Matthew Perry’s new autobiography Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing is an eye-opening read. More than anything else, it gives an insight into Nice Guy Syndrome from an extreme level; that of the highly successful Performer Type of Nice Guy.

Despite getting all the fame, love and wealth he could ever wish for, Perry still turned to drugs and meaningless sex to try to numb the void within. He shows all the classic signs of an approval seeking people pleaser, using humor to avoid intimacy and struggling with self worth no matter how much validation he received.

Chandler Bing’s character in Friends is a classic representation of the Performer Type of Nice Guy, and this book shows how close he was in spirit and behavior to the real Matthew Perry.

In this video, we look at the painful lessons we can learn from the man who brought us Chandler and showed the world the dark suffering of the Nice Guy who tries to be funny all the time.

Dan’s Top Resources

Books

Dan has 3 bestselling non-fiction books available in both written and audio form:

• The Naked Truth, his latest release, shows you how radical honesty builds self-confidence and relationships
• Nothing to Lose explores how to build confidence from the inside by correcting the programming in your brain
• The Legendary Life is a very practical, action-focused guide on how to plan and execute a life plan that brings you your ideal lifestyle

Online courses

Dan continues to put out high quality online self-paced courses through the Udemy platform

• Nice Guy Recovery: how to transform from a people pleaser into a confident beast.
• Shamelessness: how to relieve yourself of the “not good enough” story
• Powerful Honesty: takes you through step-by-step development of your communication skills to be more charismatic and powerful in your honesty
• The 3X Confidence and Authenticity Masterclass program: use the famous 3X Model to build confidence in all areas of life
• Financial Freedom for Beginners: includes everything from budgeting, to getting a raise, to investing in the stock market, to starting a side-business and more
• Overcoming Your Fear of Rejection… Permanently!: covers the psychology of “rejection” and what actions to take to make yourself immune to the fear of it

Full transcript (unedited)

