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Why Telling the Truth Scared Me — And How It Healed Me
Telling the truth can be really scary sometimes, especially if you’ve been dishonest for much of your life. Given my history of addiction, compulsion, obsession, mental health problems, and growing up in a dysfunctional family, it makes total sense why telling the truth was so scary for me. Withholding information was a tool I used to control, manipulate, and feel safe for most of my life.
But I didn’t really even know that was going on. I thought I was an honest person when I got into recovery at age 52. NOPE! Not true! This is what’s called “denial” in recovery (D-E-N-I-A-L: Don’t Even Notice I’m A Liar).
It was through the process of 12-step recovery that I came to see how dishonest I was. I outright lied about stuff sometimes, but my main form of dishonesty was withholding information. I call that “managing information.” I did it to construct the image I wanted people to have of me. That might have been that I wanted them to think I was nice or kind or helpful or smart or knowledgeable or generous, whatever.
I can now see the root cause of that was that I cared more what other people thought about me than what I thought of myself. That meant that I was willing to be dishonest to get what I wanted. That’s another way of saying I was willing to compromise my integrity for the “good opinion” of…
