Radikal Ehrlich: Verwandle Dein Leben, Sag die Wahrheit

by Brad Blanton

Die erste Ausgabe von Radikal Ehrlich wurde 1995 ein internationaler Bestseller, weil es eben kein weiteres nettes, zahmes Selbsthilfe-Buch war. Im Gegenteil – es war ein Schocker.
In dem Buch untersucht Brad Blanton, ein Psychotherapeut und Experte in Sachen Stress-Management, die Mythen, Aberglauben und Lügen, die unser aller Leben bestimmen.
Und diese Neuauflage ist sogar noch schlimmer. Blanton zeigt uns, dass Stress nicht von unserer Umgebung kommt, sondern von dem selbst gemachten Gefängnis unseres Verstandes. Was uns darin gefangen halt, ist das Lügen.


“Wir alle lügen wie verrückt”, sagt Dr. Blanton. “Es zehrt uns aus… es ist die Hauptursache allen menschlichen Stress. Es bringt uns um.”
Unseren Ehepartnern, Freunden, Liebhabern oder Chefs nicht zu erzählen, was wir tun, fühlen oder denken, halt uns in unserem mentalen Gefängnis gefangen. Der Weg nach draußen liegt darin, gut darin zu werden, die Wahrheit zu sagen. Und Dr. Blanton gibt uns die Werkzeuge, die wir zur Flucht aus diesem Gefägnis benötigen an die Hand. Dieses Buch ist der Kuchen mit eingebackener Feile.


In „Radikal Ehrlich“ lehrt uns Dr. Blanton, wie wir ein funktionierendes Leben und leidenschaftliche und lebendige Partnerschaften haben können und wie wir dort Intimität entstehen lassen können, wo bisher keine war. Wie wir bereits von den philosophischen und spirituellen Quellen unserer Kultur, von Plato bis Nietzsche, von der Bibel bis Emerson, gelernt haben – möge die Wahrheit dich frei machen.


Brand Blanton ist Autor zahlreicher Bücher, darunter auch “Radikal ehrliche Elternschaft: Sieben Schritte zu einer funktionsfähigen Familie in einer nicht funktionsfähigen Welt”

Genres: Psychology, Self Help, Nonfiction, Personal Development, Relationships, Philosophy, Communication

ebook

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read, which actually presents the premises of Eastern thought in down to earth terms most people can understand, to wit:

Most thought is a form of disease.

For those who read into this a license to go around insulting people for fun, I think they've missed an important part of the point.

By stating the truth (about your mostly childish feelings and demands on the world) you get to hear yourself being putrid and you will come off your high horse. If you just say the mean things yet keep secret the adolescent assumptions behind that feeling, you're only doing half the job, and being dishonest.

There is no objective truth, only subjective truth. If you state the subjective truth of your feelings, including a hard look at your assumptions, it is not only honest but essential to growing up and being free.

Wrong idea: "you're fat and disgusting! Hah ha!"

Right idea: "I resent you for being fat because for me it means you are weak-willed and since I'm not fat that means I have strong character and I can be the hero in my secret mental world"

[lisey · Rating 5 out of 5]

His premise is very scary: tell the truth as you experience it, no matter how it reflects on your identity. Use language to its natural limits to describe what you feel as you feel it, even if you fear it is childish or illogical. I like this. I like the idea that our feelings often don't make any sense at all. We might feel them to be ugly, selfish, wicked.

There's a part where he outlines all the secrets he is ashamed of. It was one of my favourite parts, and I started laughing because of how funny and truthful his admissions were. I imagine the first time he wrote them down on paper he might have been afraid, even though to me they were charmingly self-involved and innocent, like my own secrets. I wrote mine down too, and it hurt to do so. Some of the things I came up with sounded hideous and twisted, like they'd been decaying in the dark for too long. Things I know to be true, but never consciously acknowledge. I'll share one of them with you:

I imagine myself as some kind of person who will eventually "get it". I will learn to be totally and radically honest, I will become a liberated sexual being, I will read lots of books and become very intelligent, I will travel the world and learn new things and tell people they are perfect. I will perfect one day if I do all of these things, and no bad feelings will ever be able to touch me again. I believe that even in telling this to myself I am becoming more of a liberated being, someone special. I never want to miss people or feel like I need others, so this is how I am trying to escape those feelings of needing to be validated externally.

The act of writing these down as he had brought up much fear and self-hatred. It may feel like one is dying to admit that some of who you are is performative. It is a way of navigating the world because you think it will keep you safe. It goes back very far. From a young age we learn that love, in some families, is a limited commodity. There is a right and a wrong way of being. If one can appear to be following the rules, you can access the benefits and resources you desire. It feels as though you are using people - it's not a good feeling.

For Blanton, truth-telling is a means of humbling yourself. What is left behind is a simple sweetness. He talks about the "being that you are", the base awareness that appeared like a dim light increasing in intensity, in the womb. I think this is the part that people feel is too New Agey. It resonated with me though. It is the place where you are only watching, feeling, experiencing. Then we come along with our little post-it notes about what it all means. I feel that quality - which I am finding impossible to relate in words - when I am in deep sleep, listening to a very beautiful song, sleeping in the park and getting goosebumps from the wind, kissing, being intimate, singing, painting. The last two I no longer feel that way about - I feel too jumbled up and critical to enjoy creativity without evaluating the worth of what I am creating (which, of course, makes creativity impossible).

I like the chapter on wellness and taking care of yourself. I like this idea so much that I would like to study it anthropologically. I think the cultural ideas we have about what it means to lead a good life in the West are just totally fucked up. Ideas about morality, responsibility, being selfless and kind, blah blah blah... it's awful. It's a trap. It hurts so much. This book makes a case for forgoing moralism completely. Judgements, evaluations, all of it. According to Blanton, taking arbitrary meaning-making seriously is an example of your mind controlling your being, rather than simply being and using your mind as a tool to make being easier. It's something you knew when you were a kid, and then at some point your identity became so critical, that losing it feels like suicide.

He makes some pretty contentious statements about how deep this goes. He says that suicide is a result of this battle between mind and being, where the mind has won. I don't know how I feel about that that, but I can see where that might be the case sometimes. When I am observing without creating meaning, there is no desire to die because the weight of assessment is not present. It's like getting out of bed. Sometimes you just can't because there's all these layers sitting on top. I heard something similar from Byron Katie, who said that she would have the thought, "get up", and then other thoughts would tumble out: "I can't", "I'm so tired", "what's the point", etc.

So prioritising wellness is just another way of saying prioritise experience. Live from the body. I can't really express how radical an idea this is for me. I don't understand the mechanism behind this, but perhaps from the age of eight onwards I have felt cramped. My body has felt crumpled in on itself, contorted, very rarely at ease. Right as I am typing this I notice my shoulders are hunched in, my fingers ache from the odd way I am writing, my neck is bent. I am hungry but have forgotten to eat. It's this constant neglect that peters out each day, and takes conscious and concerted effort to attend to. I am getting better at it. It is learning to be selfish, to fully own the space you move about in, to make your arse as comfortable as you can. In some ways it is coming to see that you deserve to exist.

I like the story about that voluptuous woman who came to him for therapy. She was very meek and smiley, and they found that this was an all an act because she thought that she had to be sweet for some belief she had.

