What’s So Scary About Truth, Love & Understanding?
What really goes on in those kooky Radical Honesty workshops?
A few months ago I was taking part in intensive two day training program in couples counselling, when the instructor conducting the training started to describe ‘a form of group therapy’ he clearly considered to be both bizarre and entirely extinct. As he added more and more details to his description and the people around me in the class began to laugh, I began to feel less and less comfortable in my seat.
The workshop he was describing — one where participants stand naked and talk about their bodies in front of the group — was one I had attended myself four years before in the US, and which I had found both deeply affecting and hugely beneficial. When I spoke up and admitted this, adding that I myself had been trained by the therapist he was speaking of, a palpable and awkward silence followed. Later, when I mentioned that I was running a workshop myself in a few weeks time in the same building we were now in, more than one person looked incredulous.
“What one of the…naked ones???”
“No, just a 2 Day Weekend Workshop. The workshops with the naked work are the Intensive 8 Day Workshops. And they’re residential.”
“So what do you do in the weekend ones?”
“We learn to be present and honest with each other.”
“Huh. But why is it ‘radical’ honesty though? ‘Radical’ just sounds like an excuse to just be an asshole.”
More than once recently, I’ve been involved in conversations with people who have formed an incorrect or distorted view of what Radical Honesty workshops are about. When questioned, their judgement nearly always seems to stem from some article they’ve read in a magazine or a stand-up comedy sketch they watched on YouTube, and not so often from the honest account of someone who has actually been to one.
Before I attended my first Radical Honesty workshop in 2014, I imagine I had a pretty clear story of what the week might entail. My preconception was based on a single chapter of Jon Ronson’s book ‘So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed’ in which Jon attends a weekend workshop with Brad in Chicago and — despite what I imagine was an effort to make the whole process sound bizarre and a little hokey — I was instantly intrigued by his account.
In the months leading up to my reading Ronson’s book I had become fascinated by how deeply feelings of shame can effect mental health, and more specifically how it has affected my own sense of self-worth and my relationships with my friends and family. I’d watched TED talks and movies, read books and studies and devoured everything renowned shame-researcher Brené Brown had to say on the topic, so happening upon a book that contained a description of a ‘shame eradication workshop’ seemed like providence. Excited and intrigued, I bought Brad Blanton’s book on Kindle and scouted around online for the nearest workshop I could attend with him — six months from then in Greece.
Now, five years later, having attended that same weeklong Greek workshop four times, as well as several weekend and 8 Day Intensive Courses, I feel like I have a pretty clear idea of what the average Radical Honesty workshop involves. So here, for the benefit of anyone considering attending and maybe scaring themselves out of it, is my comprehensive list of what they don’t:
- We don’t ask you to get naked (that’s the intensive 8 day)
The naked work (which you can read about in more detail at: www.radicalhonesty.com/residential) is part of the Intensive 8-Day Workshops, not something that is a part of the Weekend Workshops or the annual residential weeklong workshop we run in Greece at Kalikalos Holistic Centre (which IMO is one of the best introductions to RH you can have).
Of the naked work in the Intensive 8-Day, Finnish RH Trainer Tuulia Syvänen has this to say:
“People often presume this will be some sort of “sexy” experience. Usually, the experience is anything but sexy. Mostly the naked work is about embarrassment and shame and suffering — and about how our avoidance of those aspects of ourselves often controls our lives. Quite often, the participants who, beforehand, scare themselves the most about doing this exercise are the very ones who benefit the most from it!”
