Unlearning how to stay safe by not speaking the Truth

By Lian Brook-Tyler

Like many autistic people, I’ve often been told I’m “too honest”.

Lies feel like barbed wire on my skin, even so-called white ones. Half-truths make me feel like I can’t breathe.

I remember once when I’d been asked to be the presenter of a proposed internal TV show for the corporate I was working for then.

During a conversation about it with someone senior with the power to veto it or rubber stamp it, she asked about my previous media experience.

I didn’t have any, so I said so, but also mentioned that I had an A-Level in Film Studies, which seemed relevant given what it had taught me about visual storytelling, archetypes and iconography (which if you know anything about me, you’ll know I had actually learned not at A-level but DNA level.)

My reply to her was weak and embarrassing, as the other people present told me afterwards, moving between exasperation and hilarity.

Even now, I don’t fully understand why that’s the case.

I wasn’t prepared to massage the truth when the truth is more than enough, and when it isn’t, it especially is.

She gave us her blessing.

But over the years, with enough experiences like this – some big, some small – I learned to hold my tongue and not say the thing that wanted to be said but no-one seemed to want to say.

And then when my father died and I was plunged into a depth of eternal truth I’d never known existed, I saw that truth is a rare, precious and necessary gem in this modern world.

It was time for me to unlearn how to stay safe by not speaking it.

But I don’t think that’s just me.

I believe that collectively we’re growing ready to move past our knee jerk closure to truth, allowing ourselves to be in relationship to it, even and especially when it’s inconvenient, scary and uncomfortable.

We can feel truth… in chills, truth bumps and tears, and in our guts, hearts and souls.

And if we are ready to feel the truth, honour it, heed it and speak it, anything is possible.

What’s yours?

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