If you can, listen to the audiobook version. It's adorable! The author reads it, occasionally stumbles, or giggles somewhat wickedly when he says something a little controversial. I don't think it would have had the same effect if I'd just read the book without his voice. He's very warm and it felt a little like having a therapy session.

While I like his theory about how Western models of health focus on illness healing rather than prevention, and how lying to ourselves and others can increase destructive behaviours - particularly through socially sanctified poisons such as neglecting movement, not listening to your body, overeating or eating things that feel bad, alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs - I disliked his judgement that obesity is a form of abuse. Perhaps for some it is, but it doesn't feel to be a particularly helpful evaluation, as it seems people can be classified as obese and still feel physically well. It's a minor point as it's not central to his book at all, but it was something I disagreed with. I think it is more useful to consider loving the body as it is, and focus on wellness rather than weight reduction. If weight reduction is a side-effect of that increased attention, great. Otherwise I fear "becoming better" might become another way of perpetuating self-judgement, or the idea that you are broken. 

He address this too: he says that a lot of his clients come to him just looking for more homework to do. They don't really get that the whole point is to give yourself a break, to have no more homework, to have no identity to keep defending and killing yourself for. I relate to this as I seem to twist the whole model of being well, "fighting" depression, being happy, etc as something that I absolutely must achieve, or else... or else what?

It seems to me most of the bad reviews for this book are indignant about the actual work he suggests: telling the truth to loved ones, no matter how much it may hurt them. I have to agree with them - I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon. I think in the context of relationships you actually want to preserve, or where there are unresolved issues, this could be very effective. I also think something that can be useful and that you can incorporate with a policy of total honestly and openness is the ability to just admit when you feel like shit. You don't have go around screaming it from the rooftops (if you don't want to!), but sometimes just being honest with yourself can be helpful. Like I have moments sometimes where I am standing with a group of people and I will get an overwhelming fear response, and feel the desire to leave immediately. I have been saying to my friends, "I feel really nervous right now, because sometimes I have thoughts that other people are judging me. I don't know what to say, that's why I'm being quiet." It really takes the pressure off. Really, they might think I'm crazy and find me to be a downer. But so far the only thing that's happened from this honest admission of how shit I am feeling is support, maybe a hug, a smile. I don't say it for the reassurance, although that is nice. Then I can tell them that I appreciate them being so kind to me, and I hope I can do the same for them when they are feeling bad, and to speak up about how they're feeling if they can.

Phew. I think that's all I have to say. I did really like this book, even though I don't know how practical it is. It's also not scientific at all, if that's what you were looking for. However, I really respect his ideas and I love the simplicity of living from the body and recognising evaluative thoughts as they arise.

[Manzoid · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is brash, confident, strong, results-oriented, opinionated, simple, and straightforward to the point of over-simplifying. It also has New Age-y sub-themes that will put off some, but that's another matter.

The book's basic point is sound -- honesty is the best policy. However, the implementation of that policy, as described in "Radical Honesty", is not very nuanced. It is a shock program most properly applied to people who are consciously or unconsciously living out self-destructive scripts that they internalized from somewhere or another, for people who are being deeply, fundamentally dishonest with themselves and with others. It is for people who could use a real shaking up, to break free from the false security and real stress of a false persona.

That's fine as far as it goes. However, if you were to apply the principles of radical honesty indiscriminately in your daily life, you would be a jerk, basically, and you wouldn't be able to get anything done in society. It's best considered for bringing health to broken intimate relationships among adults.

On this point, a quote from Khalil Gibran comes to mind:
"If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully."

The stark candidness prescribed in "Radical Honesty" is not beautiful, it is raw and ultimately self-centered. It's for emergency use, like approaching the task of redecorating by burning your house down and starting over.

That said, personally I found the author's brash style to be refreshing and likeable. As always, the reader should just extract the personally valuable stuff out of his collection of techniques and his overall message, and simply ignore the rest.

[Jonathan Karmel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was like a sandwich with some really good meat between two very thick, very stale pieces of bread. I'll start with the good part.

Chapters 6, 7 and 8, called "Taboos against Excitement," "How to Deal with Anger" and "Telling the Truth in a Couple," were insightful and well-written. The author's main point was that it is psychologically more healthy to express to a person how that person is making you feel directly to the person's face at the time you are feeling it. As adults, we (especially men) have learned to repress our feelings, especially anger. But repressing your anger doesn't make it go away. It just makes you anxious and stressed out and resentful. If someone does something that pisses you off, you're better off telling them right then and there, "I resent you because . . ." Otherwise, your resentment will just fester and come out in ways that are not psychologically healthy.

Sometimes your anger may not be justified. This book says you should express it anyway. If it really is not justified, the person you are expressing it to will immediately point that out and by expressing it you just might learn the true reason why you're angry.

The author advocates meditation and other methods of learning how to become more aware of how you are feeling when you are feeling it. Then you can become better at expressing how you are feeling -- not just anger, but also excitement, joy, gratitude -- the full range of human emotions. Expressing these kinds of emotions makes us act and feel human, instead of acting and feeling like a bunch of zombies just going through the motions of life.

I also liked this author's description of the way that people are constantly and often mistakenly believing that things are now the way they were in the past. People hold on to beliefs based on the way things used to be rather than updating their way of thinking based on changed circumstances. "You're living in the past, man." Actually, most of us are.

Now for the stale part. First of all, it wasn't clear what the author means by "radical." I heard about this book from reading The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs, and the way Jacobs described the philosophy, I thought this was about a guy who believed in telling the truth all the time, not only doing away with lies of commission but also lies of omission -- like if you read the person's mind it would be no different from what was actually coming out of the person's mouth. That would be radical indeed, but after reading this book I don't think that is what it is about. In a forward written by someone other than the author, and in one passing reference in the book, there is mention that the word "radical" here means pertaining to the roots. In medieval philosophy the radical humour was inherent in all animals and was believed to be necessary to the animal's vitality.

So I actually don't think the author believes a person should be totally honest all the time. But there is certain stuff in our inner core that is vital and needs to be expressed. If we don't let it out and express it, we're killing ourselves. Okay, fair enough, but how exactly do you know what these things are? I wouldn't personally respect someone who was constantly expressing everything they felt like a child. That person would seem totally puerile and self-indulgent.

Throughout this book, the author states that people's "minds" are killing them. People need to become aware of their "senses." I didn't find this helpful, because I believe that whatever you are thinking about comes from your mind. I think what the author was trying to say was that people have a lot of distracting thoughts constantly running through their heads, and they would benefit from learning to become more mindful of what is happening in the present, being fully present and trying to have intimate personal connections with other people in the present moment instead of constantly thinking about something else. I agree with this, but I've read others express these ideas much more clearly.

Throughout this book, the author states that "moralism" is the biggest problem for people in the world. People are killing themselves by constantly thinking about what they "should" be "doing." People can only truly live by just "being." Again, I kind of understand what the author is talking about, and if I do understand it, I actually agree with it, but I think these ideas have been expressed much better in other ways, such as in the philosophy of Taoism or Zen Buddhism. The way these ideas are expressed in this book, it comes off as a total rejection of morality in favor of nihilism. In fact, in the postscript to this revised edition of the book, the author jokes (?) that he is starting a new cult religion called the Futilitarian Church.

