Is it 'brutal honesty' or just being rude? (emotional intelligence & healthy communication)

Ever met someone who says, “I’m just being honest,” but it somehow always feels like an attack?

In Episode 23 of Things We Say in Therapy, I’m breaking down the difference between healthy honesty and using “brutal honesty” as an excuse to avoid accountability.

We’re talking about communication skills, emotional intelligence, nervous system regulation, and what emotional maturity actually looks like in real relationships.

This episode covers:

• The psychology behind brutal honesty
• Emotional dysregulation and why people lash out
• Healthy communication vs identity attacks
• The difference between impact and intention
• How to give honest feedback without shaming
• How to respond when someone hides behind “I’m just being honest”
• Setting boundaries around communication styles
• The difference between healthy discomfort and disrespect

Brutal honesty can be healthy when it’s rooted in growth, empathy, and emotional regulation. But when honesty is used for superiority, emotional relief, or control, it damages connection and erodes trust in relationships.

If you’ve ever:

• Felt shut down by someone’s harsh delivery
• Said something in the heat of the moment and regretted it
• Been called “too sensitive”
• Struggled with conflict in romantic relationships, friendships, or family dynamics
• Wanted to improve your communication without becoming avoidant or people-pleasing

You’re in the right place.

Being honest is necessary for growth.
Being harsh isn’t.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Being a brutally honest person isn't an excuse to avoid responsibility if you've hurt somebody and being hurt by someone, being honest with you doesn't make you too sensitive.

Hello everyone. Welcome back to your regularly scheduled self-reflection. I am Tash, and this is things we say in therapy. A place to feel seen, to land some psychology, and to self-reflect on some hard truths to improve your mental health.

A lot of people love to use the excuse of being brutally honest

to avoid accountability and to have an excuse to be rude.

Or tell someone how they really feel without consequences.

This episode is going to be about communication, emotional maturity,

accountability, and nervous system regulation.

This topic and all of the things I just mentioned are relevant to all [00:01:00] areas of life. Romantic relationships, friendships, work, relationships, family dynamics.

With this topic, I am not in any way promoting avoidance. I'm also not promoting people pleasing.

This episode is also not about being dishonest or avoiding the truth in any way.

This is simply about the importance of delivery in communication.

The intention behind honesty and the psychological reasons why somebody could be using brutal honesty as a mask just to be nasty to someone. This is uncomfortable on purpose, so let's call it like it is. 

Before I get into the topic, I'd just like to remind you to subscribe or follow on whatever platform that you're listening to or watching this on. I love making this content and I think it's very valuable. I've had some great feedback, so if you enjoy this content and find it helpful, please leave a review and then hopefully more people will be able to find me Thank you so much.

So brutal honesty [00:02:00] can actually be a healthy practice. So let's clarify what brutal honesty is. When it's healthy.

When it's healthy, it has a clear purpose.

The goal is improvement of a relationship to provide clarity or to repair a connection.

If you're using brutal honesty healthily, you should be able to answer the question of, why am I saying this?

If the answer to that question is because I'm annoyed because someone else needs to hear or because it's true,

that is not a good enough reason to be saying something that could potentially hurt somebody else.

There is most likely another deeper reason why you are using that brutal honesty.

Healthy honesty asks, is this useful information? Is it necessary to say this? Is it the right time to say this?

And the answers to all of those questions should be yes

and hold a significant reason that will benefit the person receiving that information.

Healthy, brutal honesty also [00:03:00] requires emotional regulation.

When you are regulated, you should be able to think about the long-term consequences of the words that are spoken.

And you should be able to acknowledge that you can tolerate the discomfort that may come along with that honesty and the other person's reaction to that honesty.

When you are emotionally dysregulated, you are using brutal honesty as relief.

You speak quickly. Your tone sharpens, you interrupt,

you escalate the situation. You get loud, argumentative, aggressive.

And most importantly, you are unable to see how this is going to affect the other person. Like in an argument when someone gets snappy, I'm sure you've heard that phrase before. When someone gets snappy, that's because they're emotionally dysregulated and they're jumping to the offensive mode in order to provide themselves with emotional relief.

Because hurting someone else or putting someone else down is [00:04:00] gonna help them feel better. I'll get a bit more into how that works psychologically in a second,

but, but the key takeaway here is.

If you feel urgency to say something, heat and anger, or a need to feel superior you're using brutal honesty to put someone else down.

Take a beat because you're most likely trying to regulate yourself. By making someone else feel inferior, small,

in order to get them to back down by hurting them, not to help them grow.

Healthy brutal honesty also includes empathy. I've briefly mentioned that.

