How Open Are You? Subtle Ways We Can be Emotionally Dishonest
We think of emotional honesty, we imagine expressing our genuine feelings, needs, fears, and boundaries. We also consider honesty to mean telling on ourselves, coming clean about things we are struggling with or are not proud of. If we want to work through and have healing happen, sharing our vulnerable truths with safe people can help us do that. But, if we can’t or don’t know how, we can consciously or subconsciously resort to ways of “managing” what others think of us.
Do You Embellish Just a Bit? Perhaps to make the story sound more interesting, and/or your case more compelling you stretch the truth to make it seem far more dramatic than it is. Why do we do this? We may be afraid that our thoughts, feelings, and boundaries may not feel valid or justified unless the evidence is overwhelming. We say things like “They stole valuables out of my car” when it was just spare change and your phone charger. Or you say “He said horrible things and cursed at me” when he used I statements and simply told you what you didn’t want to hear. Stating the actual facts may seem scary. But know that it’s the only way to be emotionally honest and not manipulate the story to make us look better and justify our reactions or behaviors.
Do You Compartmentalize? You know, tell folks most of the story but maybe leave some pertinent details out that might incriminate you? Or let them know things about you that you feel some guilt or shame about? You might tell one friend about how unfair your boss is but leave out the details of how your work performance has been impacted by procrastination and distraction. Maybe your partner knows about your struggles yet not the fact that your boss has written you up over it. No one person knows everything so that way you don’t have to come clean and be held accountable for your reality.
Do You Minimize What They Are Upset About? I know it can sometimes feel awful when you are confronted over something you might be responsible for, and the overwhelm can make you get defensive. Your fear keeps you from owning how what you did or didn’t do affected them, and that their fears are valid. So, you say things like “Oh come on it wasn’t that bad. Or “Stop making such a big deal out of it.”
All of this is about impression management, which is a nice way of saying we manipulate the outcomes so we don’t have to be wrong or feel less than, and then feel rejected or even emotionally abandoned. It takes emotional maturity and courage to convey acceptance of another’s feelings, needs and boundaries when it involves us.