All of this is just idiotic in my opinion. In The Feeling Good Handbook¸ David Burns explains why you should stop “must”-erbating. I totally agree that many people have screwed up ideas about what they should be doing that are really not based on anything, and these ideas hold them back from doing what they actually want to be doing. I also think some people spend a lot of time thinking about what they should be doing rather than actually doing it. I also think that many people expend a perfectly reasonable and respectable amount of time and energy doing what they should be doing, but still worry constantly that they are not doing enough, rather than being satisfied that they are doing what they can and enjoying their life. But if this author is advocating not thinking about what a person should be doing at all, I completely disagree. I think people find meaning in life and avoid existential depression by having a set of moral beliefs and then doing what they believe they should be doing according to those beliefs. Psychologists have an important role -- to help people change behaviors that are causing mental illness. But mental health in and of itself is not a philosophy of life, in my opinion.

Throughout this book, the author repeatedly expresses contempt for lawyers as exemplifying everything that is bad and contrary to "radical honesty." According to the author, lawyers look for fair solutions after applying a set of rules, when people really just need to let loose their feelings in order to be "alive" and not "dead." If I understand this author correctly, he thinks all lawyers are completely full of shit.

On this point, I think the author is completely full of shit. Take me for example. I am a lawyer, and I like my job. I have a nice work environment, I do interesting things, I have nice bosses, I get paid well, I have reasonable hours, and I seriously doubt that I would be happier or more "alive" if I was unemployed or had a different job. As one example of what I do as a lawyer for a public health agency, I am trying to help my client end the AIDS epidemic. My client has already helped to virtually eliminate instances of babies being born HIV positive in the state where I live, and every day my client is working to reduce the number of people who become HIV positive and reduce the number of people who are HIV positive from getting AIDS. This is not futile; it is in fact happening. But in order to make it happen, my client needs help writing laws and regulations and interpreting the laws in a way that is, yes, fair.

Lawyers are the people upholding the rule of law. If you think you'd be better off living in a society where there is anarchy than in a society governed by the rule of law, you are completely deluding yourself. In the About the Author section, the author is described (presumably by himself although this section is oddly written in the third person) as "a major participant in the civil rights movement." I wonder if the author happened to notice any lawyers who were also major participants in the civil rights movement. I speculate that this author, because of the way he chooses to live his life, has had a number of disputes involving lawyers over the years and has often come out on the losing end. Perhaps the author should take his own advice and express why he resents particular lawyers, instead of making huge, ridiculous generalizations about all lawyers.

This book is poorly written. I think an editor could have greatly improved the presentation of the concepts. A lot of the time, the author just rambles or repeats himself. The book does not seem well-organized and the author goes off on long, uninteresting tangents. The bad parts of the book should have been edited out to make the book more concise.

Overall, my impression of this book is that there are some insightful observations learned from many years as a psychoanalyst. But about 80% of this book is just new age, baby boomer, narcissistic bullshit. The author has been married five times and appears to believe that some great philosophical truth can be gleaned from becoming really good at playing golf. I guess it's to his credit that he's very open about the fact that he is trying to get rich and famous by peddling his cult-like philosophy that if it feels good it is good; but it doesn't change the fact that this is in fact what he appears to be doing. He appears to reject the scientific method, so he doesn't make any attempt to back up his belief system with any data. It's all just his own personal opinions.

Don't get me wrong. I like hanging out with people who are honest and present and share intimate thoughts. I just don't think this is all there is to life.

[Harold Swarthout · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate this guy, his writing and his shitty ideas about how to relate to others. Yeah it's personal. The "truth" according to this dumb ass is that in order to strengthen your relationship with friends and family you need to share in detail every negative, judgemental, dick head thought you ever had about them as well as detailed descriptions about any thing you have done or thought which would disturb them. Married couples should go in to detail about other people they have fantasized about or had sex with and how great it was and on and on. Daughters should sit down with there fathers and give detailed descriptions of the glory hole gang bang they participated in at serority, etc. THIS ADVICE IS NOT CASE BY CASE. It's presented as a one size fits all , universal remedy for strengthening relationships and liberating one self. No thank you.

[Arjun Ravichandran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lying is a soul-killer. That is the central message of this searing text. We think we lie in order to 'save' other people, but in reality, we lie in order to save our false and constructed selves. We lie so consistently, that it becomes a way of life for this false self. The author suggests that radical honesty is the way to disengage from the stranglehold of this false self, that it is the first step towards defeating the constant self-censorship that ruins our happiness. It's hard to argue with the basic premise of this argument, though of course, the practicality of this way of life is left to each reader to judge. What is undeniable is that a strong and cogent argument has been made for more honesty and not for less ; very recommended.

[Alienor]

Full disclosure; my boyfriend has been reading this book, we have been arguing about it, so I'm reading it with a fine comb - and no little exasperation - to fuel my rebuttals. And I'm not done yet. And I agree with everything in the first part so far.

The thing is, we (hubby and I) are bloody honest. He's Dutch (check out their reputation for bluntness!), son of therapists and a psych and IT major (smart and a nerd). I was brought us by a messed-up family and rebuilt myself with therapy, patience and YES a whole lot of transgressive truth telling. Yes! We are at a level of shared honesty I've hardly ever witnessed. We use all the psychological tools we have in order to understand and navigate our differences, we hardly ever 'fight' - we try to argue constructively. It works.

My therapist was a fan of keeping a 'secret garden' in relationships in order to cultivate attraction - full knowledge of, and melding with, the significant other tends to kill desire. I agree.

But mostly, I believe in KINDNESS a wee bit more than honesty. Maybe because my socialization as a girl brainwashed me, maybe because I am 'too sensitive' bla bla bla.

I believe in honesty up to a point. Shaming people into telling the truth is annoying. It turns into a pissing contest.

Also I live in Asia. My local friends' hair would probably collectively stand on their heads by just reading the intro. Are they wrong? Not necessarily. We strive for harmony here, not harshness, and it works for me.

Anyway. Rant over. I fervently believe in honesty AND kindness. There.
Back to hubby now.

[Per André · Rating 3 out of 5]

Life changer. Unfortunately, it's also 33% total nonsense. The good parts are so good you want to live your life over again. The bad parts are so bad you want to [insert bad things here].

Also: Worst endnotes ever.

[BookLab by Bjorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

We all lie like hell to ourselves and others, and it's stresses us to death.

The book is to the point, unapologetic and without sugar coating. The honesty Dr Blanton is talking about is not just "truth is the best policy", but to tell the truth as you experience it, in great detail and no matter how it portraits you identity.

What he suggests is shock program, but don't worry, because 99.99% of you won't have the balls (or tits?!) to do the exercises described in this book. Your ego won't let you. And you don't need to, you will still get massive value from reading it.



📝 Nietzsche: "A mans maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child at play."

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📝 "The stress that kills or cripple most of us come from people being too hard on themselves when they don't live up to their own imaginings about how other people think they should behave."

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📝 How long it takes to build a ego identity depends on culture and tech level. For a bushman to go from child to starting to making babies, take on an adult role and choose vocation takes about a year. In our culture adolescent last from 12 to 40 y/o.

