5. Is Honesty Always Good?
Short Answer
No, I do not believe honesty is always good.
Honesty can greatly contribute to trust, intimacy, understanding, and deeper connection.
And it can also create hurt, defensiveness, conflict, and distance.
For me, the key lies in how I express my honesty. When honesty comes in the form of blame, judgments, demands, or attacks, it often creates resistance and disconnection. When honesty comes from vulnerability and reveals what is genuinely alive within me – my fears, longings, needs, hopes, and feelings – it is much more likely to create understanding, trust, and cooperation.
In this sense, the problem is not honesty itself. The challenge is learning how to express honesty in a way that allows both authenticity and connection to exist together.
More Personal Answer:
The Dilemma That First Brought Me to Nonviolent Communication
One of the deepest dilemmas I know in relationships is this:
“Should I express my honesty… or not?”
– If I express myself honestly, I may risk: hurting someone, conflict, disconnection, rejection, escalation, losing harmony, or not being accepted.
– But if I do not express what is alive in me, I may also pay a painful price: accumulated frustration, emotional distance, self-disconnection, resentment, loneliness, or the sense that I am slowly disappearing inside the relationship.
Is it possible to be fully honest and still remain connected?
For many years, I experienced this like an impossible mission: Either I lose connection, or I lose myself.
NVC showed me a very concrete way to navigate this dilemma — a way that gave me, and still gives me, hope that my deepest wish is possible.
The Problem Is Not Honesty
Over the years, I began to realize that honesty itself is not necessarily what hurts connection. What often hurts connection is how honesty is expressed.
When I am triggered, my mind naturally produces judgments. For example: “You are selfish.” “You are childish.” “You never listen.” “You always take all the attention.”
And for many years, I confused this kind of expression with authenticity.
I thought: “I’m just being honest.”
But gradually, I began experiencing something very different. I started seeing judgments not as truth, but as tragic expressions of something vulnerable happening inside me.
Judgment has something funny in it. When I look carefully at a sentence such as: “I want to be really honest with you: you are selfish,” I notice something strange: “I want to be really honest with you… you are…” Strange. The way I learned to express my authenticity was by telling you who you are. I did not learn to describe what is happening inside me.
Instead, I learned to diagnose what is wrong with others as a way of expressing my authenticity.
When I try to describe the authenticity alive in me behind saying, “You are selfish” to my partner when they do not clean up after themselves, I may discover, for example, that I am afraid of falling into the role of doing all the practical things around the house.
And deeper still, I may discover that I am afraid of becoming like my mother, who took care of everyone while no one took care of her or appreciated her.
Actually, I long to be appreciated. That’s all.
Vulnerable Honesty
Today, I often use the term: vulnerable honesty.
For me, vulnerable honesty is very different from: attacking, blaming, putting pressure, dumping emotions, or unloading judgments onto others.
Vulnerable honesty is the willingness to reveal my actual inner experience.
For example, instead of saying, “You take all the attention,” when I look more deeply into myself and what is happening inside me, I might discover:
“I notice that it is difficult for me to bring myself into this group. I feel afraid to express myself. Would you be willing to hear me now? I have an idea that I think might contribute.”
When honesty comes from this place, I notice that the entire energy of the dialogue changes.
The other person no longer experiences me primarily as an attack they need to defend against.
Instead, I am inviting them into my inner world, into dialogue, into the possibility of contributing to one another, and into creating something together.
Loving Triggers and Judgments
An important transformation NVC brought into my life is that I slowly stopped seeing triggers and judgments as something “bad” — neither my own nor those of others.
For many years, I tried not to be triggered. I tried: calming myself down, suppressing irritation, “being patient,” or convincing myself that I shouldn’t react.
But this often killed my spontaneity and aliveness. And it killed important messages of my authenticity.
Today, when I notice I am triggered, I think: “Opportunity!” Not because being triggered is pleasant, but because triggers are moments when something dear to me is coming to the surface.
A trigger may reveal: a value I have, a longing, a wound, a fear, a dream, or a deep need.
In this sense, triggers can become doorways to self-understanding. And the triggers of others can become opportunities to get to know them more deeply, and to build deeper connection and trust.
Peeling the Onion
One metaphor I often use is: peeling the onion.
