Are you full of it? Or were you just an invalidated kid?
Let’s be honest: how many times have you said, "That’s lovely," when you actually thought it was rubbish? Or, "You look great," when you knew they looked completely frumpy?
We call it being "nice," but let’s call it what it really is: an insurance policy.
When you grow up in a home where you are constantly invalidated, authenticity feels like a threat. You didn’t choose to be "full of it" – you chose to survive. You learned a brutal lesson early on: being real is dangerous, but being pleasant is safe.
Pleasantness became the "tax" you paid just to stay connected.
The Survival Strategy
That discomfort with the truth is a sophisticated survival mechanism. It is your past dictating your present. If you grew up in a house where your authentic self was ignored or rejected, you learned early on that being "real" is dangerous, but being "pleasant" is safe.
Choosing comfort – the unauthentic truth – is a pure act of self-protection. You’ve swapped your honesty for the validation and acceptance – needs that were not met when you were young. You developed a pattern where "nice words" aren't a reflection of the truth; they are a transaction.
In a neglectful or invalidating home, children learn to "appease" adults to prevent conflict or abandonment. Now, as an adult, honesty feels like an invitation for an internal fight – and to your nervous system, conflict feels like drinking bleach would be more fun. Subconsciously, this is a massive trigger.
By choosing comfort over honesty, you are fundamentally trying to maintain control. When things feel out of control, that’s where the pain creeps in. By only saying what you think people want to hear, you are trying to manage their perception of you to ensure your own safety.
The Real Cost of "Nice"
While those "nice words" buy you five minutes of peace, the long-term price is steeper than you realise:
Erosion of Self-Trust: Every time you silence your truth to keep the peace, you tell yourself your own voice isn't reliable. You stop trusting your instincts, and your self-worth withers.
Resentment: You end up resenting others for not knowing the real you. But you own that resentment, because you’re the one hiding.
Slow Burnout: Constant emotional surveillance – scanning moods and managing reactions – is bloody exhausting. It’s an unsustainable drain because you’re never allowed to simply be.
Lost Time: Saying "yes" when you mean "no" is a quiet sacrifice of your own life for the sake of someone else’s convenience.
The Emotional Drag: Carrying the burden of unsaid truths manifests as a lingering sadness. It’s the heavy, low-grade weight of living a lie.
The Energy Hangover: Being inauthentic lowers your vibration and depletes the body. You wake up with a low sense of self because you’ve traded your energy for "niceness."
Building the Skill of Truth
Moving from a lifetime of comfort-seeking to truth-telling is destabilising – it’s like learning a new language. Because your brain views honesty as a threat, the goal isn't to start with massive, life-altering truths. It’s about building emotional tolerance, healing the child, and turning that old discomfort into a new kind of comfort: the comfort of being yourself.
This is a skill you can reach. The Change Experience book series is your answer to this gap in your life. Or, come and work with me in person, and we can turn this around together.
A Note on Safety
Authenticity requires a safe audience. As you start being more honest, you’ll quickly learn who in your life genuinely loves you, and who only loved the version of you that was convenient for them.
If you want to understand your own "Honesty Architecture" – the specific reasons why you prioritise the absence of friction over the presence of self – read on below. I’ll be outlining eight specific experiences from the past, the behaviours that went with them, and how they present in your adult life.
When you can see the patterns, you can begin to break ground on a more authentic life.
The Architecture of Silence
8 Patterns That Keep You Stuck in Comfort Over Honesty
If you’ve spent your life choosing "nice" over "real," it isn’t because you’re weak – it’s because you were built that way. This is your Honesty Architecture. To change the building, we have to look at the foundations.
Here are the eight most common childhood blueprints that create a pattern of choosing comfort over honesty in adulthood.
1. The "False Self" Shield
The Backstory: If your caregivers couldn't acknowledge your real feelings, you eventually stopped showing them. It was safer to hide than to be ignored.