Today we’re going to delve deep into one of my favorite TV actors of all time, Matthew Perry. Matthew Perry is a nice guy and his latest auto biography proves it. And he might in fact be the ultimate model for certain nice guys like myself. In this video, we’re going to explore the lessons that we can take from his life as recovering nice guys. So as all my biography, which I’ve almost finished reading is called Friends lovers in the big terrible thing, the terrible thing being addiction, friends, being friends, the TV program and lovers being his insatiable appetite for sex. And I’m not going to ruin it. I want you to read the book for yourself if you’re a nice guy and recovery I think it’s an excellent book to read, just to get an inside view of other nice guys how they function and what you might see in yourself. But in general, the book focuses primarily on is drug addiction and his intimacy issues. And this is on a background of super fame in wealth. So we get to see what it’s like to be a nice guy when you’re also like on most famous people in the world and have so much money you couldn’t possibly spend it all or lose it at the various special in my life because Chandler Bing is me. Amen to the little emphasis there. You know, when I saw friends for the first time back in the 90s, I guess it was you know, I was just really emerging into my nice guy persona that was about the throttle me and take over my life. And I was Chandler. Really, like I had friends who joked about how I was channeling. You know, I was the sarcastic WITTY ONE. I never let an awkward silence go by without cracking a joke. I couldn’t let anything serious happen without breaking the tension with a joke with a joke. I was terrible with women terrible was sex and intimacy. But everybody loved me and nobody could figure out why I struggled so much. And I was just I was him was the New Zealand version of him. And so you know, I as soon as I saw that Matthew period written a book as I’ve got to read this book, this is my guy on a, you know, there’s no way somebody can act as Chandler without knowing what it’s like to be Chandler, you know, and so I knew instinctively without knowing anything about Matthew Perry that he must actually be a lot of Chandler in real life, he must be a nice guy, and approval seeker. Someone with intimacy issues in real life, he just he understood it so well. When I saw Chandler I just felt so understood. Felt like somebody had written me into a TV series, and then made Americanized it. And that was a but the person who was acting me had studied me intently. Chandler, Matthew Perry himself and I were all performer types of nice guys. Now I’ve got a piece of content on different types of nice guys, you can message me, Dan ambrogio.org, if you wanna see that’s a very in depth content covering the four or five different types of nice guys, but the performer type. Generally, we’re extroverted. We have an avoidant attachment issue around we don’t like people getting close. We’re approval seekers. So we get our approval deliberately, we put on a show. That’s why I call it the performer type, as opposed to those who get approval by trying to avoid disapproval, which is much more kind of passive. We go and get approval we make you like us. You know, we control people’s emotions, through manipulation, humor being a primary manipulator. But we have other things. You know, we’re good at arguing, convincing people and selling things. We hide all negative emotions and experiences. And Matthew talks about this in his book, like, most of the time, nobody had any idea that anything was wrong with him, even though he was in very dire straits with his addiction. We self medicate, because we’re independent. So because we’re avoidant types, we don’t like letting anyone in we don’t like getting help from anybody else. So if we were to have a mental health issue, we’re gonna sort it out ourselves. And like Perry is self medicated. I’ve done a fair few amount of drugs in my time. I think I’m lucky that I’ve never had the kind of drugs he had, which are more like the prescription opiate type medications. Actually, I just got out of hospital and one night, I was really in pain there after my surgery, and they gave me a pill. There was exactly the experience that Matthew Perry was talking about, you know, your blood turns into warm honey. So it’s a sense of well being that’s unmatched by anything else. Not the same as ecstasy, which is like a loving feeling. This one’s more so self centered us feel warm and cozy all by yourself. And, you know, after they gave me their pill, I told them to give me more pills like they’re like I’m not the right person to have those kinds of pills. Luckily, I’m strong enough now. But you No, 15 years ago, if I had surgery and had a pill like that, I would have been like, how do I get more of those pills, you know, but you know, my drugs were primarily weed in ecstasy and speed and stuff like that. And I don’t have where he has an addictive thing in me is a thing where he becomes addicted, I don’t have that I’ve always been able to wean myself off stuff have quit cigarettes, alcohol, weed, they’re all hard to quit, but not that hard. Whereas He really seems to struggle. I consider myself lucky that I never pursued acting, because I have a sense that I would have been good at it. And if I had been, and got as famous as Matthew Perry head, I think my story would be the same as his his, if you read the book, it’s not a good story. I’m lucky I didn’t stumble upon the type of performing that would have elevated me to superstardom. You know, I was in a band. And I was funny with my friends, I considered stand up comedy for a little while, maybe that would have been a similar path. But I ended up sort of doing it with achievements and stuff and other fields. And probably just because I was born and raised in New Zealand, which is very anti emotional, I never got into acting, because it would have been seen as you know, soft. And I want to always be seen as hard. Whereas, you know, Matthew was growing up in an environment where acting was applauded. You lived in LA as a