Being Nice Might Kill You
Lou Gehrig was a popular American baseball player in the 1920’s and 30’s. He garnered a lot of attention, not only for his incredible batting skills, but also for the way he died. Mr. Gehrig’s illness was so famous that it was named after him: Lou Gehrig’s disease.
When he was forced to retire from baseball due to his failing health, the Yankees (the baseball team for which he played) held a “Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day” on July 4, 1939. The speech he gave that day was touching, including his famous line “I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
Does it seem incredible to you that a man, struck down in the prime of his life and career with a debilitating illness, would have such a positive attitude about life? As one who spreads the gospel about happiness, you might expect me to encourage you to be like Lou Gehrig.
However, today I’m writing to encourage you to do the opposite. While Mr. Gehrig’s attitude seems to be the way to go on the surface, there’s more to this story. According to some reports, Lou Gehrig was a nice guy to everyone except himself. He was a “do anything for you” type of guy. And that was exactly the problem.
What I’ve learned over the past couple of years is that being nice — or to be exact, being too nice — can kill you.
I have firsthand experience with this phenomenon. My brother Doug, whom my longtime readers will be familiar with because I wrote about his death last year, suffered and died (in my opinion) because he was too nice.
Doug didn’t acquire the same illness as did Lou Gehrig (the real name of Lou’s disease is ALS), but what both men had in common was an autoimmune disorder. Doug was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) when he, too, was in the prime of his life and career.
As Doug’s only sibling and with both of our parents gone at the time of his diagnosis, I was terrified that I would lose my last immediate relative. When he told me the news, the first thing I did was learn what I could about this disease. I sighed a sigh of relief to read that MS was not terminal, unlike the cancers that took my parents.
Watching Doug’s journey, however, I sometimes think he’d have been better off getting terminal cancer than MS. (Of course, I wish he would have gotten neither!)
MS is a horrible disease that robs the patient of not only their health, but of most of the activities that us healthy folks take for granted. As the disease slowly progresses, it debilitates its victims in seemingly random and numerous ways.
My brother suffered from intense headaches, muscle weakness, and other painful conditions which I won’t share in order to protect his privacy. As the disease progressed, he began having falls. Eventually he needed to steady himself when he walked. As we’d feared, the day came when he could no longer walk.
The last few years of Doug’s life was spent in a wheelchair. He was fortunate enough to get a fancy one, but he worked, ate, slept, and watched TV in that chair. Can you imagine not being able to leave your chair — ever?
The worst part of MS for my brother, however, was yet to come. Eventually, he could no longer feed nor clean himself. He was totally dependent on others. Though I can’t say exactly how Doug felt about that, my opinion is that the worst thing about MS is that it robs you of your pride. My brother, the breadwinner, the rescuer, and the person who took care of everyone else, eventually needed to be cared for by others.
MS also robbed my brother of his greatest joys in life. Doug was a talented and skillful pianist. He was also a world-class video game competitor.1 Though few would ask, many of us wondered how he adapted to having two of his most joyful activities ripped from him by his debilitating disease. Doug was quick to use words that were strikingly similar in feel to Mr. Gehrig’s “I’m the luckiest man in the world” speech.
During one of the last conversations my family and I had with Doug, he told us that he was happy because he could go inside of his own mind and remember the joy he felt during his glory days. That was enough, he assured us.
I believe that my brother was telling the truth, that he actually was able to find peace through his memories, but what frustrates me is the fact that he needed to develop this significant positivity skill at all. In some ways, Doug is a hero to me because he was able to transcend the mental and emotional pain of his MS. But, in other ways, I believe he failed entirely in dealing with his emotional health.
I’d long held the belief that my brother had somehow “caused” his illness, though I didn’t understand the mechanism. I never told him this. What good would it do to blame him for his own suffering? Besides, I didn’t have a solution for him, so expressing my belief would only increase his suffering.
I researched MS, what causes it, and how stress plays a part. One day, quite accidentally, I finally uncovered a possible solution for him, but it was too late. He was already gone. Sadly, the solution was simple, too:
Stop being so nice!
The solution, simple though it was, would not have been easy for my brother. For reasons which I still don’t entirely understand, Doug wasn’t able to stand up for himself in a healthy way. He allowed others to compel him to take actions which were not in his best interest and, though I can’t prove it, I feel sure that he held anger (and other emotions) which he was unable to adequately express.
I was never 100% sure about my theory that Doug’s inability to say “no” to others was a significant factor in his illness. That is, until I read a book that essentially verified what I’d believed for a long time.
When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection by Gabor Mate, M.D., was an eye-opener for me. I read Chapter Two (“The Little Girl Too Good to Be True”) with both horror and enlightenment.
There was a reason for — and an answer to — my brother’s illness. It could have been prevented or cured if we’d have realized that he hadn’t just been dealt a bad hand. From Dr. Mate’s research and clinical experience, there is ample evidence that autoimmune disorders have their roots in our emotions, not in our genes.2
I’m speaking out about my brother’s experience and what I’ve learned because I know that is what he would want me to do. Doug wanted everyone to be happy and healthy, whether he knew them or not. Being such a kind3 soul, he would not want anyone to suffer as he did.
There is much good news to share about the emerging science on the connection between stress and illness. It’s not just about MS. It’s not only about ALS and other autoimmune disorders. Dr. Mate’s book addresses illnesses as diverse as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, gastrointestinal disorders, and more.
If you or a loved one is suffering from significant or chronic illness, I recommend that you pick up a copy of Dr. Mate’s book. Can you or your loved one be “cured”? I can’t say for sure, but isn’t it worth a few bucks and some of your time to research and find out?
In my mind, the value of Mr. Mate’s (and others’) research goes far beyond curing existing disease. Even though I am currently as healthy a person as you’ll find for a 57 year-old, even I took note of the advice in the book.
In the final chapter, the author identifies “The Seven A’s of Healing”: Acceptance, Awareness, Anger, Autonomy, Attachment, Assertion, and Affirmation. What Dr. Mate recommends to his patients is what he would recommend to all of us: Take care of your emotional health and your body will do the rest.
When I began writing Primrose Ponderings, my focus was on happiness, but I quickly realized that I needed to add “well-being” to the mix. Despite my brother’s apparent ability to deal emotionally with his disease, I don’t feel that he handled his internal emotional life optimally. It is not ideal to have to do emotional gymnastics in order to be happy — especially when focusing on the “right” type of emotional work could prevent so much unnecessary suffering.
Lou Gehrig and my brother are both heroes, but their stories are also cautionary tales. If they were here today and understood the role that emotions played in their disease, I’m sure they would both say to us, “Don’t do what I did! Stop being so nice!” Being too nice might literally kill you.
My brother won many video game competitions, but the biggest was in 1983 when he became the U.S. Centipede Championship. He went on to place second in the world in that competition. His story was captured at Atari Compendium.
That is not to say that other factors besides stress and emotions don’t play a role in MS, but I think we have been overstating the role of genes, environmental factors, and other physical issues while ignoring the emotional root causes of the disease.
Being kind is not the same as being nice and I’ll be exploring the differences in an upcoming blog post in the near future. Subscribe (if you haven’t already) so you won’t miss the follow-up post about being nice vs. being kind.