In this short video, I explain why the easy, agreeable man so often ends up resentful and overlooked, and what begins to change when we work by video on saying what you want.
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Online nice guy syndrome therapy helps men who have spent years being reliable, helpful and no trouble to anyone, and who feel quietly passed over and bitter underneath. You work with me alone, by video and in English, in 1-hour sessions that hold 50 minutes of therapy, booked at an hour that suits your part of the world.
I help you see the bargain you have been living by, usually learned as a boy: be good, need little, and you will be kept. This is a main branch of my online psychotherapy for men. Where one side of the pattern stands out, there is more focused help with people-pleasing in men and conflict avoidance in men.
You can book a free 30-minute call, pick a session time, read my client policy or write to me first.
Online nice guy syndrome therapy is for men, anywhere in the world, who have organised their lives around being the decent, accommodating one and are worn out by what it costs. People call you dependable and kind, yet you feel unseen by your partner, your colleagues and your friends. You want to stop hiding what you need and be taken seriously as the man you are.
Some men need a more specific kind of help. If one of these lines describes you better, the linked page is a better place to begin.
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These reviews describe clients’ experiences of working with me. They come from my wider practice and do not all relate to online sessions. Each person’s experience is their own, and a review does not promise a particular outcome.
“Of all the men I see online, the ones who tell me they are simply too nice are rarely suffering from kindness. They are suffering from hiding. Niceness, for them, is a way of staying safe: give enough, ask for nothing, and nobody will ever have a reason to leave. Listen underneath and you hear ‘If I make myself useful enough, will you finally pick me?’ Next to it sits a cooler voice, ‘My needs are my business, and I will sort them out where nobody can see.’ Some men carry a third voice as well, ‘Come and find me, just do not look too closely at what you find.’ I do not think the answer is to become harder. I think the answer is to become honest.”
Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist and EFT couples therapist
I am Mark Colclough, MA. I have practised since 2004 and offer online psychotherapy and couples therapy in English.
My training brings together your emotions, your thoughts and your relationships. My deep passion is the moment when what happens between you finally makes sense, to each of you and to each other. I have lived and worked in nine countries, so I know something of life across languages, cultures and borders.
Read about my background, or explore online psychotherapy and online couples therapy.
I meet regularly with experienced psychotherapists to reflect on my work, question my understanding and develop my skills. Supervision is part of the professional care I bring to individual and couples work, including online sessions.
My focus is thoughtful practice, integrity and responsibility.
You are welcome to ask about the kind of support you need.
Tell me where you are based and your time zone. We can then consider whether online sessions together are suitable.
Andrés is 37, grew up in Bogotá and now works as a product designer in Lisbon, where he lives with his Portuguese partner. He does the shopping, remembers her mother’s birthday and covers for a colleague who keeps missing deadlines. On Sunday he planned a whole day around something she had once mentioned wanting to do. She enjoyed it, thanked him, and spent the evening on her phone. He went for a long walk, furious, and then ashamed of being furious.
I would start with that Sunday and the deal folded inside it: I give you a perfect day, so you will want me more. In a first video session Andrés would probably notice how many of these silent deals he makes in a week, and how far back the habit goes.
I have presented this clinical example as a compound of 22 years of clinical practice.
You have tried harder and harder to be good enough, and it has left you more bitter and less seen than before.
There is no correct moment and no correct reason to start. If being agreeable is costing you self-respect, desire, friendship or plain joy, that is enough. You do not need a diagnosis, a broken marriage or a crisis first. In 22 years of practice I have met this pattern in men from many countries and every walk of life, and I can tell when good manners have hardened into a way of living that needs real attention.
In our sessions I usually begin with what you give, what you quietly hope for in return and what you never let anyone see. These 6 questions can help you judge whether the good guy has taken over.
If you are, do not wave it away. You read everyone’s mood, trim what you say and keep a silent account of what you have done for whom. By evening you are drained and short with people, and you reach for a drink, the gym or your phone simply to have an hour that asks nothing of you.