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📝 "We mix up reality with our interpretation of reality. We invent some fundamental lies of how life should and shouldn't be. Then we use food and drugs to temporarily escape the lie we invented."

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📝 "Getting drunk & stoned works! being sad & being fat works! Especially in a world where being angry, horny or being expressly joyful is tabu."

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📝 "The key to happiness is the willingness to take care of oneself. Problem is that most people are willing to take care of anything and anyone else, but themselves."

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⭐️ TAKEAWAYS: The author walks his talk. When in the introduction he describes his intention with this book, he doesn’t shy away from mentioning the ugly side of why he is writing; “to show off what he learned during his career, but also to show that he is smarter than most people. To be rich and famous and to create a legacy that lives on after his death.”

These are things we all think to some degree, but never say explicitly.

I end this review by quoting my own notes; "Mind-blowing book!"



(ps. want weekly reviews in the genres of philosophy, psychology and human nature? Check out my channel: https://youtube.com/c/BookLabbyBjorn )

[Private Account · Rating 2 out of 5]

Notes to self:
-This is like an angry version of Eckart Toole--very buddhist in it's attack on "the mind". Not inaccurate in every respect but shallow and annoyingly unable to see the other side i.e. our evil abstracting minds do have SOME good things about them....
-He bashes NVC repeatedly--did this book begin as an angry rant bashing NVC?
-Yet his ideas about about good communication and emotional health are almost identical to NVC, with the exception of anger.
-His attempt to be "radically honest" about why he wrote his book was laughable. He doesn't examine what lies behind any of his petty surface desires. "I want to be famous," he says, but I want him to examine why. What need is that? Will you finally be good enough in your own eyes? Are you needing acceptance? Connection? People who want to influence others and "change the world" are needing something, and if they don't know what that is they will get lost in their vision of making people more like them rather than what they are really needing, which I have found is usually connection.
-He has had 5 wives. His longest relationship happened when he was 39 and married a 19-year-old? Similar to Nathaniel Branden. Would really like someone who has had a wonderful fifty-year-marriage to write a book about good communication....

[Deepak Chaudhary]

What do I say about this book "I don't know" that's all I can say. It asks you to be honest Radically honest as the title suggests, if you have sexual fantasies just say what you are thinking, if you are angry just let it rip with all the cussing and being loud that wants to come from you with no thought of tact or restriction, it asks you to not worry about what other people think and that you can never know what is the right thing to do so its best to just be honest at-least this way your mind will be free. If you decide to go down this road you should know that things are going to get worse before they get better. I tried the first level of honesty described in this book and I did not like what happened so I don't know I guess I am not brave enough to let go of morality just yet but slowly I might get there because I do see the value in this I have seen how my relationships in the past have improved when I have done what were suggested in this book .... its still scary though.

[Thibeaux · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed that he didn't say when NOT to tell the whole truth. It so often gets me in trouble.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmmm....I think it has a good premise. Telling the truth will set you free after all but the tactics seem a bit harsh. Spending 10 straight days telling your loved ones all the things you resent about them seems like it could cause some pretty intense resentment. But, maybe I'm just not "there" yet. It does, however, have some similarities to A New Earth in that it asks you to be completely aware, especially of how certain emotions make you feel physically which has been very powerful for me. I think this book might be very helpful for someone who is keeping secrets and therefore making themselves sick. It seems like he helps people that lead very high stress lives with secretive and often dysfunctional relationships. Luckily, not "there" either!

[Matthew Bushnell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, what can I say. Whilst the author is trying to make an attempt to argue how honesty sets you free, it is set in the context of what the author calls "Futilism"(a new religion according to Brad. Basically you can't cnage anythign so just be brutally honest. I just felt like the book was a strong attack against certain morals. Whislt I agree that traditional "Pharisaism"has produced a culture of lying to maintain appearances, it is not helpful to abandon the reality of moral absolutes as revealed by a loving Creator. The problem Brad Blanton has with the Christian religion (amongst other institutions for moralism) is justified to a large degree. However, moral absolutes can exist under a banner of love and grace rather than legalism and facade.

[Denis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only the obvious how to guide on telling the truth, but also great advise on expressing emotions, obstacles like moralism and a comprehensive model for truth. If applied this book could certainly have dramatic effects on ones own life as well as others.

Particularly I enjoyed the authors take on enlightenment phrasing it like the attempt to return to a state experienced by a fetus in a mother's womb.

The three levels of telling the truth:
1. revealing the facts
2. honestly expressing current feelings and thoughts
3. exposing the fiction you have devised to represent yourself and your history

Reward of telling the truth:
Clarity and a less strain.

[Danielle O'Neill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I just can’t get on board with this book. Yes, I agree honesty is usually the best policy but I can’t get behind the “radical” honesty train of thought. Being a jerk and speaking your anger immediately and in all situations is not always the answer, in my opinion. I also didn’t care for the author. He rubbed me the wrong way.

[Grace]

Reads like a madman's manifesto but there is a lot to take from it

[Giulio Ciacchini · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very confusing
The core claim is that lying creates stress and anxiety.
Whenever we hide feelings, pretend to be something we’re not, or shape ourselves to gain approval, we split into two selves:
the “performer,” who tries to manage impressions
the “real self,” who experiences the world directly
This split creates chronic tension and emotional numbness.
Radical honesty aims to collapse that split.
The book promises liberation from anxiety and deeper intimacy with others, and at times, it offers genuinely clarifying insights. But the way these ideas are presented can also feel confusing, repetitive, and at moments unnecessarily extreme.
The book’s strongest contribution is its distinction between facts and the stories we overlay onto them. Blanton convincingly shows how much of our emotional pain comes not from reality itself, but from the interpretations we generate about ourselves and others. He also makes a compelling case for how often we censor ourselves in order to be “nice,” “appropriate,” or socially acceptable - habits that ultimately keep us stuck in roles rather than connected to our real feelings.
Where the book becomes less clear is in its tone and method. Blanton mixes psychological insights with personal anecdotes, therapeutic techniques, and philosophical claims, but the structure is loose and the logic sometimes jumps abruptly. His writing style is blunt and provocative by design, but this can make the arguments feel muddled rather than sharp. The line between useful honesty and performative bluntness isn’t always well defined, which leaves readers questioning how to apply the practices in real life.

At last, some of Blanton’s prescriptions for honesty feel impractical or even counterproductive. His suggestion to confess every attraction, resentment, or judgment can seem less like a path to intimacy and more like a recipe for chaos. The book rarely explores the nuances of safety, context, or the emotional capacities of the people around us. As a result, the philosophy sometimes slips into absolutism: if honesty is good, then more honesty must be better, no matter the relationship or circumstance.

[Pascal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brad Blanton is an american psychotherapist. His writing is entertaining and straight to the point. His ideas are not sugar coated nor is he embarrassed to say exactly write exactly what he wants to say.
He has some great ideas about the way we relate to each other, ourselves, how we got there, and how a new radical honesty can help.
His arguments are sometimes a bit vague and rambly, and I can't say I agree with all of his ideas.
Recommend to anyone interested in psychology/therapy/communication.
Definitely has started some interesting discussions and I think I have taken some real life practical value away from this book.

