Therapy works ... in Being More Honest with Ourselves

“ … to be honest with you.”

I don’t trust this phrase. I bet you don’t either if you think about it. 

I know a person who has a habit of saying phrases such as “to be really honest with you,” “to tell you the truth,” “to be frank with you,” “if you want to know the truth.”  We were talking and he’d said several of these phrases and I was irritated and said, “Why don’t you quit telling me you are going to be honest and just BE honest?”  

The person I’m referring to is a salesperson and knows how to connect with people. I realize these types of phrases suggest that we’re going to give the person listening to us a special front row seat to our unvarnished honesty and that these phrases thus tend to initiate a felt sense of intimacy and connection. Yet, I’m wary. A person who is honest doesn’t need to pause to highlight they are going to now, at this moment, be honest. 

(Marcus Aurelius, the stoic Roman philosopher/emperor said something about this matter: “How hollow and insincere it sounds when someone says, ‘I am determined to be perfectly straightforward with you.’ Why, man, what is all this? The thing itself needs no prologue; it will declare itself. … A candor affected is a dagger concealed.”)

I see a dear client who has struggled in his life with messages from a family that told him it was not a good thing for his truth to be told into the world. This client, at important moments, would often pause and say, “To be honest with you.” For a while in his therapy, of course, I was glad to have Raymond* choosing to access truer feelings and say them out loud. As therapy progressed, there came a time when I felt that he was ready to hear that he was using this phrase rather often. And to ask him: “do you think it means anything that you say this fairly frequently?” Raymond’s response was rather stunning, actually. He replied, “Do I?”  (that is … “Do I say that?”)

[*A reminder that all names and identifying details are always altered so as to protect patient confidentiality.}

For a person with Raymond’s intelligence and self-awareness, it seemed almost far-fetched that he was not aware that he used this phrase – often. Yet, there it is. For Raymond, the conditioned habit of holding back his truth was Shouting at Him to be heard, noticed, and undone. In spite of his conscious intent, he was giving himself a regular reminder that he was not being honest as a matter of course. 

Raymond was genuinely curious about saying this phrase. He did take on the task of increasing his awareness of his use of it. He did so, however, in a comical way. He made it a behavioral goal of his to “catch” when he said the phrase and then to stop himself from doing so. The humor in Raymond’s response is gentle and universal. We all have tendencies to want to solve something curious in ourselves rather than listen to its deepest meanings. Raymond, at first, was not ready to hear the phrase and its meaning for him. Instead, it was a behavioral glitch to solve. 

For several weeks, at least, Raymond would occasionally mention how he was surprised at how often he would notice himself saying the phrase, in spite of his commitment to stopping the practice. I would try to help by pointing out to him the times he would say it still in session … which tended to be 3-5 times in a 50 minutes time together. He would often reply, “I did? I’ve got to watch that.” 

The work is not completely finished at this time and Raymond still does not like to think that the legacy of his family’s negative response to emotional honesty resides in his approach to life. Yet, he is becoming more emotionally present, with himself and others. Raymond less often uses this phrase to initiate moments of truthfulness … because it seems he is more comfortable with an approach that his goal is to be constantly truthful in therapy. He does catch himself saying, “let me be honest with you” sometimes and he can react to it with humor and kindliness-with-himself, suggesting to me that he is on the road to being more honest. 

If we listen to ourselves, we can begin to notice when/if we use phrases like, “Let me be honest with you.” Awareness that such statements issue from our own mouths can help us be aware of the powerful external and internal pressures that invite us to soften, mute, or deny acting and speaking in ways that are genuine expressions of our truest selves.