What Is The Difference Between Being Honest And Brutally Honest?

Is it good to always tell the truth and be so brutally honest? Is it really appreciated when a person is always honest? When do we talk about being honest and when do we talk about being ruthlessly honest? To be brutally honest means to tell the truth in an unadorned way, without knowing any limits or considering what the other wants or how they are feeling.

Best of all, of course, to use the truth to help and be honest to create something, but never to hurt or destroy others. We must not forget that the truth is a very powerful weapon that should never be lacking in empathy and social intelligence. Because basically we can assume that unthoughtful honesty can cause unnecessary damage.

If we are brutally honest, we may well not tell lies and want to convey something honestly. But if we do this without regard to the other or only to relieve ourselves, we are neither behaving properly nor speaking the truth appropriately. We only announce objective realities that hurt our fellow human beings in sensitive moments.

So should we lie so as not to hurt others? The answer is not easy to formulate. The best we can do is communicate what we want to say, but be sensitive about finding the right moment and place for it. In addition, we should find the best possible way to communicate.

What happens in our brain when we lie?

A   study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience showed that the more untruths we tell, the less and less active the amygdala, the area of ​​the brain that is activated when we lie. This means that if we keep telling the untruth over and over again, she will be desensitized. From this we can conclude that our brains relax and get used to not telling the truth when we tell a lie.

But we should not lie, but learn to convey a truth appropriately. Our social bonds will not survive if we do not filter certain things out of our communication, regardless of whether the message we are communicating is true.

As we said earlier, being brutally honest is not particularly appropriate behavior; it also does not increase our self-esteem and does not help us to put interpersonal relationships on a more solid footing. What exactly helps us here is to be sensitive. Certain truths have to be pronounced as carefully as a feather is tender – others, on the other hand, should be avoided until the right moment has come. And yet others should never be expressed because they are simply irrelevant and only cause harm. There are also truths that we should communicate bit by bit so that the other person has time to process them little by little.

Anyone who can express their feelings without hurting others is a true hero. These are people who take the time to weigh their words, and who, with their actions and expression, contribute to improving their surroundings and making those around them feel better.

Is it good to always be brutally honest, or is there too much honesty?

Mexican psychologist Claudia Castro Campos conducted a study of lies and concluded that the average person would tell at least one or two lies throughout the day, regardless of whether it was a large or small untruth. We would use lies to change reality in our favor.

We all know the saying that drunks and children always tell the truth. This happens because our brain is less censored when we are drunk or in childhood and we are less inhibited to say what is on our mind. It doesn’t work in the same way with children as it does with adults, because they only learn later to lie to their advantage. Our society prepares us to hide or gloss over the truth with the intention of controlling the consequences.

“What we should do is not be brutally honest, but never say the opposite of what we think.”

Carmen Terrasa

Those with well-developed social skills can be honest without harming anyone. The point is not to lie, but to convey information in an appropriate way. It’s also not about being the most honest, but about communicating the truth in the best possible way. We should be true to ourselves without forgetting the harm we can do to others – with a ruthless truth and with a lie. Truth imparted in an intelligent and well-intentioned way will always come in handy.