[Karam Elkezit · Rating 3 out of 5]

To reread later !!
Do not listen to the audiobook, its just baaad
Ill give it 3 stars for the challenging ideas, even if i didnt fully grasp them, i still love his emphasis on the importance of telling the truth.

[Yorgo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it, even though the book is not perfect. But then again, why should it be ?

I'll probably make a longer summary another time but one thing is sure : I really love the concept.

This book is about noticing how we internalized some rules, some ways of living (lying, withholding...), some "morals"... that actualy keep us trapped in our mind and can possibly lead to great suffering. In the end we are all neurotics at different degrees.

Radical honesty is not about becoming a cocky blunt cunt that tells everything that comes up in his mind. Instead, it's mindfulness at it's finest. It's noticing what we think, how we feel, what happens, and realize there's no right or wrong per se. Realize that it's selfish to withhold from others even if it's "not to hurt their feelings". The truth is : YOU don't want to feel bad about making them possibly feel bad, and preserving the other makes you feel good about yourself (even though you might resent them), and therefore you withhold, and miss on the possibily of sharing your experience, of what you live, go through, with another person, and the opportunity of them sharing their experience with you in return.

read in another review : "He advocates for being honest in your dealings with all people as a way to keep yourself "sane" and to have true intimacy with others, instead of having fake relationships based on how we are "supposed" to act. Feel your feelings and be open with people. Very logical to me."

So radical honesty is "radical" as coming back to the roots of our experience. Becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable. It's about letting go of that falls sense of security we have because of all the morals, rules, and beliefs we believe in, and embrace insecurity by letting them all go, which in returns gives you the opportunity to get out of your mind and into your life, and actually really LIVE what you're living/experiencing/being on a moment to moment basis.

At the end of the book he talks about how he "created" a religion "futilitarism". I laughed so hard. It's amazing. I'm sure Brad Blanton wrote this laughing out loud at himself. But the moral is so true : what's the point anyway ?

The more I read great philosophers and thinkers (Alan Watts, Nietzsche, Marcus Aurelius, Milan Kundera...) the more I realize they are all closely talking about the same thing : that there is no point to being alive ; there is no sense to life ; life has no meaning per se. And when you realize that, it can be difficult to grasp, because the human mind is made for making sense of things, have a sense of control, find meaning and order, and feels insecure when it can't. But you can actually find incredible peace and joy of living once you let go of the mind's tendency to look for making sense of the world, and once you embrace the insecurity of being and living. That's what Alan Watts talks about in "Wisdom of insecurity" and what Milan Kundera talks about in the "The Unbearable lightness of being". Unbearable lightness of being, because once you realize "being" is effortless, that there is no one true meaning to life, you gain "lightness" but this lightness is unbearable because you let go of all of which you were holding onto, and have to learn to appreciate the insecurity that comes with it.

And my philosophy is : there's no point to life, so we can make anything we want out of it (youpie!), and in the end, it won't matter at all anyway, because you might as well have done anything else, you'd haved lived anyway.

[Merritt Rogers]

This book could use some editing, but it's a refreshing read. In American culture, social games and lies are not only encouraged but expected. Uncomfortable truths are buried, and tellers of uncomfortable truths are ostracized. Philip Larkin says in his poem, "This Be the Verse," "Man hands on misery to man/It deepens like a coastal shelf." He wasn't speaking about the misery that results from men deceiving themselves or others, the "white" lies that have to be covered with increasingly dark lies, but the verse applies. Men and women create and magnify stress and suffering for themselves and others by practicing deceit, even deceit which would widely be regarded as polite or socially appropriate. In their desire to please themselves and others, people lie. They have been taught and rewarded since childhood to identify the "truth" that will please their listener or improve their image and then tell it. Blanton makes the bold statement in the beginning of the book that, "Politeness and diplomacy are responsible for more suffering and death than all the crimes of passion in history." At first I thought it was a bit of an overstatement, but as I reflected on it, it rang true. Much, if not all, of my own suffering has been the result of lies - of commission or omission - told to myself by myself, told to me by others, or told about me by others. And what happens on the micro level, of course, affects what happens on the macro level. We are suffering because of our individual and collective refusal to think and speak honestly. This is a self-described "how to" book on freedom, and its message is one everyone should hear. "We all get to make this choice between manipulation and communication over and over again in life."

[Mario Tomic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting book going deep into the benefits of direct, honest communication and the limitations you are causing yourself and your loved ones by not telling the truth. It really dives deep into the human nature of our communication with others and how by withholding the truth or parts of it we can cause massive stress in our lives. As we grow up we lose the courage of being fully honest. And the fact is that we rarely ask directly for what we want, we're not honest and eventually this turns into a nightmare where we can't remember what we said to who or who said what.
The big idea of the book is that happiness can be achieved through cultivating honesty regardless of how hard or easy the situation is. And this definitely sounds a lot easier than it is. Telling the truth is much more rare than you think. If it was easy everyone would be doing it and we know that truth is a rare commodity in human relationships. Most people pretend to be brave when they're afraid, pretend to be happy when they're depressed, take different identities and spend A LOT of energy and time preserving that ego self-image. This book is a classic everyone should read. If you don't resonate with it as strongly at first don't worry, you'll still discover a very fresh view of the world and a few valuable lessons.

[Magnus Lidbom · Rating 2 out of 5]

TLDR 1: I might sum my experience of this book up as three parts deep wisdom, one part harmful dogmatic extremism and one part emotionally abusive manipulation trying to bludgeon me into accepting the harmful dogmatic extremism. Reading it felt somewhat like trying to eat a delicious dessert, stuffed with bits of broken glass, using a razor blade as a spoon.

TLDR 2: You know that guy who, sneeringly, tells his depressed wife: "You're wallowing in your own misery because you like it. You are better suited to be a sheep than a human." and then when his wife starts crying he tells her "Just being honest!"? Blanton is that guy, but with a whole - eastern mysticism based - philosophy, which is often very insightful, to paint his behavior as enlightened and himself as a savior. This gives me a raging intellectual dissonance headache.

TLDR 3: Radical Honesty presents a philosophy and perspectives that I consider to frequently be insightful, but, just as frequently, rigid, dogmatic, moralizing and downright emotionally abusive. If the reader works hard to temper Blanton's black and white perspectives with large spoonfuls of nuance, common sense, emotional intelligence and a flexible wisdom that takes the actual context into account, they might find great value in this book. However, Blanton's own approach, in practice, seems to me to be a blind, unthinking dogma requiring unquestioned full disclosure no matter the context. This, I believe, is more likely to destroy lives and relationships than to enhance them. Then, when Blanton extorts his clients to act according to his personal dogma in their private lives by threatening to terminate therapy if they don't comply, my blood runs cold. To my mind, Blanton talks a good game of escaping dogmatic compliance to rigid principles and then turns right around and uses emotionally abusive manipulation and extortion tactics to bludgeon clients and readers into just such a dogmatic compliance to his own rigid principles, thus betraying everything he claims to stand for.

