to hide from life, not to embrace God and the abundant life he has for them.
The following questions to Dr. Laura Schlessinger about her latest book, Bad Childhood—Good Life: How to Blossom and Thrive in Spite of an Unhappy Childhood, are posed with the "Christian Nice Guy" problem in mind.
1. After speaking at the Iron Sharpens Iron Men’s Conference in New Hampshire recently, I was reminded of how confused children of alcoholics often become as adults. I worked with a number who are in the middle of a divorce. Please explain how being a child of an alcoholic can create a fearful perception of life and a passive approach toward living.
Parents who are alcoholic are but one possibility of the many scenarios that damage children. When children have to be "careful" or "parental"-- lest their parent explode or implode -- they are often quite handicapped later in life, continuing to imagine that all situations with all people require those sacrificial attributes.
Parents are supposed to help their children become autonomous adults. Parents who fail in doing so, who focus on themselves instead, create children who can only function in that dysfunctional sphere.
2. You write that men with bad childhoods don't try to control others with tears, the way some women do. "Men are more likely to withdraw and drink or dominate and hurt with words or physical violence. In doing so, the entire family is constantly vigilant about his moods and afraid of 'setting him off.' He becomes the pampered, protected Center of the Universe because of his family's fears." This is important to the "Nice Guy" problem because their anger is often the result of their overarching fear of life in general. How can a guy figure out if his anger comes from fear?
Any man can realize quite readily that his anger is from "fear" when it is obviously not in the service of a noble cause or ideal, and when it is obviously out of proportion to the moment, and when it is directed at those he is supposed to love and protect. Anger is the number one direction a man’s fears turn into because it is considered more "masculine" to be angry than fearful.
3. Are men with bad childhoods prone to other unique ways of destroying their lives and hurting others when compared to women?
Withdraw, drink, and or dominate covers it, except for more direct suicidal behavior compared to the slow death that comes from alcohol/drug abuse and other risky behaviors.
4. You write that a father with a bad childhood who doesn’t do the hard work necessary to obtain the good life might directly or indirectly lead him "to victimize a child." One of the ways passive and fearful men indirectly victimize their children, I contend, is by being stingy with their affection. A "Nice Guy" might remain unknowable to his kids, and as a result, these kids often think there's something wrong with them. What do Nice Guys need to do to stop hurting their children in this way?
These damaged men can create in their children the same horrible feelings they’ve been suffering from their whole lives. When I talk to such men on my radio program, and drop that bomb, it usually, but not always, sobers them up to a sense of responsibility, which ennobles a man or father.
It is absolutely true that the number-one cure for depression is looking outside yourself and expressing compassion toward others. It obviously gives your life the meaning it hasn’t had.
5. I used to ridicule books like yours (and mine) because I thought they were for "weak" people. I hear from men who believe like I once did. What would you say to such men?
It takes great character and integrity to be willing to look at oneself with critical clarity. It takes great strength and courage to let go of the "self" and accept the truth about what that self has meant to others and done to others. Weakness is what keeps people from becoming truly human with the grace to look truth in the face, embrace it, and turn toward what’s good.
For more information on Dr. Laura's book Bad Childhood - Good Life, click here.
Paul Coughlin, speaker with Iron Sharpens Iron Men’s Ministry, is the author of No More Christian Nice Guy: When Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts Men, Women, and Children (Forward by Dr. Laura). His upcoming book, Married But Not Engaged: Why Men Check out and What You Can Do To Create the Intimacy You Desire, is co-authored with his wife Sandy and will be available this fall. For more information, go to Christianniceguy.com
