By being honest with ourselves about what we feel when we are hurt, we learn to accept our feelings and to recover from emotional distress.

Emotional dishonesty is a self betrayal which keeps us from healing emotional wounds and experiencing the inner peace of self-acceptance. Self-acceptance comes from honoring and accepting what we feel rather than judging feelings, blaming others or shaming ourselves. Self-accepting persons have no need to harm themselves or others. Self-accepting persons are more capable of accepting others.

Emotional honesty is listening to the meaning of each hurt feeling and attending to the resulting distress that occurs. By naming and thus disarming emotional wounds, they do not accumulate and become infected with shame, fear, hate and anger. Emotional honesty is an individual process by which we learn how to prevent the violent and self-destructive responses to emotional pain that threaten to tear apart ourselves and our society.

Emotional honesty is taking responsibility for what we feel. What tends to prevent awareness and acceptance of our true feelings is a prevalent cultural misbelief that emotional pain is shameful and “someone must be to blame if I’m in pain!” Being vulnerable to painful wounding experiences is seen as a weakness rather than a sign of being human.

Emotional honesty does not mean escaping from being emotionally wounded. Rather it is taking responsibility for what we feel, including our pain. One reason our society seems so incapable of finding preventive strategies that can stem the growth of child and adult violence and depression is our tendency to place blame, rather than look inside ourselves for the trigger that detonates destructive acts upon ourselves or others .