---

As I understand him Blanton believes that the thinking moralizing mind which gets us stuck in unquestioning belief in rigid ideas and principles about how to be and act is the ultimate cause of most of the problems in the world and most of human suffering. We need to "return to our senses", recover a more direct experience of ourselves and what is actually happening right now based more on our senses than our ideas. Blanton, apparently, believes that a constant, unrelenting, radical honestly and disclosure of all that we think and feel without any consideration whatsoever for the consequences in context is the universal solution to achieving this. To me it seems that his solution is itself a case of dogmatic adherence to rigid ideas, the very thing that Blanton claims to want to save us from. Blanton appears completely oblivious to this, to my mind, glaring problem with his practical application of his philosophy.

To that issue I need to add that Blanton considers any level and amount of emotional and verbal abuse perfectly acceptable. "Fuck diplomacy" is a direct quote from Blanton. Blanton explicitly states that we should not try to be decent when angry. Only physical violence should be avoided, any level of verbal and emotional abuse is fine: "We can inhibit killing and physical violence. But we must be willing to be angry rather than decent". I consider this to be a horrifyingly destructive way of relating.

Trying to put that aspect aside I first find very much to like and appreciate in his philosophy. But I find it very hard to be appreciative when Blanton keeps emotionally slapping me to try to bludgeon me into agreeing with him. Time and time again Blanton implies or explicitly states that those that don't agree with him: are "better suited to be sheep", are "cowards", are "pathetic rationalizing miserable bastards", like and maintain their suffering because it allows them to feel sorry for themselves, are "full of shit", are "phony", are unwilling to "sacrifice the pleasure of crying yourself to sleep", are "unwilling to help themselves". That's just a sampling of the manipulative abuse Blanton bludgeons the reader with at different levels of subtlety throughout the whole book. No doubt he considers it "honesty". I consider it emotional abuse.

So again I take deep breaths and return to trying to find the gold in between the recurring instances of emotionally abusive manipulation and I find that the book is indeed full of nuggets of wisdom. But then I'm slapped in the face with the revelation that Blanton extorts his clients to act according to his rigid dogma by threatening to terminate therapy if they do not comply. He has described using this extortion tactic twice already and I've only read a third of the book(Later it is made clear that it is a long term pattern and he has "thrown many clients out of therapy" for the crime of "not being willing to help themselves"). In no case of pressuring the client to disclose very hurtful information to their intimates does he mention taking anything whatsoever into account in deciding whether or not this was a wise idea. I wonder how many relationships have been destroyed by clients complying, how many of his clients have been brutally beaten, if any have been killed. It is well known that the type of disclosures that he extorts his clients to make has had such consequences for countless people.

The first such example is when Blanton threatens to throw a woman out of therapy unless she tells her husband that she finds the very thought of sex with him repugnant and that she has had several affairs. Thankfully, to my mind, she refused and terminated the therapy instead. In Blanton's mind though it appears that every problem she had, mental, relational and physical was caused by her failure to adhere to his dogma. How's that for being stuck in rigid beliefs?

The second such example was Blanton forcing a woman to disclose every resentment and harsh judgment she had towards the man that had left her to the man in question. This woman complied. She found it a very rewarding experience. The man however killed himself a few months later. Blanton is, as usual, blissfully convinced that this happened exclusively because the man had not sufficiently adhered to Blanton's dogma. Alternative factors that might have contributed do not cross his mind. He never considers that the anguish of having someone throw everything they dislike and despise about you in your face might have been a factor. He never considers the possibility that this man might have actually tried to adhere to Blanton's dogma and that this might have had very unpleasant consequences which contributed to his suicide. Blanton sits inside his fortress of rigid, dogmatic, enlightened, righteous conviction, safe from having to consider such disturbing possibilities.

Of course this is just the most blatantly problematic aspect of his treatment of his clients. I'm reminded of one instance where he arrogantly declares that the client is lying about not being angry and that their "indirect expression" of their anger is "poisonous". Thus invalidating her reality, calling her a liar and implying that not adhering to his dogma makes her "poisonous" all at once. A three fold emotional punch to the stomach. All in the name of "honesty". No wonder that the clients that stay tend to comply with his wishes and agree with him when such treatment is the alternative.

To finish my reflections on the book, here's some Radical Honesty for Blanton: "Honesty does not require either arrogance or emotional abuse Blanton. You are trying to appear like an enlightened savior while, covertly, emotionally bludgeoning people into compliance with your dogma. This is anything but honesty. Your behavior makes me furious and disgusted. I wouldn't wish 'therapy' with you upon my worst enemy."

[Ruben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vol met goeie ideeën over moralisme, integriteit en persoonlijke problemen die ten grondslag hebben dat we (ik) een bepaald beeld van onszelf hoog proberen te houden dat helemaal niet bestaat – en dus niet eerlijk en open leven in relatie met anderen. Met vlagen confronterend, en goed voer om een aantal dagen uitgebreid in mn dagboek te schrijven en wat nodige gesprekken te voeren. In dat opzicht ben ik de schrijver al erg dankbaar. Jammer dat ongeveer 1/3e van dit boek als complete bullshit voelt. Maar je kan niet alles hebben.

Twee mooie quotes:

"Telling the truth, after hiding out for a long time, reopens old wounds that didn't heal properly. It often hurts a lot. It takes guts. It isn't easy. It is better than the alternative."

"I cannot decide to be loved or trusted, but I can decide to be personally honest or not. And when I choose to be really honest and say what I experience and what I feel, I am showing that I can be trusted. [...] Honesty does not always bring a response of love, but it is absolutely essential to it."

[cat]

Very American concept, I think, this notion that it makes sense to say everything you're thinking, basically. Not sure I go along with that. But I definitely appreciate the revelations in this book about the deep value of straight dealing, even when it's uncomfortable or ugly or seemingly unkind. It's an often neglected piece of the integrity puzzle, and I agree with the author that the truth is ultimately the kindest thing you can tell someone. I think the author also does a good job pointing out the high level of bullshit in disguise in our society: ubiquitous use of euphemism, "white lies," dishonesty pretending to be politeness, etc.

The writing itself is sometimes stream-of-consciousness style, so if you don't like that it might be tough to get through. But if you're interested in really thinking about what the truth is, in what ways it is valuable, and how the hiding dishonesty all around us is making things suck, read this.

[Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 5 star lesson to bring into my life’s practice written in a 3 star fashion, which is good because it can be digested by the masses. A lot to take away here to complement my approach to life. To get any value from the book, this must be practiced and lived, otherwise it’s just patting yourself on the back for understanding words. I put this book as a companion piece, or even a precursor to the best book on this topic - Conscious Loving by Hendricks. if you’re wondering should you read this, the truth is fuck yea.

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really enjoy the idea of us not having to deal with all the little white lies...but at some point it can be good to not spend all day telling everyone in the world every single thing that comes into your brain. The general idea I like, but this guy's execution of it, not as much as I was hoping. Too egotistical.

[Mike Lyons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding! He advocates for being honest in your dealings with all people as a way to keep yourself "sane" and to have true intimacy with others, instead of having fake relationships based on how we are "supposed" to act. Feel your feelings and be open with people. Very logical to me.

[Sean Goh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deadness is a low-intensity form of suffering. It is the result of staying on guard against imagined greater dangers. The greater dangers we imagine are based on memories of how we have been hurt before

Therapy is over when a person stops incessantly demanding that other people be different from what they are, forgives his or her parents and other begrudged former intimates, reclaims the power to make life work, and takes responsibility for doing so.

