Why Honesty Matters

Honesty is a fundamental aspect of personal development, and it plays a crucial role in building a strong sense of self. As therapists, our level of honesty greatly impacts the depth of our work with clients. Being honest with ourselves means owning, facing, and grappling with our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and choices.

Source: cdn2.psychologytoday.com

It entails meeting ourselves in every moment, including moments that are disappointing or frightening or confusing or challenging. The more honest we are, the more of ourselves we gain. Honesty is the bedrock of our emotional development, and it’s the primary tool for developing a strong sense of self.

Our level of self-honesty dictates how much we’ll be able to see, face, work with, and change as we reach for developing a clearer sense of self. If we can’t look at our strengths and weaknesses honestly, we have little hope of truly transforming our relationship to ourselves and to our life.

The Roots of Dishonesty

As kids, most of us learned to manage others’ reactions: We didn’t want to make mom mad; we didn’t want dad to start yelling or hitting; we didn’t want our teacher to know we hadn’t done our homework; we didn’t want to admit we forgot a friend’s request, etc. We lied about doing our chores or where we were going or who we were hanging out with. Sometimes, lying came in handy when we wanted to look good or win an argument or get our way.

Can you imagine speaking the truth in your family, maybe saying something like: ‘I don’t like being in this family.’ ‘You don’t really love me.’ ‘Why do we pretend all these fights are normal?’ ‘How come we ignore mom’s drinking?’ (or even harsher truths)

Maybe we tried being more honest and suffered the consequences in a family with a low tolerance for the truth. Many young adults struggle to claim themselves in an honest way, moving far away instead of staying on the family farm, or choosing to be an artist instead of an engineer, or stepping away from the family’s religious beliefs to embrace a different path, etc.

To manage our discomfort with upsetting others, we often begin to lie to ourselves. These kinds of choices require deep self-honesty as a first step.

Self-Honesty is the Foundation

Self-honesty is the most fundamental aspect of honesty. Taking stock of where we avoid telling ourselves the truth is a great place to start working with the process of truthfulness.

In being dishonest with ourselves, we miss out on the crucial step of knowing—and being willing to own up to—exactly who we are. We imagine we can manage others (and ourselves), and dodge our discomfort by getting slippery with the truth.

We rarely grapple with the cost of that habit of dodging honesty: a less-conscious, less clear relationship to ourselves. Carl drove by his ex’s house a lot to keep tabs on her. ‘It might seem like a small thing, but I pretended I was just taking a shortcut to the mall.’

As he started therapy, progress meant admitting to himself that even if he still drove toward her neighborhood, he wasn’t making a great choice. ‘It took me a while to stop altogether, but owning what I was doing—owning it to myself, first—was a game-changer.’

Practicing Honesty

While we might believe absolute honesty is the best practice, we all have areas where we hold back from being completely truthful. There’s so much to learn from watching the ever-shifting edge we have between honesty and dishonesty.

Being consistently aware of when we lean toward honesty and when we lean away from it tells us a lot about who we are—it’s a perfect lens. You can practice honesty, starting slowly as you build a stronger relationship with it.

Here are some questions to consider: Do you track your level of honesty in an ongoing way? Are you aware of moments where you lean away from honesty—the situations where you hedge, omit, or outright lie?

Can you name the issues, people, or situations that you’re not fully honest with or about, and times when you’re not honest with yourself?

As a place to start, give yourself an assignment: Just observe your level of honesty for a week or so. Simply notice where you hedge. Don’t try to make any changes. This is a time for gathering information, seeing the baseline. No judgment, just curiosity…and coming to know yourself.

After a few days or a week of observing, pick one place (one situation, one topic, one friend, etc.) where you’d like to be more honest. Work on that. Get it solid. Then pick the next area where you’d want to step up into honesty.