Kay Prime’s Reviews > Radical Honesty: How To Transform Your Life By Telling The Truth > Status Update

Another idea that Blanton and I share is that many of us were taught- directly or indirectly- that we must protect our loved ones from our anger by withholding/suppressing it. Somehow this is virtuous so we martyr ourselves. When our efforts aren't appreciated we resent our loved ones. But no one appreciates having info withheld from them or being lied to.

I agree with Blanton that language and how we is it is important, especially in interpersonal relationships but his ideas on what that means and mine differ greatly! It's possible to share your negative feelings compassionately. Being an asshole is not always necessary, especially if you want a sympathetic result. (Non-violent communication.)

This book could be considerably shorter if Blanton didn't enjoy proselytizing about the homeopathic benefits of telling the truth and how exactly said truth should be told. He repeats the same ideas over and over using different anecdotes, excerpts from various pieces of literature, and Eastern spirituality. It's all so very tedious. But I must finish it. This book will not defeat me.

The issue I am having with Blanton is I gotta slog through his eastern-philosophy-guru-ness rambling to find the gems. Like this one that I enthusiastically agree with!: "If I calculate and put on phony behavior in order to please you, you may love my behavior, but you cannot love me, because I have hidden my real existence behind this artificial behavior."

Blanton differentiates three phases of telling the truth: revealing the facts; honestly expressing current feelings and thoughts, which is "[...] the practice of admitting how you feel when you feel it, speaking your secret judgements of others out loud and constant revealing your own petty and condescending ways"; exposing the fiction you have devised to represent yourself and your history.

Blanton says all stress is caused by lying (and all lying is caused by moralism). "We are all the walking wounded. [...] Being overweight, uptight, a heavy smoker, a heavy drinker, a non-excerciser [...] are the direct result of a more central ailment of the mind. [...] Escape from the trap of lies in learning [...] to tell the truth." He makes claims that clients have experienced physical therapeutic effects. *hrm*

Blanton really dislikes values not based in individual, ongoing experience: The gap created by lack of grounding in our experience leaves us dependent on ideas, principles, rules, values, and imagination as our primary modes of orientation. Fritz Perls said in 1946, "Principles are substitutes for an independent outlook. [...] He hangs on to them because of the insufficiency of his own independent judgement." Agreed!

Not everything Blanton says sounds like malarkey: "People who are intensely attached to moral principles notice only the experiences that justify the rightness of the principles and simply don't notice anything else. [Few] people learn to treat principles [...] as less important "rules of thumb" to be validated or invalidated by new experience." But these are things I already know.

This book is not what I was expecting. I wanted a far more objective explanation about how being honest benefits us mentally and emotionally, considering Blanton is a trained psychiatrist. Instead, this stinks too much of Far East spiritualism and other guru-type ideologies. We need to get back to the being we were in the womb because that is our true selves? *sigh* This is going to be tedious.