Truth is the bravest escape route you can take

​I used to consider myself someone who lived without fear. Now I know I was someone who avoided fear at all costs, and I paid the price of living with the fearful man inside.

Dr. Harriet Lerner says, "It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable, so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions."

I found that wording powerful - "doing the brave and true thing" in your daily life. I've come to believe they are one in the same.

Doing the true thing.

Saying the true thing.

Being the true thing.

True does take bravery. NOT doing true isn't brave - that is avoidance. No matter how good you get at making it LOOK and SOUND like the true thing, you always know when it's not true. You feel it. And that feels a lot like the fear you're unadmittely hiding from.

It feels like anxiety.

In their book Attached, the authors Amir Levine and Rachel S.F Heller say, "If you're avoidant, you connect with romantic partners but always maintain some mental distance and an escape route. Feeling close and complete with someone else - the emotional equivalent of finding a home - is a condition that you find difficult to maintain."

The first time I read that I'm sure I read it a dozen times. I'm not sure if that was to memorize it or to find a way to read it that made it somehow not sound like me.

But it was me.

It was me - not just in romantic relationships - but in all interpersonal relationships.

It was me and my relationships with jobs.

It was me and my relationships with launching new ideas or ventures.

Always maintaining some mental distance and escape route - and in case you think maintaining that is easy - I'm here to tell you it's exhausting. Decades of it can leave you feeling lifeless.

Dead.

The last several years I've been fortunate to find some safe spaces in my life to begin being the true me. There have been people. And really, writing here in the morning has been one of those spaces.

I'm sure there are mornings when folks walk away from reading what I write thinking, "he's kind of a mess." To that I would say, you're right. Many days I am. But I would also say I'm not near the mess I once was when I didn't look so messy on the surface.

I'm coming to learn there are a lot of people who don't look so messy on the surface but feel pretty upside down.

And then there are people who look pretty messy on the outside but feel less anxious and upside down than ever on the inside.

Truth can do that. Bravery can do that.

If you're avoidant, I feel for you. I understand you. You didn't get there alone. Something along the way made you feel more comfortable with distance and escape routes.

I'm also here to tell you there is no better escape route than truth. It takes a lot of bravery - it does take life turning upside down to not feel so upside down any more - but it is the ultimate escape route.

It's the escape route from dying to living.