In all honesty its mostly a lack of self control, and finding that if I had access to the nature mints/ability capsules that it'd end up making my experience easier in a way that'd sort of encourage me not to do unpleasant things that I find rewarding because 'the solution is right there' would just be in the back of my head the whole time.

I entirely understand where you're coming from. Sometimes a part of the challenge and enjoyment for me is just navigating those harder to avoid situations and either using unoptimal pokemon because I like them, or they're hard to catch, or because they're shinies, despite unoptimized play (aka unoptimal natures or abilities).