I would look at where the resentment piles up and which unspoken needs it points to. If this is how your weeks feel, book a session with me and we will look at it together.
Both wishes can live in you at once, because each guards something different. Being liked protects you from rejection. Wanting respect comes from a part of you that is tired of nodding along.
I do not treat the approval-seeking part as weak, or the part that wants respect as the hero. I help you hear what each one is protecting, so your choices come from you rather than from whichever side is louder that day.
For many nice guys it does. A clipped message from your partner or a cool reply from your manager sets off an alarm that something is wrong and that you caused it. You apologise for nothing until the warmth comes back.
Your wish for closeness is legitimate, and I will not make you feel foolish for it. What I help you change is the alarm that fires before there is any real sign of trouble, and the reflex of buying back warmth with effort. You practise asking plainly whether you are all right with someone, and living with the answer.
Yes, and it confuses you as much as anyone. You want to be truly known, yet when your partner relies on you, you feel answerable for their happiness and want to get away. Your helpfulness draws people in, and then the expectations it created start to suffocate you.
I help you slow this down until we find the moment when wanting someone turns into wanting out. I respect why you protect yourself, and I will also ask you to own the way you vanish on people, so you can stay close and still keep something back for yourself.
A lot of good guys have a back door. Once the requests feel endless, you slip out through it into late work, gaming, a few beers or a long run.
That back door does a real job, and needing solitude is nothing to apologise for. I help you see what it shields you from, so you can take space openly rather than in secret. Saying you need tonight for yourself costs far less closeness than silently going missing.
After years of adjusting yourself to others, your own opinions and desires go faint. You say you are easy about the restaurant, the holiday and the weekend, and you mean it, because you no longer know. Underneath there is often shame, a feeling that the real you would not be welcome. Nothing in you is broken. It has simply been put away.
Together we separate what truly belongs to you from what you picked up in order to belong. Expect me to object when you shrink yourself, and do not expect me to supply a replacement personality. What we are after is a clear sense of your own convictions and of a life that suits you.
If you recognised yourself here, a free call is an easy way to talk it over, and you can book a session straight away if you already know you want to begin.
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Tell me briefly what kind of support you are looking for.
Include your country and time zone so we can discuss whether online work together is possible and find a suitable time.
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Seeing the pattern is a start, but your asking, refusing, wanting and showing up also have to change.
Working on the nice guy pattern with me will help you understand why you keep your needs hidden, see what holds the habit in place and make changes the people around you can feel. Yet if you understand the pattern and still live it every day, very little moves.
I take an active role. Integrative psychotherapy is the heart of my work. Since 2010 I have also studied men’s work, and it has enriched and deepened that training rather than replaced it. Eli Buren, a dear friend and mentor, has been a central influence, and I have sat in his work many times. On this theme I lean most on Robert Glover’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy”, his portrait of the man who conceals his needs and flaws to earn approval, and of the way out through honesty, boundaries and real friendship with other men. These 6 questions describe what we work towards.
Related reading: Why can I never say no, even when I want to? and Why am I always the one who ends up saying sorry?.
I help you separate the core of the pattern from its side effects. The resentment and the fatigue are real, but they are results. At the centre you usually find unspoken bargains, which Glover calls covert contracts: I will be generous, so you will appreciate me. I will want nothing, so you will never go.
I tell you which bargains matter most, and I question explanations such as “I am just a giving person”. If you are curious about your own bargains, book a session with me and bring one recent example.
You can learn to spot it early. There is usually a chain: a small tightening when someone wants something, a quick scan of their face, the agreeable smile, then the yes or the swallowed opinion. Once you can feel the first link, you have a moment in which another choice is possible.
In our sessions I help you slow that chain down and see what sets it off and what it costs you. We rehearse a different response on screen, and you take it into one real conversation that week.
Staying steady does not mean feeling nothing. It means noticing the guilt and the urge to smooth things over, and still choosing what you do. The first few times you say what you want, your body may react as though you have done something dangerous.