as a young man. So I feel now lucky that I never went into acting, because I think there would have been a tragedy for me, I think I would have been good at it. And I think if I’d done well, if I got to like being on TV level doing well, there would have just been drugs and mayhem for me as well. You know, so I’m glad I missed out on that even though I was so sure I wanted it for a long time. So maybe periods clearly talks about being avoidant needy. This horrible combination for the performance type a nice guy where we end up engaging in this constant push and pull through performing, we like to be the center of attention. We like to get lots of laughs We like to be the cause of other people feeling good. We like people to say they were the funniest person ever made, or the nicest guy that they’ve ever met, or are you gotta have, you gotta meet Danny’s fucking awesome, nothing wrong with them. We like people to think that way about us. But at the same time, we have to resist intimacy and commitment. We don’t want people to get deep. We don’t want it to get real. We don’t want ugliness without confrontation. We don’t want difficult conversations about how we really feel about things. So we’re constantly trying to keep people with just the right distance. They love me. But don’t get anywhere near me. You know. And I think being a famous TV star, it’s just a brilliant way to achieve their goal you know, everywhere you go, you loved that nobody knows. It’s perfect. It’s absolutely perfect in the unfortunately for him found their perfect Nice Guy hole to start digging even mentions in the book talking about having erectile dysfunction, which is very common for us performer type nice guys, because we get performance anxiety. And we’re always wanting to put on a good performance even in the bedroom even for our first time we want to blow them away just ridiculous. And he got over his very quickly because he had a partner that was understanding me it took me many many years to get over mine because I have a few partners who would you know, as performer nice guys, we think fame and wealth to a lesser extent, but more so fame would solve all our problems that you know, that would finally be the kind of beer tap of approval with a keg that never runs dry. But all it does is feed the monster. The problem with actually being funny is that if you’re good at it, you then you get the validation. And it’s like being good at buying drugs, it just means you’re going to get more addicted, you gotta get more drugs. You know, the best thing for being a drug addict is that you don’t have access to drugs that nobody wants to sell them to you the only way you’re gonna get clean. And it’s the same with being a performance over if nobody thinks you’re putting particularly entertaining and you get bad reviews, nobody laughs at your jokes then maybe you won’t do it so much. And if you won’t feed that nice guy approval seeking monster and maybe find some other way to live a period you never got a chance to find another way to live because he found the eternal tap of approval. So it’s interesting you might say our channel from friends he must be fucking crushing it but no he suffers more than most people around the whole world. Despite his wealth of drugs and alcohol one was killed on multiple times he lives in a prison inside his mind when most of the time he suffering Anytime he’s not So Frank is when he is using him when he’s using he’s actually suffering even worse it just comes to bite him later. He is really almost died multiple times by his account. Become very close. He’s been a lot of physical pain is permanent injuries, both mental and Physical, from all his using, he does not enjoy many minutes of the day, he doesn’t know if he even really likes people we feel does feel disconnected from everyone. He’s not winning. So his relentless need for approval and as avoidance of intimacy is fear that letting people in will hurt him because it hurt him as a child because people close to him hurt him as a child that isolated him and prevented him from achieving normality. See, for the nice guy, performer type. normality is the solution. You know, we need to have a basic as middle of the PAC life in order to be healthy, we can’t be high performance. We can’t We can’t survive at the top with all the attention everything, just like a drug addict cannot survive in a house full of heroin. You know, they need to be a place where they don’t have access to it. They need to humble themselves and then that’s what guys like me and Matthew Perry need we need to just live out a regular life that’s how we’re going to be healthy and confident. And he actually mentioned this I haven’t finished a book so maybe it ends there somewhere but he mentioned just the idea of kind of like pottering around the garden and stuff and now there’s something brilliant in there is a there’s a clue there as he would say from God that this is a supposed to live. So the greatest lesson I think from the channel have been character, which is really just an extension of Perry is a using humor to get approval. You got to see that for what it is a coping mechanism for abandonment, trauma. And all it does is create more isolation, you end up causing more of the problem that you’re trying to solve. You know if you know anyone or you are someone who’s funny all the time, always got a joke always crazy and never serious. I guarantee you that person is severely dramatized. That is not healthy, functioning, being humorous, you know, having a lighthearted view of the world and occasionally cracking off a good joke and just kind of seeing things in the most playful light. There’s not the same thing, being funny, being entertainingly funny all the time. That’s the thing you got to watch out for. That’s a huge red flag that somebody who’s not doing well psychologically. And nobody knows that because they look like they’re doing exceptionally well psychologically, they’re always having a laugh, they must be doing well, right? No, it’s a perfect mask. There’s nothing but pain under there. Now they will laugh and have a good time because it’s also