When I am triggered (or when others are triggered), the first layer is often judgments. For example: “You don’t care.”. “They are controlling.”. “She is insensitive.”
Rather than trying to immediately become “spiritual” or “nice,” I often like to first welcome these layers honestly. I sometimes call this: ‘celebrating my jackals’ (Meaning: celebrating my judgments).
Not because I believe the judgments are objectively true, but because these judgments are alive in me and carry a message
Meaning: a judgment is an analysis of what the other person is doing wrong, about which I actually have very little objective knowledge (“I am not God”). What I do know is the unpleasant impact it has on me, and the longing underneath it.
And when I allow myself to honestly notice these thoughts without shame, I can slowly begin moving deeper. Underneath the judgments, I may discover deep longings that are at the core of my being – what we call in NVC “needs” – such as: connection, understanding, cooperation, trust, care, belonging, support, freedom, honesty, mutuality, etc.
When I reach this layer, the frustration or anger often begins to transform into more vulnerable emotions, such as sadness, tears, or tenderness. Not because I forced the anger away, but because I connected with the deeper vulnerability and the longing beneath it.
And at the same time, I also reconnect with my power to stand for my needs.
Honesty and ‘Energy’ Behind the Words
One thing I increasingly notice is that honesty is not only about the words themselves, but even more about the energy behind the words, which reveals the consciousness I am actually coming from.
For me, “energy” includes tone of voice, facial expressions, nervous system state, micro-movements, intention, and mostly: the deeper consciousness behind the words.
People are often more sensitive to the tone of voice with which we speak than to the words themselves. Our tone of voice reveals our authenticity.
Two people can say the exact same sentence, yet the energy behind the words can create completely different effects.
For example, if I say, ‘Would you be willing to be on time?’ while inside I am actually thinking, ‘You are always late, it is selfish of you, and you need to change,’ the other person will often sense it and immediately feel pressure or blame. They may then react with resistance as a way of protecting themselves.
But when my honesty comes from a genuine wish, and the request is truly alive in me as a request (meaning that I am genuinely open to the other person saying “no”), it may sound more like:
“It would help me relax and make good use of our limited time if you could hold the intention of being on time. Would that be possible for you?”
And then I am authentically open to hearing whether something might prevent the person from being on time. For example: “I am deeply struggling with bringing my child to school in the morning because he is being bullied and is scared to go to school each day.”
When I speak from this place, I often notice that connection and cooperation become much more possible.
Not always. Not magically. But much more likely.
Can Honesty Hurt Connection?
Yes — surely honesty can stimulate pain, and, it can also hurt the person and the connection.
My focus goes to 2 aspects:.
1. Vulnerable Honesty:
Not: suppressing myself, nor attacking others, but learning to speak from vulnerability rather than blame.
And honestly, I still find this deeply challenging.
Sometimes I do react defensively. Sometimes I do judge. Sometimes I do lose connection with myself.
But over the years, I increasingly experience that vulnerable honesty creates a very different kind of connection.
I am learning to stay connected to myself while also caring for connection. For me, this is one of the deepest arts of dialogue.
2. Clearing Up the Mess Between Us (Healing Dialogue)
Yes, honesty can sometimes stimulate hurt. And surely, if you are close to people, hurt and pain will happen.
And yet: My focus today is not so much on how to avoid pain, but rather on how to meet pain with utmost care and skill. Every hurt is an opportunity for healing, for deepening understanding, and for building greater trust.
Honesty as my core safety:
For me, honesty is deeply connected to safety.
One of the scariest things for me is when people are not honest with me. Because then my imagination begins to fill the gaps:
– Maybe they are annoyed with me but not saying it
– Maybe I speak too much
– Maybe my breath smells and no one tells me
– Maybe she is lying to me
When I do not know reality, my mind can go wild.
Also, when honesty is missing, there is often greater pain or danger underneath. For example:
– In a romantic relationship, a lack of honesty can hide infidelity or other serious issues that, when eventually discovered, may create deeper hurt and a significant rupture of trust.
– If your teenage child lies to you, you may become more frightened because you do not know what is really happening in their life or how best to support and protect them.
Honesty can be painful, but for me it is far less painful than the suffering created by imagination and uncertainty.
What I long for is not superficial harmony. Not walking on eggshells.
But a connection in which I can slowly become more fully myself — and invite the other person to do the same.