The Coping Mechanism: You built a "compliant" persona – the "Nice Girl" who is perfectly calibrated to be whatever everyone else needs.
Your Adult Way: This mask has become your default setting. You aren’t lying to be manipulative; you’re using "pleasantness" as a shield to protect your true, unvalidated self from the sting of further rejection.
2. The Honesty-Shame Link
The Backstory: When being yourself was met with cold silence, a joke at your expense, or a blatant put-down, your brain started to link "truth" with "shame."
The Coping Mechanism: Telling the truth feels like an exposed "Walk of Shame," while telling a nice lie feels like a warm blanket of safety.
Your Adult Way: At a nervous system level, you choose the unauthentic truth because your body expects to be punished or deemed unworthy the moment you speak your mind.
3. Strategic Invisibility
The Backstory: In an invalidating home, being noticed usually meant you were "the problem." You learned the art of moving through life without causing a ripple.
The Coping Mechanism: You choose comfort because comfort maintains the stillness. Honesty causes waves, and in your experience, waves lead to wreckage.
Your Adult Way: You’ve been invisible for so long that you’ve actually lost the signal to your own inner voice. You aren't just hiding your truth from others; you’ve genuinely forgotten what it actually sounds like.
4. The Emotional Flatline
The Backstory: You grew up in an emotionally "sterile" environment. When you had big needs or hit a conflict, your parents went flat. There was no resonance, no support, and zero validation.
The Coping Mechanism: You offer "nice" words to keep others "plugged in." You’ve become the "emotional battery" for your relationships, doing all the work to keep a spark alive because you’re terrified of the silence.
Your Adult Way: You use pleasantries to jump-start other people’s emotions. To your nervous system, their silence or lack of response feels like you’ve been completely erased, so you lie to keep the connection "live."
5. The "Fawn" Response
The Backstory: Your home was volatile and inconsistent. One minute you were liked, the next you were belittled. To survive, you learned to "fawn" – appeasing the adults to prevent the next episode.
The Coping Mechanism: You became a master at reading the room and smoothing things over before they could explode. You traded your authenticity for a temporary truce.
Your Adult Way: You say whatever keeps the peace because, to you, honesty feels like an invitation for chaos. You settle for unauthentic "niceness" because you believe conflict will only end in pain and isolation.
6. Conditional Worth
The Backstory: If you were only celebrated when you were helpful, quiet, or "good," you learned that love isn't a right – it’s a transaction.
The Coping Mechanism: You developed the belief that people only love the version of you that makes them feel good.
Your Adult Way: You offer "nice words" as a way of paying the "tax" required to stay in the relationship. You keep your true thoughts to yourself because you’ve convinced yourself they are "too much" for anyone to handle.
7. Repetitive Abandonment
The Backstory: Whether it was a parent who travelled constantly or one caught up in their own drama, you were often left to fend for yourself. This chronic abandonment left you feeling unworthy of anyone's full attention.
The Coping Mechanism: You became hyper-sensitive to being discarded. Feedback or a small disagreement doesn’t feel like a conversation; it feels like the end of the world.
Your Adult Way: You choose the "comfortable" lie as a desperate attempt to keep the other person from walking out the door. You equate honesty with being left behind.
8. The Keeping Up Appearances-Concept
The Backstory: You were told exactly how to act, and any deviation was met with rejection. Because you weren't allowed to be authentic, you never developed a solid sense of who "you" actually are.
The Coping Mechanism: You’ve become a "social chameleon," scanning everyone around you to see what they want to hear so you can mirror it back to them.
Your Adult Way: You aren't just lying to people; you are genuinely disconnected from your own needs. Your internal compass has been silenced by decades of catering to the expectations of others.
What Now?
Seeing the patterns is the first step toward making any change in your life. You’ve spent your life building these paper walls to stay safe, but now they’re just keeping you stuck.
If you’re ready to dismantle the "Nice Girl" mask and build a life based on truth, I’m ready to help.
