What is “our truth in the moment”? It can be found in what we perceive, what we do, say feel, believe or think. We have been told as children to “tell the truth, now”, and we’ve taken in many messages since that time that revealing “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is what shapes our character and integrity. I resonate with this to a large extent, while also knowing that honesty and truth-telling is fraught with old pain and damage for many of us.
We have trauma around revealing truth and not being believed; when we have given all we have to give and are met with mistrust and suspicion, it is a grave indicator that we contain large gaps of mistrust of ourselves being reflected by the person facing us. We have trauma around feeling too afraid to reveal key parts of the truth; this unprocessed fear generates its worst nightmare when somehow the withheld information is discovered and the other person responds with feelings of betrayal and hurt. Additionally, we have trauma around the guilt we feel when our truth triggers someone else into their hurt. This guilt within can look like punishment from without; on the personal scale we have been punished for lying, telling partial truths, and for telling the whole truth. On the global scale, withholding or even revealing the truth has resulted in torture, death or perpetuation of crimes against humanity.
The consequence of these seminal scenes in our pasts around giving our truth is that our behaviour can warp when faced with another opportunity to speak our truth to our friends, associates, bosses, families or lovers. Perhaps we find ourselves situated somewhere near the poles of the hiding/spilling continuum, on one end either withholding our truths nearly or totally completely, on the other revealing every low-level detail we can think of regardless of its appropriateness to the situation at hand. Neither polarity offers a balanced response.
Emotional and spiritual process can be vital ahead of time in order to get clear on where to land within this spectrum, and to more accurately align with our own inner sense of what feels right to reveal as opposed to “what we should say”. Judgments such as “they can’t handle the truth” are distorted evaluations predicated on past pain and experience. Releasing any judgments, predictions and projections out loud around what to say and how much or little is right to say can also be extremely helpful in the time prior to approaching someone with our truth.
The payoff of finding a balanced truth to give in each situation is the growth of trust: trust for self, trust for other, and trust for the truth itself. The cultivation of trust is, perhaps obviously, most intrinsically important in long-term relationships, where investing our deepest truth in each moment becomes paramount.
Without knowing how to give our truth, we cannot develop the trust we need in ourselves or in anybody else. Being in our deepest truth can grow with practice, becoming more facile with time and deeds. When we can be true to ourselves first and foremost, thoroughly honest with ourselves at all levels, it can radiate outward into all of our relationships.