Usually the body is remembering something, such as a father’s sulk or a mother’s hurt look when you were small. We find ways to sit through the discomfort without fixing it at once, and you practise between sessions, because that is where change takes root.
Asking clearly starts with knowing what you want and believing you are allowed to want it. Many nice guys hint, hope and wait to be noticed, or bury a request under so many apologies that nobody can hear it.
I help you find words that are honest, specific and free of that cushioning. I will challenge you when you silence yourself, and also when you expect your partner or your boss to read your mind. Often we rehearse the exact sentence you need.
Choices become clearer once you separate the fear of letting people down, old duties and habit from what you actually know and value.
I help you weigh your options and notice whose approval you are still chasing. I will name it when you hide behind other people’s preferences, but the decision stays yours. David Deida’s “The Way of the Superior Man”, with its call to live from your deepest purpose rather than from a wish to please, can be a useful compass at this stage.
It does not mean turning unkind. Change shows up in ordinary places: the evening you admit you are tired instead of cooking anyway, the meeting where you disagree, the friend you finally ask for help. You may need firmer limits and regular time with other men.
We decide jointly which habits go and which earn their place. Your warmth and reliability are not the problem. The goal is a man who is generous by choice rather than out of fear, who can be disliked now and then and still know he is all right.
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You do not need to have the pattern worked out or the right words for it. We start with your life as it is this week.
When you begin, I listen closely, help you name what is really going on and give our work a clear direction. A vague sense of being taken for granted is a perfectly good place to start.
This work belongs to my online psychotherapy, which is structured individual work on how you feel and how you relate. If the relationship itself needs the attention and your partner is willing, online couples therapy offers long-term relational development and healing. When you already know the work will take time, a therapy bundle brings real savings and a plan agreed at the outset.
I ask what has brought you now, where being nice is costing you most, what you have already tried and what you would like to be different. I listen for the deals you make and the needs you keep out of view. Your full life story can wait.
Before we finish, I give you my first reading of the pattern and suggest a direction, and you judge whether it feels useful. If you would like to hear my voice before committing, book a free 30-minute call first.
Individual work is right when the pattern lives in you: in the way you learned to earn love, in the shame you carry about having needs and in how you show up at work, with friends and at home. We can explore all of those relationships without anyone else joining the call.
I hold the thread from week to week and tell you honestly when you slip back into the old deal. Online psychotherapy describes my structured individual work as a whole, if you want the wider picture.
Couples therapy is the better choice when the relationship itself needs sustained attention: the same distance keeps returning, or you are caught in a loop where you give and wait while your partner feels pressured and pulls back.
With both of you on screen, I help you see that give-and-wait cycle, own your share of it and build safer ways of being together. Online couples therapy is long-term relational development and healing.
The pace depends on how deep the pattern runs and how much room your life has right now.
My usual advice is to begin with a session each week or each fortnight. If the gaps grow too wide for momentum, I will say so, and I will also say when we can meet less often. If travel or shift work makes a weekly slot hard, a few back-to-back sessions over 2 or 3 days are also possible.
A bundle makes sense when you know the work will take a series of sessions and you would rather have continuity than decide after each one.
A bundle lowers the cost of each session and gives you the safety of a structured plan. You can compare the options on therapy discounts and bundles and in the cards further down this page.
You are done when asking, declining and disappointing someone have become ordinary acts that no longer need a session to recover from.
We look at progress together and out loud, and keeping you in therapy indefinitely is not my aim. When the job is finished, sessions can become rarer, pause or stop. Returning years later about something else would not cancel what you achieved.
