For those of us who spent years living a lie during our active addiction, and even into our early recovery, learning to be rigorously honest is downright scary. Dishonesty became woven into the fabric of our lives. We went to great lengths to avoid the truth. That way we could avoid the pain that comes with telling the truth. It takes great courage to finally open up and be willing to be honest. And while it may be painful at first, it gets easier with practice.
The fact is we can’t obtain meaningful emotional recovery if we are still living a lie. The first person we have to start being truthful with is ourselves. We know deep inside when we are not telling the truth. The more we lie, the less we like ourselves. Lying takes us back to that secretive, shameful place we knew in our active addiction. Lying takes enormous energy and when we do so, our sense of self-worth plummets and we feel the urge to escape from ourselves… and so we are tempted use again. In fact, dishonesty is a sign of pending relapse. It is often quoted in recovery circles “behind every relapse there is a lie or a secret.”
Three primary lessons we learn growing up in a family with addiction are: don’t tell the truth, don’t rock the boat or keep the peace at all costs, and don’t talk about feelings. No wonder telling lies and living a lie became second nature to so many of us. These messages get locked into the mainframe and the processes run automatically – our behavioral radar is established: we need to be liked and want to please others and so we never really get to know who we are… all this and many of us weren’t even 10 years of age!
Hopefully life will take us to that place of surrender where we begin to realize the full freedom of the words, “and the truth will set you free.” When we are rigorously honest we don’t give our addiction room to hide. Hard honesty not only means telling the truth, it requires consistency in our thoughts, words, and actions.
Truth has an amazing quality of lightness, while lies and secrets feel heavy. If you shine the light of truth on any difficult situation, the feelings of anxiety fade away. Darkness cannot prevail when you shine a light on it. Intentional deception or dishonesty about ourselves and our world is not an option when we work at being rigorously honest.
As addicts, we not only tell lies, we often live a lie – we present ourselves to others, especially those we love and care deeply about, as though we are living one way when we are not. Telling a lie can be harmful to everyone; however, living a lie eats you up and eventually destroys our spirit.
Father Martin, a recovered alcoholic and a Catholic Priest, said “telling a lie won’t kill you, although it might get you into trouble. However, living a lie will kill you spiritually, emotionally, and possibly physically.” Living a lie happens when we consistently present ourselves to those who love and care about to be living a certain way, when in fact we are not.
The first step to living honestly is to accept where we have been hiding out, not telling the truth, and living a lie. When doing this, keep in mind there is no blame and there is no shame. It takes courage to be honest in every aspect of our life. This does not mean saying things to people that may be honest, but not helpful. Honesty also means no cheating or stealing. If you cheat on your partner, fudge your income taxes, or steal office supplies from your employer you are being dishonest. We may think we are being honest when it comes to our addiction, but if we start telling ‘white’ lies in other areas of our life, our recovery foundation will start to crack… and over time cracks grow in size, weaken the structure, and eventually cause it to collapse.
To learn how to become honest in recovery, we can begin by doing the work of a 12-step program. Working on steps four and five (Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.) really address the issue of honesty. Following through on these steps is what the work of recovery is all about. Of course people have a choice to do this work or not do it. If you don’t, you don’t get the payoff – the opportunity to become happy, joyous, and free.
Being rigorously honest isn’t something that happens overnight. Learning to be more honest is an incremental process – you can only be as honest as you believe yourself capable of being. As you work with it and become more truthful with others, you become more honest with yourself and realize there is more you can do to really be rigorously honest ‘all the time, about everything, to everyone’.
