By Brad Blanton
Truth-telling as path to freedom
Subject
Themes
Lying is the primary source of human stress, and it kills people. The most dangerous form is withholding: keeping back information from those who would be affected by it. Psychological healing only becomes possible when a person stops hiding. Stress originates not from external circumstances but from the mind itself, which mistakes its own interpretations for reality. These mental constructs, termed "bullshit" after Fritz Perls, are abstractions from experience to which the mind assigns value. Freedom means no longer being dominated by them.
Lying is the primary source of human stress, and it kills people. The most dangerous form is withholding: keeping back information from those who would be affected by it. Psychological healing only becomes possible when a person stops hiding. Stress originates not from external circumstances but…
Radical Honesty emerged in 1994 from the intersection of several intellectual and therapeutic traditions that had been developing throughout the twentieth century. Its primary theoretical debt is to Gestalt therapy, founded by Fritz Perls in the 1940s and 1950s. Perls emphasised present-moment…
Moralism is not a character flaw or a bad habit but a disease contracted in childhood, one that is incurable but manageable. Every human being who passes through a socialisation process acquires it. The mechanism of transmission is education in its broadest sense: parents warning children to be…
Truth-telling is not a single act but a developmental progression through three distinct levels, each building upon the previous one and each producing a deeper form of freedom. Most people never advance beyond the first level, if they reach it at all. Understanding the architecture of these levels…
Three forms of excitement are systematically repressed in modern culture: sexuality, anger, and joy. Each operates according to its own logic, each has its own history of suppression, and each requires a distinct form of courage to reclaim. Together, they form a unified theory of emotional…
Coupling up involves trading freedom for the greater creation of a committed relationship, and the exchange only works when both partners tell the truth. Without honesty, the trade produces neither freedom nor creation but merely a slow accumulation of resentment, co-dependence, and emotional death.…
The apparent struggle between wanting to change and being unable to is a fiction. It is not a genuine conflict between opposing forces within the psyche but a smokescreen created by the mind to conceal the fact that a choice has already been made. The person who says they want to lose weight but…
Moralism is a disease that all humans contract during childhood. As children grow, they learn to abstract, generalise, and evaluate their experiences. They become emotionally attached to their summations and assessments, eventually reaching a point where they cannot stop living inside their own…
Children lose their innocence through repeated hurt in the natural course of growing up, and the process accelerates when adults are intent on teaching them. Hatred passes from generation to generation through what is taught "for their own good." Parents, out of a confused mixture of fear, love, and…
Two kinds of language exist: the descriptive language of being and the evaluative language of the mind. When someone speaks the truth using descriptive language, everyone around them is touched. Honest people speak simply, using language more to describe than to evaluate. Liars evaluate almost…
Many people deal with anger the same way a soldier smothers a grenade: they sacrifice themselves to protect loved ones from what seems like a life-threatening explosion. But unlike an actual grenade, anger does not destroy people when expressed directly. The tragedy is that people sacrifice their…
Many people who seek therapy are simply exhausted from having arranged their lives in ways that drain rather than restore them. When they take responsibility for exercise, nutrition, and rest, a surprising number of their psychological problems disappear. The human body has a remarkable capacity to…
At the One Hundredth Anniversary of Psychotherapy conference in Phoenix in 1985, psychiatrist R.D. Laing demonstrated therapy by simply having a conversation with a homeless woman. He listened to her theological abstractions, shared his own thoughts on the same subjects, and let her "get" that she…
Behind every thought, every moral principle, and every carefully constructed self-image sits a witness being. This witness is the background awareness that has been present since consciousness first arose, and it operates on entirely different terms from the mind. While the mind seeks control, the…
By Brad Blanton
Subject
Themes
Lying is the primary source of human stress, and it kills people. The most dangerous form is withholding: keeping back information from those who would be affected by it. Psychological healing only becomes possible when a person stops hiding. Stress originates not from external circumstances but from the mind itself, which mistakes its own interpretations for reality. These mental constructs, termed "bullshit" after Fritz Perls, are abstractions from experience to which the mind assigns value. Freedom means no longer being dominated by them.