What is the line between being real/honest/authentic with others and having private thoughts nobody needs to know about?

Incredibly, it’s been ten years since I lost all privacy from my brain. Every thought, every impulse, everything I think about, tried to suppress, real thought or just a knee-jerk reaction, all of that is broadcasted to every spirit with me – which is… A lot of people. Often these thoughts are about them. “Oh, how fat. Well, don’t you have a weird nose?” You’d never say these things out loud, but you can’t help but notice because fat and weird noses aren’t invisible. (Breach of privacy: “oh my god, my colleague hacked my phone, got to my Fitbit data, and now they know I’m obese!” “You don’t say?!”) Anyway, the first time I thought to write about this topic is only now… Apparently, I have no sense of privacy. 😀

I preach to people about the importance of authenticity, right? To be honest with each other. To avoid being a fake friend and never even resort to white lies to get you out of a difficult situation when someone is begging for compliments. (White lies can be very disorienting to a person who seriously cannot get honest feedback from anyone and can create a false ego or a narcissistic personality disorder.) So, am I saying you should blurt out every thought that pops into your head as soon as it pops in? Oh, no.

I mean, don’t go out of your way to be nice to someone you don’t like, even if you feel sorry for them. If you do, then you owe them an honest explanation: “I feel sorry for you…” Bet you they don’t want your friendship if you lead with that. “I think you’d be desperate enough to be my friend now that my old friends ditched me” is not exactly a good line to lead with when making new friends, but that’s how we wind up making friends somehow. If you can’t give your reasons to be a friend to someone to them because they’d find it insulting, don’t make friends with them. But unless they put you in a spot and demand a reason, you don’t need to tell them why you don’t want to be their friend.

Authentic communication, at the best of times, can be tricky.

You can be authentically the kind of person who doesn’t want to offend others or doesn’t think their opinion about them is universal or even important. Therefore, they may choose to keep that information to themselves, and they are well in their right to do so.

However, if there is a situation that seems to be based on miscommunication or assumptions, then it’s necessary to inform the other of how you truly feel or think about it. The problem is that the Savants* and the Normal Person* communicate feelings in very different ways, so if you try to explain how you feel to someone of a different bracket, they may think you’re saying the opposite thing. (It sounds insane, but the Normal Person* would never say anything important directly. They’ll always put things between the lines. Therefore: “I think you’re ugly” literally means “I am very attracted to you” in the Normal Person*language. The Normal Person* are also keen to take EVERYTHING insulting to their ego as a joke or playful banter. They don’t think that after pestering you for the real reason why you don’t go out with them and eventually you scream: “I think you’re butt ugly, OK?!” They may STILL think you’re joking – they’ll act offended but still come back after they think “the joke is over”… and they’re offended only because you don’t CONFESS that you love them, even after all this time they’ve proven to you that they’re not going away.

The most common situation in awkward truth-telling is between the Savants* and the Normal Person*.

the Normal Person* fall in love with people who they know. Literally. The more time they’ve spent with someone, the more in love they are. To the Savants*, time spent together changes their feelings only for the negative. The Savants* will never fall in love over time; they’ll only ever go in the other direction. They can fall MORE in love with someone they fell for at first sight, but they’ll never fall for someone who they didn’t like from the start.

the Normal Person*, different thing. They tend to dislike all strangers by default. The less they know you, the less they like you. They don’t have a preference for “good stuff” and “bad stuff”; whatever they find out about you, they’ll “love.” They love familiarity, whatever that is.

Therefore, to make the Normal Person*fall out of love with you, change. Act foreign. Be different than what you were. Unpredictable. But, usually, the Savants* try to talk things through, explain themselves, and give that person somewhat closure. The Normal Person* will keep thinking everything is fine between you for as long as you stick around, tho… Therefore, stop answering them. The Normal Person* fall for reliability and familiarity, therefore, the opposite is displeasing for them.

Subscribe to get a Daily Message