their medication. When the laughter stops, and they’re left alone with their thoughts, that is pure hell, I know this from experience in sodas Murthy taken to the extreme, the pain of that disconnection, that isolation of feeling like an alien amongst the different species. It’s so great that drugs are the only way to get over it the only way to numb it. You know, for me, it was like ecstasy was the only thing and speed or anything that God made us fuck and actually say what I’m really thinking and feel like I’m part of the group feel like I’m with people. Other drugs like alcohol actually used to earlier emphasize that I felt like I was different others, but I just didn’t care as much. And we’d Of course, let me just kind of giggle and just numb the pain until bedtime. And he uses drugs as for similar reasons can I can handle how fuckin alone I am. And no crazy thoughts go through my head. So there’s a pill that stops that from happening, then I’ll do you know, which of course, when you’re on drugs all the time, when you’re high, you’re not connected to anyone, it’s not real. You know, I used to love the conversations I have with people on ecstasy, because they’re just so real and honest and transparent. And then they still wouldn’t remember it at all. And I wouldn’t feel any more connected to the other person. It’d be lonely just reset overnight. It wasn’t real. I didn’t even consider back then that I could have those conversations without getting high and that the connection was lost if I wasn’t, you know, when you look at Friends channel being clearly suffered more than any other character on the show. And I think that’s a real accurate portrayal. You know, the other characters for all their various foibles and flaws. They all had backbones, they were assertive, they were happy to disappoint the crowd in order to do what was right and so on and so forth. And they, therefore they suffered less and I think that’s a great critique of nice guy syndrome. You know, and if you watch the whole series I’m actually a big friends fan. I know somebody why do I fucking love it? And I’ve watched it multiple times and at the end channel Ben calms down a bit, which actually Matthew Perry talks about the drug use happening behind that and so on but the last couple of seasons you know, Perry puts on a bit of weight tan of being becomes this kind of like settled and husband who’s just relaxed a bit more and he’s not so fucking like this all the time and doing his little well fuckin double takes and all that It just got to chill he still got that sarcastic wit but it’s much more like relaxed and kind of dad humor and he’s there’s so many more moments where he’s being intimate and honest and real and surf and stuffing seem kinda he’ll you know as tragic to think that the real Matthew Perry behind that was not going through that same transition that this channel have been characters now if anything far from Matthew Perry So once he accepted a normal life and committed to a loving partner and just found a job that was right for him rather than the one that was easy and all that he found pace and he found confidence Jen loving that as he found his balls along the way stepped up and you know, gave up the easy funny path for the more sort of serious but real and authentic path. He stopped being as funny as well. Did you notice that the at the ends, you know, at the start of friends first few seasons, Chandler’s the funny one, the funniest one, at least, the one he’s actually attempting to be funny, you might laugh at Ross more, but you know, by the end of the channel just sort of fades into the background. And he’s not the funniest one anymore. He’s not the star of the show anymore. And that’s actually a sign that he’s getting healthy. You know, if there was a real world you know, one of the signs for me getting healthy was not being the funniest guy in the room anymore. And not being the center of attention, and being the smartest or the best at anything. And just being like an average dude who doesn’t know what he’s really doing and just kind of potter’s around trying to do something he enjoys and speaks his mind and just let the chips fall where they may like. For me, I used to think being like married with a kid and you know, the white picket house. They used to be my nightmare. I couldn’t think of a more horrible thing that their mundane existence and now I realized I was shying away from my own human you know this this is where I should be this is peaceful. You know, I’ve got my problems don’t get me wrong, but I have this need to impress people all the time. I’m not constantly living and dying on the approval of others. I don’t feel this urge to be funny automatic and have serious long in depth conversations and have deep connections with people and it’s way better I’d rather go to my grave unknown but happy then to be a big star who wants to work and die all the time so but it’s hard it’s like an ego thing I had to let go of like being the star I think I could have been being the big deal that I probably could have been if I just pushed it and just went in the right direction maybe took her back then who knows maybe I’m delusional but you know when I read Chandler I’m gonna do another piece on Will Smith based on his book as well when I read these guys who actually went in that direction and went all in and being the man had been the funny one being the successful one I’m so glad I didn’t do it they fucking disaster awful they suffered endlessly so I haven’t finished the book so hopefully it acts around some sort of happy ending for for Perry but if anything else I hope Perry himself can learn from the channel of being of friends and see there but at the end when he settles down just has a family and does some like unimpressive but enjoyable thing for a living you know that their life that’s the answer. Maddie if you’re watching this, which you definitely aren’t. That’s the answer, mate. That’s the solution. Thank you all for watching. I hope it was helpful. Get in touch dan@brojo.org If you’d like to recover from nice guy syndrome alongside me, and I’ll see you guys next time.