Not sure this is the right starting point? Here is how online nice guy syndrome therapy sits beside the options men in this pattern most often consider.
| Option | Choose it when | Pace |
|---|---|---|
| Online nice guy syndrome therapy (this page) | Being the good guy has left you resentful, unseen and unsure what you want. | Weekly 1-hour video sessions at first |
| Online therapy for people-pleasing in men | The automatic yes at work and at home is the one thing you most want to change. | 1-hour video sessions, weekly or fortnightly |
| Online therapy for conflict avoidance in men | You go quiet, give in or walk away whenever a disagreement starts. | A focused course of video sessions |
| Online psychotherapy for men | You want to look at several parts of your life as a man, not one pattern. | Video sessions at a pace you choose |
Online nice guy syndrome therapy with me is individual psychotherapy by video, in English, for men who hide their needs and flaws to be liked, and who end up resentful, overlooked or stuck. Nice guy syndrome is not a diagnosis. It is a name for a pattern many men recognise at once.
My page on online codependency and people pleasing therapy is for anyone who loses themselves in looking after others, while this one is about how that pattern shapes a man: the good guy identity, the hidden bargains and the shame about wanting anything at all.
It is worth bringing when agreeableness starts to drain your self-respect, your love life or your energy, or when bitterness slips out in ways you dislike. A good guy role that has begun to feel like a costume is reason enough on its own.
I look at how long the pattern has been running and what you have stopped wanting because of it. If it follows you from home to work to friendships, it deserves more than another resolution to try harder.
Yes, in many cases. You picked up the pattern for sound reasons, mostly as a child, and anything learned can be relearned. How quickly that happens varies, and I do not sell shortcuts.
In my clinical experience, men who have always been nice often find that it once kept them safe, perhaps around a volatile parent or in a family where needs counted as selfish. Our focus would be the job the niceness did back then, and how much of it you can safely retire today.
No. Many men fear that the only alternative to nice is cruel, but that fear belongs to the pattern. What we work towards is being honest and kind together: saying what you want, hearing what others want and negotiating in the open.
In my experience, people usually find you easier to trust once you stop pleasing them, because at last they know where they stand with you.
Because the giving often carries a hidden hope. When the thanks, closeness or desire you hoped for does not arrive, the disappointment has nowhere to go, so it turns into bitterness or quiet withdrawal. It is a way of reaching for love you learned long ago, not a flaw in your character.
I help you put the hope behind the giving into words, so the other person can actually respond to it. Then we work on asking directly, giving only what you give freely and stepping back openly instead of going cold.
I start with now: where the pattern shows up most, what you give, what you hope to get and what you want to be different. I may ask a little about home when you were young. When the hour ends, you will hear how I read your situation and where I would start.
Whenever you feel ready, book your first session, or begin with a free 30-minute call if that feels easier.
Plan for a course of sessions over a few months, weekly or every second week, rather than a couple of conversations. If the niceness is bound up with older hurt or a harsh home, it usually takes longer.
I would rather you commit to a clear first stretch, see the pattern properly and review it honestly than drift. At each review we decide together whether to carry on, slow down or stop.
Yes, and start on your own. Video lets you talk from a room where you feel at ease, wherever work takes you. Bring headphones, a steady connection and a room where nobody can listen in. If a partner or friend nudged you to come, that is a perfectly good reason to begin.
This work is about finding your own voice, which is easier with nobody else to manage on the call. If the relationship becomes the main focus later, we can talk about couples therapy online together.
Like all my individual psychotherapy, this work is booked in online sessions of one hour, with 50 minutes of therapy. My prices page shows what I currently charge, in US dollars.
Planning a series? A therapy bundle takes 10 per cent off and gives the work a structured plan, as set out on therapy discounts and bundles.
Book your first session online, or request a free 30-minute call if a conversation first feels more comfortable. Every time slot is shown in your local time.
If none of the times suit you, contact me directly and we will find a way. Then book, and we start with the man you are today.
You can also send me an email
I want therapy to help you understand your experience and make choices you can use in everyday life. We pay attention to feelings, needs and the responses that happen before you have time to think.
Our online room should offer enough trust and honesty to explore what is difficult. I bring attention and professional judgement. You bring your experience, questions and the right to say when something does not fit.
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P.S. I’ll call you in a bit!