Although our weekend workshops often contain discussions and revelations about how we feel about sex and our bodies, how much you reveal of yourself (in that sense at least!) is entirely up to you. - We won’t try and get you to join a cult
Sometimes we in the RH community joke about Radical Honesty being ‘a cult’, and we’re really not a cult. Although we do fit a few of Merriam-Webster descriptors, we really don’t mind if you want to leave the community, don’t care that much if you tell people that we’re full of crap and have zero interest in persuading you to believe something that isn’t observable by one of your five senses. And — speaking personally — I don’t have that much interest in taking all your money either. I’d like to make a decent living doing what I do, and just because you can’t afford a workshop that doesn’t mean I won’t teach you everything I know. - You won’t just get yelled at
A few people that I’ve spoken to seem to have the idea that Radical Honesty workshops are full of people yelling “f**k you!” at each other. In most workshops we do a paired exercise in which we tell our partners all of the ways we bully ourselves into doing things by turning them into ‘shoulds’ — “I should get up early and exercise every day” “I should lose weight”. During this exercise we then loudly reject our own shoulds, often embellishing them with a few colourful words or two in the process. It’s a fun, energetic exercise and normally leaves me laughing and breathless. I imagine this is where the idea of RH workshops as ‘angry and shouty’ comes from.
Let’s get this one straight though. People sometimes shout and raise their voices in workshops, and sometimes their shouting might be directed at you. One of the ways we practice Radical Honesty is to report out loud our own petty judgements and resentments towards other people in order to reveal ourselves as the flawed petty judgemental people we are. We all have these judgements and we keep them to ourselves, usually with the story that it would hurt others to hear them. The hiding of these not-so-nice thoughts has a side-effect though: we begin to judge ourselves as terrible rotten people whose insides do not match the outside — “If you know what I was really like, you’d hate me.”
In RH workshops we encourage you speak these judgements out loud and experience the sensations that go along with the idea of being ‘seen’. We also ask you to listen to others doing the same, and to possibly sit with the experience of hearing judgements directed at you. In my experience, this is something people scare themselves about constantly in life, so experiencing it in the confines of a facilitated workshop can be a powerful and hugely freeing experience. - No-one will force you to do something you don’t want to
What you get from a workshop is entirely up to you. If you reveal a lot and try out some stuff you imagine you will find difficult, my story is that you will make better, deeper and more authentic connections and gain the most personal benefit from the weekend. AND if you choose to withhold your thoughts and judgements, observe more than participate and stay in your usual ‘comfort zone’, you will not only have wasted your time and money but also have missed a unique opportunity to change your own patterns of behaviour, which was very probably the reason you came in the first place. - No-one will force you to go home and talk to your loved ones
This is one reason a close friend of mind has repeatedly cited for not attending a workshop, so I have a judgement it might be a fear for a lot of people.
No-one can force you to repeat the conversation with your mother that you might have practiced in the workshop once you leave it. All trainers understand that how hard having these conversations can feel — in both our minds and our bodies — because all trainers have had them. Because of this we also know the benefit of them, how having honest conversations with our loved ones can shift decades of anger, sadness, fear and mistrust and build new loving authentic connection.
So we will absolutely encourage you to have them, we may even ask you to promise to have them, AND no-one can force you have them or to change your life as a consequence. That’s entirely up to you.
I am making myself hopeful that having written this article and maybe allayed some of your fears, a few of you might follow the links included and book yourself onto a workshop (my next one in the UK is in 2 weeks). If you’re still unsure though, and have a story that a Radical Honesty workshop is just too scary, weird, risky or exposing I’m here to tell you that you are just the kind of person who could benefit the most from attending.
I had the same story, I was afraid of being seen as I truly was and had spent my entire life trying to persuade myself and everyone around me that I was ‘a good person’ while — deep down in my core — I strongly suspected that I wasn’t. Learning how to be honest about who I really am has changed everything about my life; my relationships, my family-life, my career and — best of all — how I am with myself, in every moment of every day.
Do I think Radical Honesty is the answer to all life’s problems?
No, I don’t and I think it helps with a lot of them.
Am I always happy now?
No, maybe about 15% of the time I’m depressed.
Do I always tell the absolute unvarnished truth to everyone?
No, sometimes I tell people nice lies, avoid conversations and withhold stuff.
Do I still fear that you knowing any of that will change the way you see me and somehow ruin my life?
Absolutely not :)
………………
Law Turley is a BACP Registered Integrative Therapist and Certified Radical Honesty Trainer living and working in the south west of the UK.
Her next workshop in the UK is in Exeter, Devon 26–18th April 2019
https://www.radicalhonesty.com/events/weekend-exeter-april
