There is an idea in psychology that “Radical Honesty” with one’s self and those around you is an important key to health and happiness. Not just an idea, but a book and series of workshops on the idea, if you are interested. Serendipitously, Rabbi B. found this idea during a week where several of the clients I work with struggled with “honesty” in critical ways – and not just “lying”, the lack of honesty, but in some ways, TOO MUCH honesty. So, B. and I decided to pepper this idea around and compare it to logotherapy’s concept of “Response-ability”, or, what we called, for today, “Radical Responsibility”.

The first case this week, was a kind gentleman who had learned his wife had filed for divorce.  When I asked him, “what would you have wanted to do differently in the past?”, one of his ideas was, “I would’ve been 100% honest, all of the time”…

At first glance, I thought, “yeah, that’s a good idea.”  But this individual wasn’t a chronic liar, or a manipulator, or engaging in any kind of nefarious infidelity.  No, he had avoided the truth in matters of small spending and occasional eating behavior that his partner disagreed with.  You see, sometimes, in relationships, especially in marriages, we teach our partners not to be honest with honest by the overwhelming force of our reactions in some situations.  That’s not an excuse, but an explanation of how some behavior can be learned when we avoid empathy in favor of honesty, or when we are not communicating and negotiating in a healthy way.

So we explored a little deeper…  “100% honest… is that even a possibility, or reality?”  This is where we start to weave a little bit of philosophy into psychology.  We eventually settled on, “no, not really.”  We DO NOT want to be honest – warning cliches coming up – when asked “how did you like my cooking?”, after hamburger patties where turned into hockey pucks, or “how do you like this outfit?”, when you were not thinking pleasant thoughts about that outfit in the first place.  No, Radical Honesty, would not be good here.  Sometimes, for the sake of our partner, we take responsibility for our thoughts, and maybe ‘improve’ them a bit for the sake of the relationship.  And, as mentioned before, we work on honest & responsible communication and the power of healthy negotiation.

The other situaton was that of an individual who was wallowing in shame after making a poor decision.  His thoughts focused on what he had done, and how terrible a person he thought he was.  We can certainly associate these ideas with “honesty” – in fact, he used that word, “I’m just being honest with myself.”  Unfortunately, that ‘honesty’ prevented him from taking responsibility.  It prevented him from looking at the “why” of the decision, and how to prevent it from happening again.  The shame of ‘self-honesty’ kept him stuck thinking about himself, and clouded him from seeing how his decisions impacted others – this even let to misplaced anger at those others because he was so angry with himself.  Sometimes, radical self-honesty is a path to shame, whereas responsible guilt allows us to focus on others to change our behaviors and transcend our self.

For more on these ideas – check out The Meaning Project Podcast #110 – Radical Honesty or Radical Responsibiilty w/ The Meaning Academy

Or you can find the video of my discussion with Rabbi B. on my YouTube page Dr. Daniel A Franz

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