Stress is not a characteristic of life or times, but of people. Stress does not come from the environment, it comes from the mind of the individual under stress

Telling the truth frees us from entrapment in the mind.

Chickenshit is a normal greeting that doesn't mean what it says, as in "Hello, how are you?" "I'm fine, how are you?" Bullshit is normal conversation in which people are simply whiling away the time with meaningless abstractions and generalizations. Elephant shit is any discussion of Gestalt theory.

Bullshit is any abstraction from experience your mind makes and assigns value to. "You don't love me," or "Those people are angry," or "This is ugly (beautiful, good, bad, important, etc.)" all are interpretations of reality. Bullshit is a sales pitch for an interpretation of reality that comes with any interpretation of reality. All interpretations of reality are bullshit. Freedom is not being dominated by your own bullshit

What kills us is intense attachment to our interpretations and failure to distinguish these interpretations from sensate reality

The stress that kills or cripples most of the population comes from people being too hard on themselves when they don't live up to their own imaginings about how other people think they should behave. We don't know who we are, and we try to guess who we ought to be in order to do the right thing and be happy. We get lost in the process and beat the hell out of ourselves before we even know we're hurt. It does no good whatsoever simply to change what we imagine others expect of us. We need to recover the ability to pay attention to something other than the whirlpool of questions and doubts about what is required or expected for acceptance.

To grow beyond adolescence, people have to let go of, rather than tighten their grip on, the principles and standards with which they define themselves. This is usually very scary, like falling backward into the unknown.

This book is for that group of people that is growing larger every day—-those whose thirst for knowledge and willingness to share overrides their defense against embarrassment.

But telling the truth kills nothing but false roles, images, interpretations, and lies.

Intimacy is a power grown into after adolescence. The person capable of intimacy—that is, the person capable of telling the truth—still has roles to play, but is no longer trapped by them

I recommend that people tell the truth because all stress is caused by lying.

Telling the truth creates clearings between yourself and other people where there is a possibility of sharing in creating together.

But the appearance of a successful life is to a successful life as the menu is to a meal. The appearance of success is a performance in which you are cut off from contact with the audience except through your role

When you get what you said you wanted by manipulation, it is never enough. When you tell the truth and get what you want, getting what you want is like gravy—it feels like you are getting more than you ever hoped for, rather than just okay but not quite good enough.

Honesty, however, is a behavior and is something I can choose or not choose. I cannot decide to love or trust, but I can decide to be personally honest or not. And when I choose to be really honest and say what I experience and what I feel, I am showing that I can be trusted.

This honest relating is not always joyful or pleasant —it is sometimes sad, sometimes angry, etc.—but it is always solid and real and vitally alive.

When you admit your act you also admit your ignorance. You confess that you developed your act in order not to appear lost and in hopes of finding your way by faking it. Then you admit that you are lost and faking it most of the time these days as well, not just in the far-removed past. Before you acted smart; now you acknowledge ignorance like it is gold.

Level three involves vigilance against being taken over by the mind

Still, it's clear that the revelations at each level of telling the truth allow for greater sharing of who a person is and what they are about. When we reveal more, we have less to hide. When we have less to hide, we are less worried about being found out. When we are less worried about being found out, we can pay better attention to someone else. In this way, telling the truth makes intimacy and freedom possible.

we locate and anchor in present-tense experience. When this occurs, we gain the power to use our minds as tools rather than as machines for the defense of who we think we ought to have other people think we are.

Who you were before this second is already dead. Who you are is merely who you are now, memory included.

When you tell the truth, you are free simply by virtue of describing what is so. This descriptive language evokes a feeling of affirmation, a willingness to be, an appreciation for being alive in the world as it is.

An honest person is free by virtue of not being lost in her own mind. An honest person is a being within whom the ongoing flow of experience occurs, and who has a mind full of guiding abstractions, but for whom neither circumstance nor principles dictate action. Action that is clearly intentional occurs, but results from consciousness of circumstance, of principles, and of consciousness itself.

Being descriptive of one's own feelings in so precise a way as to evoke feeling in another is the heart of the creative power of poetry and of honest.

An honest person prefers language that reveals what is so, whether it's about someone else, the ■world, or himself.

What is normal is to be concerned foremost with having a good cover story. Normal people are concerned with figuring out the right thing to say that puts them in the best light. They want to live up to their own best guess about what the people they are talking to want to hear.

That paradoxical state—comfortable uncertainty—is a prerequisite for a creative, fulfilling life. Growing and sharing, rather than stagnation, occur in a context of uncertainty

Just as we fear the consequences of expressing anger or sexual feelings, we fear the consequences of giving and receiving love. God forbid we should get too happy! If we let ourselves bubble over, we fear that we just might bubble away. We are afraid that if we let ourselves love freely, we'll be opening ourselves up for tremendous hurt.

Neurosis is essentially a refusal to accept what is happening in the present. Neurosis involves denying the truth about any form of excitement, here and now. A neurotic is a person who incessantly demands that life be other than it is.

Getting fat allows people who are uncomfortable about their own sexual excitement to be emotionally intimate with members of the opposite sex while remaining physically isolated from them. In this way, they remain safe from their own sexuality.

When we communicate our resentment to the person we resent, the anger dissipates more completely in the moment of expression.

Everyone who experiments with telling the truth about anger at least finds out that people don't die if you tell them you resent them for something they said or did. In fact, more often than not, when people tell the truth about their feelings, relationships get better, even if the truth is about hatred.

At times, being honest about your anger is the only way you have of sharing who you are. Love is sharing what you have, even if you're having a fit. Telling the truth is loving your neighbor.

All these explanations sound forgiving and noble, which they would be if they were experiences rather than ideas. The problem is not that these ideas are inaccurate or wrong. The problem is that ideas about forgiveness are not forgiveness. They don't even help.

Forgiving someone with whom you are angry—actually experiencing forgiving him—only happens after you tell him what he did or said that you resent. Only when you allow yourself to experience and express anger openly will it disappear. Thinking and deciding what to do about the person only serves to suppress the anger.

We human beings are all selfish and unfair and it's worse than useless to pretend we aren't.

Our decision not to express our resentment is based on a deeply held belief that our anger has to be justified, righteous, and legitimate. It doesn't. To be free of anger, we have to give up this belief and allow our resentments and other people's resentments to be expressed even if they are completely irrational.

Repressed anger blocks the flow of love and creativity that we once experienced around them, and generates a flurry of thoughts for us to get caught up in. The more we are caught up in our thoughts, the less present we are to the other person and to.

The rightness or wrongness of what she said or did is irrelevant.

We are all more petty and selfish than we are willing to admit. When we are willing to admit our petty anger, we get over it faster and we have less of it in the future.

The process of forgiveness involves the following six minimal requirements, none of which may be skipped. 1. You have to tell the truth about what specific behav ior you resent, to the person, face-to-face; 2. You have to be verbally and vocally unrestrained with regard to volume and propriety; 3. You have to pay attention to the feelings and sensations in your body and to the other person as you speak; 4. You have to express any appreciations for the person that come up in the process, with the same attention to your feelings and to the other person as when you are expressing resentments; 5. You have to stay with any feelings that emerge in the process, like tears or laughter, regardless of any evaluations you may have about how it makes you look; 6. You have to stay with the discussion until you no longer feel resentful of the other person.

