The truth is that people often aren’t honest.
Not necessarily intentionally‒ although that happens too‒ but often because they can’t get to the root of what they’re feeling themselves.
If someone can’t admit or identify a feeling or the reason for it themselves, it’s near impossible for them to be honest with you about it – making it even HARDER to determine what they really would like/need/want from you.
For example:
They tell you to leave, when they want you to stay.
They say no, when they mean yes.
They say they’re not hungry, when what they really want is tacos.
They push you away, when what they really want is for you to love them.
Why do people/we/me/you do it? Say one thing, but mean another? That’s a mystery that Freud himself couldn’t answer. (Or maybe he did? I don’t know – I stopped reading Freud after uni.)
You see it in teenagers, people who’ve been hurt, and people struggling with self-worth, loss, grief, or themselves most of all. In my experience, often the people who need us the most are the ones that lie and tell us they don’t.
Emotions and feelings are so tricky – especially the ones we’re struggling to reason with and define. We can’t control our emotions – no one can – but our feelings aren’t who we are, and sometimes we mistake them for being so.
Sometimes our feelings scare us, and it's hard to fight through the fear – that doesn’t make us weak. Everybody gets scared.
Sometimes our feelings overwhelm us, and it’s hard to make sense of them at all – that doesn’t make us stupid. Everyone gets overwhelmed sometimes.
Sometimes we suppress our emotions without realising, and it’s hard to manage when they bubble back up – that doesn’t make you crazy or inadequate. We’ve all been taught at one time or another to suppress our feelings.
‘If you get upset so you’re a sensitive and irrational person’ is a line people (often women) are fed and it’s not true. Everyone gets upset – it’s just often displayed in the form of anger by men, and tears by women. (And the greatest marketing ploy to exist is that anger has been branded ‘a non-emotion’.)
Sometimes we aren’t even sure why we’re feeling what we’re feeling or we try to tell ourselves that we shouldn’t be feeling it – which is when the unintentional lying comes in.
I’ll say it again: we can’t control our emotions – trying to do so is futile and often harmful.
BUT we can control our reaction. We control our response, the way we choose to behave as a result of how we’re feeling.
Same goes that we can’t control other people’s emotions, we can’t read their minds, we can’t stop them from acting the way they do. The only thing we can control is our reaction to their behaviour, by trying to understand why they might be feeling the way they are.
TELLING someone how they’re feeling is never okay – at the end of the day, you don’t know. Only the person knows how they feel.
But next time you’re in a situation with someone who you feel isn’t being honest about how they’re feeling – maybe not just with you but with themselves – ask yourself:
When the emotion passes, when I look back at this moment in an hour, a day, a week's time ‒ how will I have wanted to respond? What does the other person really need or want from me right now?
We’re all different, so the way you’d want someone else to respond isn’t necessarily the way they’d want you to. But I think you’ll have wanted to respond with grace, compassion and empathy – even if you feel the person is hiding their true feelings from you.
So do that. Act with love, grace, compassion, kindness and empathy. Understand that while they might not be telling you the truth of how they’re feeling, they may be struggling to articulate it themselves.
We’re all unintentional liars ‒ but the truth of it is that we’re all just honestly trying our best.
