Are you ashamed of telling your parents how you feel, or about certain events that are happening in your life?  Are you afraid that telling them what’s actually going on for you will make them angry or uncomfortable?  Do you feel that, as a son or daughter, you have an obligation to make sure you only tell them about aspects of your life that will make them happy?  When your parents ask how you’re doing, do you feel it would be “wrong” to tell them about the anger, fear, hurt or sadness you may be experiencing?

For me, the answers to all of these questions used to be yes.  When my parents asked me how I was doing, I used to assume that they didn’t want to know how I was actually feeling.  What they wanted, in my mind, was a progress report—a report on my most recent plans and achievements in the academic or professional realms.  Maybe they wanted to hear about my intimate relationships as well, but if they did, they only wanted to hear mundane details like the name of my partner and where we had gone on our most recent date.  And there was no way they’d want to know about, say, my frustration at how slowly a project seemed to be going, my tendency to rehash embarrassing events in my head, or the feelings I’d experienced for someone other than my partner.  My emotional experience, particularly if it involved difficult or negative feelings, was off limits.

In my perception, “how are you doing”—when asked by my parents—really wasn’t intended as a question at all.  Instead, it was a command—“tell me something to make me happy and proud.”  It was as if they expected a conversation with me to be like watching a heartwarming, uplifting, G-rated Disney movie.  And if I didn’t do what they supposedly wanted—if I told them the unvarnished truth about what was going on in my life—I would be a bad and “selfish” son.  It would be selfish to tell them the truth because doing so would give me the emotional release associated with talking about my problems, but would leave them with only fear and worry about their child’s situation.  And they were my parents, after all—they’d fed and clothed me for so many years, and the least I could do would be to leave them feeling happy after our conversations.

And here’s the real kicker:  I made all of these assumptions without even bothering to ask whether they were correct.  I simply assumed that my parents didn’t want, or couldn’t handle, the truth, and I’ve lived most of my life taking that assumption as gospel.  It was only recently that I started having open, uncensored conversations with my parents about my life, and I discovered—to my surprise—that this took our relationship to a new level of connection and emotional depth.

You may be making similar assumptions about your relationship with your parents.  You may be convinced that your parents only want to hear about parts of your life that are likely to please them.  If you have this mindset, I invite you to consider a few questions.  Suppose, for a moment, that you were in your parents’ place.  If you asked your child how he or she was doing, what would you want to hear?  Would you want to hear a whitewashed, censored account of your child’s experience that omitted any event or feeling that might cause you the slightest discomfort?  If your child were in a state of depression or despair, would you want them to lie and tell you they were happy?  Would you want your child to constantly worry about whether what they told you would make you anxious or upset?

I suspect you’d answer no to these questions.  I think that if you asked your child how they were doing, you’d want an uncensored answer.  I think you’d want to know the truth about your child’s condition, even if it caused you displeasure or discomfort.  How could you adequately care for, advise and protect your child if you didn’t know the real facts about their situation?  And how sad would you feel if you learned that your child had been lying to you, or omitting important facts from your conversations, because that’s what they thought you wanted?

“Great, but that isn’t how my parents are,” you may be thinking.  “They just couldn’t take it if I told them what was really happening in my life.  And I owe it to them to make talking to me a pleasurable experience.”  But are you giving your parents the credit they deserve?  Could it be that your parents actually understand that you are a human being, and that human beings as a rule have foibles, make mistakes, and experience negative emotions?  And that when you pretend that you’re a perfect, perpetually cheerful and “good” son or daughter, you’re not really fooling anybody?  And maybe even that, when you lie to your parents to keep them happy, they can sense it and it hurts?

And how about that idea that you “owe” your parents conversations that always leave them beaming with parental pride?  Do you think your parents view your relationship this way?  Is your relationship with them like a commercial exchange—they gave you care and feeding early in your life, and in return you must present to them the image of a perpetually happy and successful child?  Is that the way you’d think of your relationship with your own child—you busted your hump for them all these years, and now they’d darn well better tell you something to make you happy?  Or does viewing the parental relationship that way actually cheapen and degrade it?  And is it really fair to your parents to assume that they think that way?

If nothing I’ve said convinces you that your parents may actually want to hear the truth about what’s going on in your life—that, when they ask how you’re doing, they really want to know—just humor me and try a simple experiment.  Ask your parents what they want to hear.  When they ask you how you’re doing, do they want to hear the truth, even if the truth isn’t always pleasurable or comfortable?  And while we’re at it, how about your other loved ones, friends and colleagues?  Have you made the same assumptions about what they supposedly want to hear?  Are you willing to test those assumptions?

I suspect that the answers will surprise you.

Related posts:

1. Assumption-Free Conversation
2. Do You Need To “Justify” Your Choices In Life?
3. Why Do I Like Honesty?
4. The “Dark Side” Of Dolphins (And Humans)
5. Bringing Humanity Into Networking