Admit your cowardice—your unwillingness to tell the truth if anything that you judge to be significant is at stake. You lie like hell when you are scared, and you are scared whenever you are angry.

Love is when you let someone be the way she is. When you let up on your judgements of someone, there is a free space in which forgiveness and love occur.

You resent people, not facts or vague "its."

Focus as much as you can on what did happen instead of what didn't happen. When you resent someone for what he didn't do—that is, violating your expectations—look back to what he said or did to create that expectation. Express your resentment to him for what he said or did. Lousy as it may seem, you are the only one who is responsible for all of your expectations, disappointment, and anger.

This may sound ridiculous and unfair. Clearly your spouse is not at fault and is being blamed. But note this: the unfair blaming is being done out loud. It is in the public domain where it can get cleared up, not in your secretive mind. People outside of you can be depended on to fight back and take care of themselves. You can depend on it. You don't need to protect your spouse from your irrationality. You will get set straight in a minute.

What you put out there relieves you. What you withhold will kill you.

People are scared of feeling anger, but they are terrified of experiencing love. It's no wonder that when an authentic exchange occurs, the next time the two people meet, they will talk about anything but their real feelings.

When "I-You" is spoken with an active, transitive, present tense verb (resent, appreciate) between the I and the You, denoting a present feeling, the moment's truth is spoken in its entirety. Then the truth changes. When the truth changes from your speaking, you know you've spoken the truth.

Anger is never permanently handled. If it isn't stockpiled, you have handled it the best it can be.

Anything less than full disclosure is withholding of the kind that creates alienation. There is no such thing as "none of your business" in an intimate relationship

This is simply a matter of an adult human being taking good care of himself or herself. I frequently prescribe the exercise, included in the previous list, of masturbating to orgasm in front of each other with no assistance from each other. This exercise is useful in several ways. Not only do people get a chance to demonstrate being pleased sexually and how they do it for themselves, they also demonstrate, for the benefit of their partner, their capability to please themselves without help. That relieves a sense of obligation for taking care of each other sexually and opens up an area of permission to play. As in other areas of life, when people don't feel like they have to perform, they are free to perform.

It is not the way they look or how good they talk that makes us love who we love. Their ability to be with us is more powerful.

he still "loved" her, of course, since she had rejected him. Nostalgia, a mixture of love and hate for a memory, is easier for cowards than reality.

Beings do a better job of loving each other than minds.

If intimacy doesn't extend to friends and extended family, the network of support is too thin. If you have even one good friend to both people, to whom both can talk and who supports both in telling the truth, you have a great resource.

If you want to please me, if you want to know what would make me happy, here is what I would really like for you to do: _______If you don't do that; it's O.K., I'm a big girl (boy), and I will take care of it myself. You are not obligated to make or keep me happy or to do what I want, I am responsible for my own happiness. If I get mad at you, I will handle it, and I'll get over it. If I get disappointed, I'll be responsible for my own disappointment.
Here is what I want, but you don't have to provide it for me. You are invited and requested, but not obligated, to take care of me.

Alcoholism cuts across all classes, because the self-torture of moralism cuts across all classes. One of the reasons the temporary relief of being drunk gets to be so precious is that getting drunk knocks one's conscience in the head. For a while the goddamned moralist within shuts up. That is wonderful for a little while, but when you sober up the moralist within works overtime.

Well-being has to be continually relearned and reexperienced through a redirection of attention away from the preconceptions of the mind and toward the experiences of excitement in the body. Once well-being as a continual process of noticing and rediscovery has been learned, the way a person spends time and what he or she does in his or her life changes noticeably.

The source of personal power is the ability to interrupt your own mind. And since having things to hide keeps you in your racing mind and keeps it racing, you have to reveal what you have hidden.

Learning to take care of ourselves creatively rather than resentfully is a big step in growing up. When we take such good care of ourselves that we have all we need, the overflow to generosity with others is possible. Prior to that, nurturing relationships between or among adults are not possible. Prior to that, all gifts are bribes—everything has a string attached.

The primary, fundamental, essential, baseline, critical, lowest-level minimum requirement for happiness, without which there is no other hope, is a willingness to take care of oneself. The trouble is, people are generally willing to take care of almost anyone or anything else BUT themselves

Growing up is not just a continual accumulation of new learning: you have to ditch some of what you learned before. One particularly effective way to do this is to tell the truth about all your attempts to manipulate others to get what you want. Until you can laugh about this, you aren't free from being manipulated by your own manipulations. It is only through telling the truth about all these hidden agendas for getting what you want that the real work of growing begins.

But even radical interventions by the best of therapists are powerless unless there is a commitment by a whole and undivided being to change. All of the information in the world is of no value, and all research is irrelevant, until placed in the context of the power of intention.

The abysmal truth is that everything comes to nothing. No change matters. Whatever you don't have is only important to you because you don't have it. Something you want is very important to you until you get it, and then it's nothing after a while. This movement from anticipation to accomplishment to disillusionment is inevitable

Students have trouble writing, after all, because they have trouble reading; they have trouble reading because they don't hear; and they don't hear because they don't take time to listen.

Learning how to lie and to withhold is a necessary developmental stage, crucial to getting on in life and getting around in the world. We learn to condense experience, and we then all, individually, experience the problem of reductionism. Lying is a result of reductionism—the condensation of memory and the categorization of experience we naturally learn while growing up. When we start thinking with categories, we exclude a lot of experience; yet, we need the efficiency of thinking with categories.

We hunger for simple contact with people and everyday experience. After being sufficiently lost in the nest of categories, we never meet anyone new. We only meet representatives of people we used to know.

"How do you make love stay?" You don't. You let it come and go. Then there is a new opening for new love. Otherwise the space for love no longer exists, being occupied with ashes and bullshit.

This experience of freedom is no big accomplishment at all to non-minded beings. Dogs run free. They don't have consciousness of freedom because they have nothing to measure it by, no unfreedom to compare it with, no ideals or images of perfect dogdom to hamper them.

We are against politeness as a substitute for the truth because that politeness kills. Politeness and diplomacy are responsible for more suffering and death than all the crimes of passion in history. Fuck politeness. Fuck diplomacy. Tell the truth.

Resistance to limiting the future by commitment —to one project to the exclusion of others, or to one person to the exclusion of others—is the sickness of our time

We are all moralists. The more moralistic we are, the more hysterical we are. The more hysterical we are, the further away from experience we wish to be.

Being right is not the most important thing in life. If it was, you might as well kill yourself. Being willing is what counts. If we are willing, we are fools, as any good mind will tell you. Exactly. Fools rush in and learn all kinds of things angels will never know.

When I am describing to another person how things are, I am always describing how things are for me at the moment, or I am not telling the truth.

We have all been waiting for a long time to grow beyond both these positive and negative self-images, and afraid to do so. Most of us never make it beyond adolescent hope and hype and disappointment. Wishing is a way to remove oneself from what is going on now. Hope springs eternal. Fuck hope. Hope is how most of us avoid growing.