To choose honesty | Integrity over people-pleasing
Honesty.
Yes, sometimes saying it can hurt - both the speaker AND the listener. But it lets the other person have a choice!
It’s the opposite of control.
You can’t manipulate with honesty.
And I’ve been on both sides of this equation. Small white lies tended to come out when I was overwhelmed (almost always). “I have a headache.” “I don’t feel well.”
When, really, perhaps I needed the space to do it - whatever it is - differently than what I believe is expected of me.
Big lies when I don’t want to hurt someone with my truth. When it felt like my truth may cross their boundary, and cause them to go.
“Oh, she doesn’t have control over her emotions.” I would hear over and over in my life, because I had learned to hide those emotions entirely, from me and everyone else, until they exploded out of me.
“I have anxiety.” I would say quietly to new friends.
“Oh, I do too!” They would commiserate.
But internally, I would cringe.
“Do you?” I would think. “Do you know what it’s like to be so anxious you faint on an airplane gangplank and end up in an ER cardiac ward?”
Do you know what it’s like to be desperate for any feeling of safety. ANY. And despising these feelings and vowing to never be in a situation where other people could see them again? But that vow causes the world to get smaller and smaller.
The global pandemic affected me differently - in that, I was okay with the isolation.
Until I wasn’t. Until I finally got to the tipping point where if leaving meant death, then so be it, because what I was doing wasn't living.
Then, after a lot of subsequent extroverting, I realized the truth was in the balance.
Virginia Rosenberg wrote:
“Rather than self-mesmerize in fantasies of a life I don’t have to disassociate from, I have begun the hard work of earning that life. Building it from the embers of this wreckage.
I’ve been confronting myself. Dismantling my resistance to living the life I’ve been given. Utilizing the raw material available to me.
As my phobias echoed around me, their power over my experience greatly diminished. The fear spell of attempting to manage and direct outcomes is dissipating. The trance of paralyzing indecision is broken.”
And oh did I hear her.
For that is my resolve for this second half of my life: I will be honest with everyone, but especially with myself.
Excavating under initial reactions to the feelings underneath. Watching and waiting for them to show up, knowing some of them takes time.
And building a life where introvert time is built-in. Not running from myself, but knowing, acknowledging, I need other people in my life. I love their thoughts and expressions. “Why did they say that? Why did it evoke that reaction in me?”
And most of all understand that they may not all be honest - with me or themselves - and my body will know. My brain will try to make up stories, but my body always knows. And I can feel they may not be honest - and still let them be. Still meet them exactly where they are, but navigate with boundaries so I don’t get hurt.
Boundaries that include time for my own emotions. Boundaries that include respecting others' need for their space for their emotions. Asking consent - on both sides - as emotional conversations come up - or don’t!
To be honest, but also entirely unattached to the outcome. Which, honestly, is the hardest part for me.
And if I stumble, if I swallow my words, keep coming back until I CAN be honest. Until the words - the true words - can slip past my throat and out of my mouth. Even if they “hurt” the other person. Even if causes them to leave. For to get them to stay under false pretenses is 1000 times worse.
And it doesn’t give them the choice to decide for themselves. The same respect I want in return.
Perhaps I’ve internalized that message now. Perhaps I can be rooted in my wonderful life, the one conscious one we have, and live here knowing that I can be honest in it. Over and over again.
Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash
