Ep. 8: Emotional (Dis)Honesty and Relational Responsibility

[Music] We are the Excellency. [Music] Four existential psychotherapists invite you to join us in a dialogue about what it means to live an Excellency-tuned life. [Music] Your hosts are. Xavier Williams, therapist in Vancouver Canada. Janelle Dresner, therapist in Edmonton Canada. Chelsea Stanner, therapist in South Surrey Canada. Hermi Haila Lone, therapist in Vancouver Canada. Hello existentialist. Today it's your usual co-hosts coming together. So, Mahila, Xavier, Janelle and myself, Chelsea. And today we'll be talking about emotional dishonesty and honesty kind of across the spectrum. And we'd like to start with a bit of a check-in first amongst us just to see how we're feeling today, how we're landing, and to start with that before we begin our dialogue with anyone like to kick us off. Yeah, I can do that. I hope it's early morning for me still trying to get as much of my coffee as possible before I speak up during this podcast. Yeah, so still, you know, coming back to life after the sleep last night. Really excited to be here though. Very excited for the topic. And beyond the present moment, like my life is quite stable, okay, at the moment. I'm definitely noticing that I look forward to a break, to go on some holidays, some time off. I really, really feel the need for that. So, I'm kind of looking forward to that in a few weeks. And other than that, yes, I'm kind of counting the days to that moment. But for the present moment, I'm really excited about being here with you and, or having a dialogue about emotional dishonesty. Thank you for that emotionally honest answer. For myself, I also feel ready for a break too, but coming into this weekend, we're recording on a Saturday morning here in Vancouver and Janelle in Edmonton. And so, on this morning, I'm also a little bit tired, but feeling relaxed. And as I'm stepping into the weekend, there's not a whole lot on my plate. So, I'm looking forward to the spaciousness of that, to just kind of be able to relax and let things emerge or feel spontaneous with what I would like to do. I'm a little bit disappointed with our weather so far. This summer, I was hoping to kind of get outside a little bit more, not that we can still do that when it's raining. But I know that I definitely feel like a sense of calm and peace, like when the sun is out and just kind of experiencing that warmth. So, I'm not this thing right now. Yeah, that weather is not really being a friend at the moment. I suppose also counting days to a break, long needed. I think everybody, frankly, needs some form of break, and we're lucky enough here in BC to be able to do some sort of break and some sort of travel. So, that's really nice. Otherwise, I think I'm mostly just occupied with this topic with I've had to kind of really ask myself, well, when have I been emotionally dishonest? And I'll talk more about it, but I'm glad to say that that was more in earlier life for a whole host of reasons. But it certainly prompts you to go, okay, well, maybe, and it's a little bit uncomfortable at times. So, I'm excited to kind of be always fun to do this with the three of you, but also kind of like, maybe we might have to double a few things and I might not necessarily want to. For me, I find the question of how are you to be difficult to answer whenever people say, like, how are you doing? What's going on? It's like, yeah, good. But that's kind of emotionally dishonest. It's easier for me to respond with body sensations, like, I'm feeling tired or my jaws or or feeling nauseous or easier, more often to respond with, like, what I'm thinking at any given time, but to actually attune to what I'm feeling. Sometimes I dread that question, how are you doing? Even avoid it sometimes I work. Because it just never feels good enough to say good, and I understand that there's like, that's kind of a social, socially accepted way of engaging in a very short amount of time, right, when you're passing each other in the hallway or what have you, but something just doesn't feel authentic about it. And yeah, so this topic has certainly has me intrigued because even in this moment I'm sitting here thinking, how am I feeling? And well, immediately I feel anxious because the sound keeps cutting in and out, and I can't tell when you guys are talking or not talking. So it's not the best internet connection, but we'll work it through. We'll figure it out. Thanks for letting us know that. And thank you to for your check in there, Janelle. I was also thinking that too during mine, kind of like, oh, I'm not totally sure how to answer that, how are you questioned. And I know it often comes up with clients too, because usually I will actually start with that question, but almost always it's, oh, I'm good. I'm fine. And then I find I have to ask the question the second time. And when you get to it the second time, like, how are you doing? Or how have you been to kind of word it a slightly different way, even or to circle back to it? I then get the, or more of kind of the true answer. And I think that's for myself too. Like, there's something just so automatic, or I don't know, culturally expected about giving an answer that's, yes, I'm good. I'm fine. Or things are busy, like very vague, kind of ambiguous words that don't really have a lot of substance, or that could mean various things to whomever you're talking to. So I liked what you shared there. I think as therapists, we maybe kind of, I don't know, it's a difficult question to answer, because it's really not about us. And yet clients are desperately not always maybe, but quite curious about how we are. I often get, how are you? And I'm like, oh, okay, thanks for how are you? And then they will ask me a second time, and they'll really be asking me. And then I've got to kind of come up with a way that is respectful of that. And not wanting to be emotionally dishonest, because they would be almost counter therapeutic and counter and not real. On the other hand, we don't really want to make it about us. And also, I was thinking what you mentioned just about the cultural expectations, and emotionally dishonest, and is it dishonest if someone is following the expectations of a certain culture? It could feel very dishonest for someone from another culture. But before we launch into that, maybe we want to define our terms a bit. Like, what, how do we understand emotion in this honesty? Before we, again, discuss more about cultural expectations and other things. Yeah, so as we sit with that term, emotional dishonesty, I'm just curious what comes to mind. I know immediately for me when I think about what that means, it's that maybe my expression of how I'm feeling or how I portray something on the outside to the world or to somebody else doesn't accurately reflect what is really going on in the inside for me. And I think maybe there's different degrees of that too. Like, sometimes I may not even be connected with or aware of what is going on inside. And then all the way to the other side where I might be very, very aware of what's going on. But I don't decide to disclose that. It seems to be that you are talking about the discrepancy and incongruency, either unconscious or outside the awareness, or very conscious. In which the second case will be like, when there is an attempt to portray ourselves in a manner to achieve a certain perception from the others, so there is more purposeful there that I don't want to be seen or my feelings to be seen by the other. So that's more to me more intentional and purposeful to hide, not to disclose the white lies kind of thing, the omissions, or even more like portraying more deliberately in a different light. But then I really like what you highlighted about discrepancies between how we feel and how we present, because we don't know how we feel, or we cannot articulate how we feel. Or indeed those instances in which we, whether rightly or wrongly, assess that the person who is asking maybe isn't the right person to hear it or maybe lack the capacity to hear it, or the wounding that they might suffer is, you know, you kind of evaluate, we calculate that it would be too much or something, something to that effect. So is that dishonesty then? I don't know. This is a very good question. I mean, it would, I suppose in a way, because you're not really saying what you feel and you're aware of it. And so there's some intent to hide, but it is hiding for a good purpose. What's popped into my head is the, um, the inquiring murderer. It was that that was Kant. When is it moral to tell a lie? I have some of her murders chasing somebody and they ask you which way did that person go? And you believe in never lying? Do you lie or don't you? It reminds me also that it reminds me also of something that is stuck with me from existential analysis, training like when we talked about the ability to be, which is related to reality, to truth, telling the truth, something that we say that it's telling the truth at all costs, even at the price of doing harm to the other person is an act of violence. And so that relates very well to what you just said. I have that the question is telling is telling the truth, the most ethical moral act at all times. Can you expand a little bit on that, Mahailah, what you're saying about doing violence to the other? Yeah, like if someone tells a very hurtful truth, because the other person who receives that truth is not able to understand it, to relate to it is too much, too wounding, then we create more damages than doing any good. So again, it's very tempting to advocate for, be honest at all times and tell the truth at all times, but I guess it's more nuanced than that. So what is emotional dishonesty? We then kind of going into a realm of this, maybe emotionally honest or dishonest outwardly, but then the verses kind of being emotionally honest inwardly. If I know what I feel and I deliberately don't tell you because it would be too wounding or because I don't trust you enough or whatever, I may not be telling you the truth, but I'm not deceiving myself, I'm not oblivious, I'm not even avoiding or pretending. I'm sitting there almost wrestling with it. I would say to at least to some extent, internally that would be emotionally honest for me. That does make a huge difference. I think it's actually, relationally responsible to assess the capacity of the other or maybe even to be, to practice our remember in our existential training, we talked about modesty in terms of what we share of ourselves and that not every person we meet is deserving of our innermost feelings and thoughts and so on and so forth. It can actually be protection, a kindness to oneself to not share that. I think that's important in different relationships actually to assess whether the other can hold and receive it and whether it does me a violence to share it, but I think awareness is everything. Are you aware of your own feelings? What's going on inside of you and making a conscious decision and deciding what you can send to share and what you don't consent to share? I really like what you said generally about relationally responsible. That kind of stuck with me as being so critical in how we kind of decide and assess if something is emotionally dishonest or just as you suggested a responsible way to deal with myself and the other. The other point on that, picking up on what you know, my highlight of the said is I've had a couple of clients who when asked what's something without telling me what's something that you've never told anybody and they were unable to identify something in so much as that they've even been telling everything basically of the experience that they could imagine or indeed it's been expected of them. So they lack a privacy and intimacy, a kind of their own inner world and how important it is in that modesty that Janelle highlighted there that it serves not just a purpose for maybe being relationally responsible but also for ourselves to create a healthy kind of inner self. When I said the relationally, I mean when Janelle said relationally responsible and I repeated that I was also referring to the relationship with myself. So I am absolutely with you, you saw on that one so it's responsible towards the other and towards myself. And so I would suggest that emotionally dishonesty then since we try to still describe it and capture it, it doesn't apply to those instances in which we act relationally responsibly and we may because of that not reveal, not disclose everything. So you're saying then that in those circumstances where we are being relationally responsible that that actually would be part of kind of what Zav was saying there that it is part of emotional honesty on the inside to not portray everything to the other. I think as long as it's a decision and it's the choice that we are making is obviously taking in consideration the other and myself in the dialogue, in that relationship. But then the question that came up for me is like our capacity for self-deception is quite high as we know from lots of research. So the question would be can we be sure that we are actually relationally responsible and not just not wanting to get into trouble or difficult conversations? Yeah and it's sparked a question for me too around like how accurately and actually how much is it my responsibility to assess the other person's capacity? Like might I be actually taking away from their freedom, their responsibility in making those decisions for them that I will hold back this thing because I don't think that they can handle it. And I know like when I was thinking of emotional dishonesty that something that comes as an example to me first and foremost sometimes in my particularly family relationships where I'm wanting to sustain some kind of relationship as is and not being sure if another person or another family member can hold necessarily what I have to say and so I hold it back. But I kind of feel there's a bit of a dilemma there like how much should I really be doing that? Can I really assess for another person? Sure that's such a great point Chelsea and the dilemma and intention is there for me too. And I know some people saying yeah we should preserve the relationships at all cost and the relationship is the top value while others say no my authenticity and being able to say how I feel and to share who I am is the most important so that tension again between authenticity and the relation responsible. And then too when we talk about preserving relationship and you have to look at what is relationship and so if I'm preserving a relationship on a false pretense or from a place of dishonesty is that really relationship? So we were planning to talk about emotional dishonesty I see that we are talking about like really core issues like relation responsibility the self and other and what you said right now Chelsea. Hey not so easy to define emotional dishonesty I guess. I think that to go to your point Chelsea like that's what I hear and work with my clients and from my own experiences there is like different reasons to be emotionally dishonest. And the two that I come across the most is the assumption of if I tell the other person what I'm feeling it's going to burden them. And the second one being I don't want to cause conflict. And they're being conflict avoidance. And I think all around like underneath both of those is this avoidance of suffering. I think it's much easier for us to be emotionally honest with when we're happy, when we feel joy or gratitude. But if we feel anger especially I noticed that one gets concealed quite a bit particularly in Canadian culture. Yeah, I'm so appreciative of you generally like making these points about yeah what we try to hide sometimes are the not so good things and avoidance of conflict is a big one that I encounter too is in working with my clients in my relationships and culture plays a large role in that I think. And personality types speaking from personal experience conflict avoidance. Would you like to expand on that? Maybe not this minute. I mean no she does not know that would be I don't know maybe you've done it. But yeah, you know so I'm a as listeners might know from our website, eccentricpodcast.com. I'm a on the anyogram personality type I'm a nine and nine is a peacemaker nine. Nine doesn't like conflict so much which is interesting because I used to like I've studied you know a war in society and so I kind of and grew up in a in your friend's household in which conflict is with order of the day. Like it's not abusive or anything, it's just how we communicate sometimes. And yet I certainly find myself holding back less so now, but previously definitely holding back precisely to avoid upsetting the apple cart as the phrase goes, to avoid any sort of distress in the other. And Janelle kind of hinted at that to prevent their suffering really, or at least prevent me imagining their suffering. Because what I've discovered is that on the whole people tend to be a little bit, have a lot more capacity than we might imagine. They might evaluate and endow them with. And that kind of came through working in existential analysis, and particularly on the topic of inner consent. And for listeners who remember the first episode where I talked about the, you know, the party that you go to with that you don't want to really, that really kind of helped me get to a point of, "Okay, well, what is my actual answer here? What I really want to say?" And I'm finding myself better able to say it, maybe not perfectly, not all the time. There's definitely times where I don't, and my wish that I could or I did, but you have conflict of weddings, for sure. And that, what you said, so brought me back to what Chelsea mentioned before, do we have the right to decide for the other? Like, and you also pointed out that we imagine sometimes much more than actually the realities, and we tend to imagine that the other is more fragile somehow, and that it's our responsibility to protect them from suffering. And I don't even know if it's suffering. That we imagine suffering perhaps is just distress, or maybe they also are conflict of wedding. Yeah, the question that comes up for me is how ethical it is to make a decision for the other, and to actually treat the other as if they are fragile, and kind of in need of protection at all times. I think to, like, along with the different reasons that we've named for the emotional dishonesty, or reasons why it might occur to avoid conflict as I was saying, I think another way that it shows up is to try to control, or, yeah, I guess, controls the best word for it, maybe, or even manipulate at times how someone else might perceive us, like, trying to portray something different or not reveal actually how we're feeling. And so it can be maybe protective of the other, but then also protective in some way, rightly, or wrongly of the self, too, and how you might be perceived. Yeah, that's very important. Because I think, I mean, if we really think, kind of more, reflect more on what, or whom do we want to protect? That's a great question when I don't say the truth. Is it because I want to really protect the other, or do I want to protect myself from all the burden conflict whatever I may create by being honest? And sometimes I think it's legitimate to absolutely say, yes, it is for the other, but other times I think we may tend to use this as a way of protecting ourselves, like people who don't say the truth for a long time and delay to procrastinate, but just under the pretext that, oh, I'm protecting the other from suffering, but at the end, the mess that it will be created is way higher, and the disappointment and hurt and the breach of trust are probably much more painful than if that person had said something earlier. Like, I can, some clients come to mind, especially in close relationships, intimate relationships, someone who's not, who's consistently dishonest for the sake of not creating conflict or in quotes, in air quotes, protecting the other. Actually, I doubt that it's just about the other, and I think the disaster and the damage to the other is much greater by not saying the truth for so long. In these examples, at least for me, when you're explaining it, so I put myself in that situation and I look at for me and kind of, how much am I making the decision for that person? What am I? Where's the other person's responsibility to say, hey, I don't feel that this is, you know, that you're being entirely sincere or truthful or I know how you function or I know how you operate, I know you really well. This is very out of character. These kinds of things, could we say that they're being emotionally dishonest by not asking or maybe not that so much, but it sounds very accusatory. But maybe out of fear and of not really wanting to know. You are talking about the other now, the perspective of the other. And if I am the other, and I know this, that you tell me something that is kind of like, to shine your two good to be true and I know you, it's also my responsibility to say, well, I don't get the feeling that this is completely accurate or what's going on. Yeah, I think that's absolutely, absolutely correct. And maybe something that came up to me as you're talking about, the other is that, also creating the proper conditions to have a dialogue and honest dialogue is important. Like when the other is more receptive and even checking in with the other and noticing their reactions, like probably you don't need to dump everything in one, you know, sitting or in one sentence. So we can also have checking points in a conversation that is difficult and kind of check, are you still with me? Is it still okay? So I think that's also important and that came up for me from what you said, so I have that it is a dialogue and the other also has a responsibility. Also a responsibility to say, oh, this is too much for me right now or you hurt me, I feel hurt. And of course for us to listen to that. Siting various examples without citing them. How might say we help our listeners or clients who say, yeah, but I want to, but every time I do my parent, my partner, my friend shuts down or they get emotionally overwhelmed or they start crying. Indeed. And so, and so I try or I have tried and every time I do it, it just never works. And so now I don't. This is actually a wonderful paragraph in a book called The Romantic Movement by Alan De Boleton. It's not really on this, but the main character talks about how she was dismissed so frequently by her partner that the paragraph kind of reads essentially, at first, you know, I used to venture things and then they would get dismissed or ignored. And so I stopped venturing them. And then she says, after long enough of not venturing, I even stopped having the idea to venture. This is so sad. This is so, so sad, because this also points to the how this honesty can erode and slowly destroy a relationship. Because if you say people is the learned helplessness to a certain degree in that construct that we learn in our psych classes, like in a relational context, I mean, there is no point for me to be truthful to you because you are going to dismiss me and not listen to me ever. So I'm not going to even try. But then because I guess in all of us, there is an impulse to be authentic and to be seen, then we may we may find it somewhere else. And then the relationship, the original relationship may start dissipating. And that's that what you said strikes me as very sad and a very sad consequence of emotional dishonesty. I'm just wondering if maybe we can talk about or define what an emotionally honest encounter looks like. Then we've kind of talked about different ways emotional dishonesty can show up both within ourselves and also relationally. But I'm curious how we would see then what emotional honesty is or what that looks like. Great question. And I guess that another way to get it at is like how do we deal with emotional dishonesty and how can we strive to become more honest? I think for me, the first thing that comes up is that again, that this emotional honesty, this honesty takes place in a relational context. And it could be obviously with the other, but also with myself. So I think the first kind of condition would be to have that open dialogue, that openness to dialogue with myself. I mean to check with myself, how am I feeling right now, what am I thinking, what are my impulses, but also to be attuned to the other. So that that seems to be a first kind of condition there. And then also to remain engaged and attuned, then if I want to bring up a relational issue is the other to check with the other person to be mindful about the conditions of in which that conversation is happening. Like not the last five minutes of a heated conversation, like being something really, you know, but like taking time, being in from a place of care of closeness and then checking multiple times, like having multiple checkpoints. Yeah, I think what you're speaking to there also points to a term that we use in therapy and counseling called immediacy, where it's not just the content that we're talking about between us, but also the process of how is it for you to hear me say this right now, or how is it for you to express that to me? What is going on for you kind of on that process level that can also help kind of deepen the emotional authenticity of the moment as well and saying, you know, how is this relating between us? What is happening right here? right now. There is much more that can come up from that relational space, like pointing out to that and exploring that, then even perhaps my initial intention of what I had the content I wanted to communicate, and sometimes just talking about that can clarify many things about the content that I intended to say. But overall for me, like that, and that's a personal stance, of course, like it's, I think it's way more damaging, not to speak the truth in an appropriate way, of course, than to holding, you know, to keep it under wraps, under the pretext of protecting the relationship, then to find this way of communicating, because I guess my fear is that the damage to the relationship may be greater than what we think it are the benefits of not being honest. Two things come up for me there is, one is a phrase that my supervisor once said to me when I kind of brought up a client that I was worried about bringing something up with, and for fear of kind of causing suffering. And her response was, your client is already suffering. And that was very in a very succinct way, kind of said everything that needed to be said about that, that what I feared was already going on, it wasn't. And that the suffering was probably such that my asking about it or my pointing it out wasn't going to add anything more to it that wasn't already there. So that was the one part. The other thing is, we've talked about kind of being open to dialogue and kind of, I think the phrase would be titrating things and kind of slowly in context. So how could we help listeners who are perhaps haven't spent years and years and years and years training in psychology and how to do and handle emotions and figuring out, like just the regular person on the street who says, okay, but like, I don't know what to do. How could we help them more? I think a really practical way to start moving to a more authentic or honest emotional expression with others is to, and it's so nuanced and we might not even notice it, but is to start speaking from the first person or from the eye. Like, I feel scared when you do this or when this happens versus a lot of how our language works is we go, you, you, you, you, you know, when you're out there and you're doing this and then this happens and you feel this way, when I actually might be circling around my own experience and not actually expressing how I feel instead, I'm using colloquial third person, you, to try to make a general expression versus something that's poignant and personal. Absolutely, Chelsea. And that brings me to another kind of condition of how to do that. I mean, maybe it's not as practical as you want to at this point, but very important in order to speak from the eye point of view, I have to be able to stay by that eye, by myself, to have that inner strength to tolerate the fact that I may hurt the other and to tolerate the possibility of losing the relationship ultimately. And how am I going to be with myself if that were to happen? So I think that's actually, it could be very practical like before starting talking, right? And to ask myself, what are the, what is the price? I'm willing to pay for that. And can I tolerate, can I am I fully with myself and can I speak from that eye place and can I tolerate the cost? Yeah, what is the worst that's going to happen here? Yes, yes, kind of like for, for any anxiety, right? What is the worst that's going to happen? Is my partner going to leave me? Is my, well, my parents never talked to me again? And then, and then to kind of work backwards from there? Sometimes to help with the imagination of how we potentially perceive that somebody would respond to us bringing up something conflictual or how we're feeling instead of going to kind of the worst like, well, imagining them really suffering and really in distress, often ask clients, you know, and if you were to share this, what do you feel would be the kind of realistic ideal response from them, realistic good, but then also realistic bad as a way of helping to broaden their perspective so that it's not always necessarily focused on the worst possible outcome of sharing, but then also to go along with what Mahalua is saying is that it is a possibility that they may not be able to, with what happens, the relationship may not be able to continue and is that a risk we're willing to accept? And that takes us back to what we talked before, like that tension between being myself and being with the other, being authentic and being in a relationship sometimes. I mean, of course, ideally, relationship means that I can be authentic, but when we get to the point of even contemplating emotional dishonesty perhaps is not really that way sometimes, it's again the tension that we are asked to hold there. And to try to deal with it in the way that we kind of suggested here, I think there are some sensible, everything we talked about, like in terms of practicalities are sensible steps that my hope is that all of our listeners and our self-sconed practice. Oh, certainly. I think it's all fantastically useful. Certainly in terms of the practical experience, I think it's something very valuable. I hope to listen to the energy said Mahalua to us as well to remind ourselves and to kind of practice it, like any muscle we need to practice doing things. And often I get to start with clients not just to, you know, kind of what you said about titrate, but to start with small things, right, small instances of saying something, you know, like, yeah, you get the wrong coffee at Starbucks. And to, well, actually, no, this isn't what I would have rather than kind of just taking it second. And I see Chelsea's just kind of smiling and nodding. So I'm guessing this is an actual example. Yeah, I've talked about that exact example actually with a few clients here and there. And the range of responses is interesting from, oh, no, I would never do that. I would just take the coffee and go to, you know, like, oh, yeah, I think I could do that. Maybe I'll try it. So yeah, that's just interesting. You brought up that example because I know even for myself, usually I'm more inclined just to, you know, take the order and go. What? You should know what? No, absolutely not. You paid too much, you know, too much for that coffee. No, I see that that really motivated you now. This is where I speak up. Yeah, absolutely good. Have we talked about being emotionally honest just with ourselves? No, we haven't very much. I mean, just with ourselves, not with the other. But like being able, what I understand from what you're saying is being able to really admit to myself some things that I prefer not to admit to myself that, uh, I'm not to, maybe I'm thinking in a certain way or I don't even feel that I'm thinking, but there are some thoughts we've thought popping into my head. Even just emotional attunement to like what we're feeling, like actually being able, and I mean, in psychology, it's typically reproduced emotional intelligence, right? Like being aware of one's own emotions and understanding them and being able to name them is a big piece. Then being able to actually engage with them is something entirely different. And I think that emotional honesty and relationships is made that much easier if we can actually engage with our own emotion, honestly, because I think that people, we've already brought up the enneagram. I'm an enneagram for. So one of my downfalls is the tendency to identify my whole personality with my emotional state. And I think that that's quite common for people, particularly with what emotions they want to avoid. Like I want to avoid sadness because I don't want to be a weak person. I want to avoid anger because I don't want to be like this angry person who reminds me of me bad experiences and growing up in their family or what have you, except that when we actually cut ourselves off from our emotional experiences, where if our emotions are related to what we value or what values are being violated or realized, then we cut ourselves off from getting to know ourselves. I mean, emotions are an access to who we are authentically. Fabulous points. It kind of on a practical level, it reminds me of something I do with the clients and I encourage listeners to, to as well as what am I feeling even if I don't know why. Why can be done after or in therapy, I mean that's kind of maybe, you know, some exploratory but at the very least, can I know what I'm feeling or what I'm maybe hiding? Or even if I don't know what I'm feeling in words at least to describe that experience, right, rather than looking quickly for the meaning, but why and what does it mean? Indeed, yeah, I like that as well, the kind of describing. And to attend to just the physical sensation that comes along with the feeling, right? Okay, you feel sad and you're crying. So stay with the tears or a lot of the tears to come. You feel angry so your stomach starts clenching and every muscle gets tense. What's that like? You know, before I go to bed, I'm going to go to bed. I love that before you have to understand why or before you have to do anything about it. Just recognize what is happening in your body. Yeah, and that's an act of honesty and an ethical act towards ourself, like acting justly towards our experience. And I guess thank you so much to Nelif for bringing us back to the relationship with self and that honesty towards ourself because I think it's fair to say that if I cannot be honest with myself, with my own experience, it's virtually impossible to be honest with the other. Which is ironic because I think that people are emotionally dishonest with themselves to preserve relationship. How many relationships do we stay in or do we keep going and deny our own felt experience in it? It's not that bad or it's okay. Yeah, I get angry sometimes, but they mean well. And to not really sit with that anger and it's like, but is that actually coming from a place that deserves to be heard? Yeah, so true. If we betray ourselves and we leave ourselves behind, it's virtually impossible to be honest with the other, to claim emotional honesty and relationship. That's a great phrase. If we're not honest with ourselves, then we can't expect our partners to be emotionally honest. I mean, we can. We can. It's intelligent, fair and unjust. So our emotional, dishonesty invites emotion, dishonesty. As much as hopefully our emotional honesty will maybe help a partner who is more conflict avoidant, for example, to show up more and to be more honest. Sometimes if we're not emotionally honest with our partners, our friends, that leaves a lot of space for them to project and put their own content or put their own stuff or take up more space even with their emotions, like more space for them to emotionally extrovert and take up our emotional space. And it can often lead to a lot of clients feeling misunderstood by the other. And yet there hasn't been opportunity to be understood because they haven't shown up for whatever reason. So that's something that I see as well. Or they haven't understood themselves in order to be understood by the other. Because sometimes I guess we expect a lot from the other to understand to support to be good to us, but it's our doing our work of trying to understand ourselves and to articulate to the other how we feel what we need. So that's another, that came to mind like right now, like thinking about a client who expected to be understood by the other, but without doing the minimal work. And then it's curses out like, what is it that I'm feeling or what is it that I need? So that's another form of emotional dishonesty, like expecting the other to do this work that I'm supposed to do. Yeah, to pick up on that on again on a practical level, something I say to clients who come to me for couples counseling is that considering finances because therapy is not cheap. If it's a choice between couples counseling and individual counseling, I will always suggest individual counseling first, always, because you're going to get much more benefit out of understanding yourself and knowing how to deal with your own things. And then that'll carry over into your relationship rather than trying to do couples counseling when neither of you are really doing your own work. Yeah, great points of yes, or at least doing parallel, but the finances may be a problem. Oh, sure. Parallel is always the best, but yeah, it costs money. Are there any final thoughts that we have on this or things that we would like to reflect upon or share here at the end kind of before we wrap up this episode? Without wanting to kind of force the issue too much, I kind of actually enjoyed this far more than I imagined I would. And the more we talked, the more kind of open it felt. And kind of way, this is what we would hope that comes from her emotional honesty, that it creates more dialogue and more curiosity and speculation and suggestions and solutions. Yeah, so I feel very much the same. I feel that we go to look at different facets of that. I didn't expect that they would come up from this dialogue. So I am also very grateful for that. And definitely I'm also taking something from this for myself and for my clients. And with that too, I think that there were so many different avenues that opened up from this that it would be interesting to dialogue further, maybe about specifics because there's so much here that emerged, like we can't do justice to in the time that we have today. But there's so many different things that have come up for me that I'm thinking about that I would like to come back to in future episodes as well. I think the last thing I'd like to say about emotional honesty is just to recognize how much courage it takes to do that. And then it can be an incredibly scary thing to be emotionally honest with oneself. But especially with the other, however I do think that being emotionally honest is quite enriching to relationships. We can have more authentic relationships with ourselves and others when we are emotionally honest. Great point. Yeah. Great point, Janelle. Yeah, thank you for mentioning that. Yeah, it is very, very scary for some people and it takes a lot of courage. And yet I'm with you here, like I think it's totally worth it. And I think that not being honest just creates more time and suffering in spite of interestingly enough, emotional dishonesty being motivated most of the time by the desire to prevent suffering. And maybe we can leave our listeners with a bit of a challenge that the next time that somebody asks them how they are, that they actually tell them how they are. You know, within reason to the relationship. Excellent. Excellent point, Janelle. Yes. I think that, you know, it's just kind of dawning on me as we've been talking to is when we are asked how we're doing, how often it comes back to something just like so acquiesce and watery and nothingness really. And I was thinking about my check in today and just how I started talking about the weather. It's like how conditioned is that, right? It's like, it's coming up even there, you know, I wasn't sure exactly what my check in would be that there for today. And it's like, oh, yeah, the weather is disappointing me. And it's just interesting how sometimes not even being aware of it. It comes up in that way. So yeah, I just wanted to make note of that. Just before we move into our existential question for our next episode, we want to say a big thank you to our listeners for your ongoing support. We've reached just over 1,500 downloads, which is above and beyond what we imagine it would be so early on in the creation of this podcast. We are so pleased you're enjoying the content. And if you'd like to help us, we would appreciate it if you could subscribe if you haven't already. Share the podcast with your friends or give us a rating. Of course, we always appreciate comments and would love to hear from you if there are any topics you'd like us to cover. Follow along and find us at existentialistpodcast.com. Now for our existential question. It's a short one. Are you ready? Who are you really? How would you describe who you really are? We look forward to hearing your answers. Well, thank you for listening with us today and following along and consider the challenge that Janelle gave there to find a way or an opportunity, possibility to be more emotionally honest and to show up in that way. So we'll leave you with that to reflect on. Thank you for being with us today. Follow us on Instagram @existentialistpodcast and let us know your answer to today's existential question. 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