Empathy in this context means considering the impact of your words on someone else. Healthy honesty always addresses someone's behavior and not someone's personality or character traits.

It doesn't ever attack their identity. Healthy honesty also leaves room for a response. You are willing to sit and listen to the person's [00:05:00] thoughts on your honesty and to open a discussion and also among that you're willing to acknowledge your fallibility in the situation, which means

you acknowledge your ability to make mistakes and to be in the wrong, which a lot of people lack.

So. For an example of addressing behavior instead of identity, instead of saying things like, you are so selfish, you would address the behavior behind that. Why you think that? So you'd say

you tend to cancel last minute a lot, and it makes me feel dismissed.

Or instead of saying, you are terrible with money, you could say, I noticed that you're making a lot of impulsive purchases lately. Can we talk about it?

This also protects you because when you are approaching something like a sensitive topic with curiosity and compassion, instead of attacking somebody,

and you're still met with resistance or escalation, or [00:06:00] defensiveness from the other person.

Then there's no ambiguity as to who's in the wrong or whether that person is a safe person

who is worth addressing issues with, because if you're coming at it with compassion and they're still reacting poorly, they're not a safe person.

When you are approaching a sensitive to topic with somebody, you want to have that healthy honesty with them; you should feel worried about hurting them. You should feel anxious about it because you're approaching a topic that could potentially hurt someone else's feelings that you care about.

Healthy honesty requires vulnerability from both sides.

If there is zero vulnerability and you are just saying something to belittle and attack somebody that is not growth based, that's just you being a dick.

So let's move on to the actual psychological reasons behind why people use brutal honesty as an excuse to be harmful towards [00:07:00] someone else.

There is a concept, a psychological concept called emotional discharge, which is essentially just trying to offload something. You feel irritated or annoyed by something. So you say something hurtful and you feel immediate relief,

inflicting that damage on somebody else gives you the relief because when you feel irritated by someone or something, you feel inferior, you feel attacked.

So, having that brutal honesty in those situations is kind of putting someone else in their place so that you feel that emotional relief.

This is you trying to regulate your nervous system through someone else, and it's very harmful to relationships, lips.

Harsh, brutal honesty is also frequently about superiority and having dominance

if someone is being honest with you, and that is accompanied by smirking public call outs to humiliate [00:08:00] you

or saying things like, oh, I was just saying it because everyone was thinking it. This is belittling and triangulation and manipulation, and it's a social dominance behavior. If you actually enjoy saying something that hurts somebody else,

you need to examine that. it doesn't necessarily mean that you are doing it to hurt someone, But it is probably that attempted emotional relief, and you do need to dig a little deeper to figure out where that's coming from.

Harsh, brutal honesty also lacks consent. So, healthy honesty starts with, do you mind if I give you some feedback? Are you open to having a vulnerable discussion? Can I say something direct to you? And being a dick sounds like, well, I'm just gonna say it.

You need to hear this. I don't care if it hurts you.

The consent of the honesty changes the power dynamics.

Unsolicited criticism often creates defensiveness, and that means there is absolutely zero growth [00:09:00] and there's just conflict then in the relationship, and it becomes pretty pointless.

And finally, harsh, brutal honesty attacks, identity over behavior. So like I briefly mentioned before, the difference is

if you are addressing the behavior, which tends to be healthy honesty, you'd be addressing something situational, something specific, and something that can change. But if you're attacking someone's identity, their character,

it tends to be shaming somebody,

Saying things like, you are selfish, you are stupid, things like that.

"You are" statements, you are toxic, you are dramatic. They create defensiveness.

Always address repeated behavior that is an issue. Not a character trait. When you shame somebody based on their character.

This activates someone's threat responses, and it does not create sustainable change. It just [00:10:00] creates resentment and avoidance of the problem.

So let's get onto intention versus impact.

A common defensive argument is that it wasn't their intention to hurt somebody, and the excuses that, oh, well, it's true, so it's fine that I said it, even though it hurt you. Intention matters, but impact matters more. You can not intend to hurt somebody, but if it does hurt somebody, you do need to address that, even if you think it's unjustified.

When you are coming at somebody with honesty, you are responsible for both the intent and the impact.

I will say here that if you are met with somebody who has a victim mindset, which is my last week's Monday episode, this becomes a little bit more complicated because you are responsible. If you've hurt somebody to address that and say, sorry, but that doesn't mean that the issue then just becomes about you hurting them.

[00:11:00] If that's the case, then you're probably dealing with someone with a victim mindset who doesn't actually wanna address the problem that you've brought up and only wants to deflect or blame shift so that they don't have to take accountability. However, if you regularly make people feel belittled and you're met with resistance when you're coming at people with honesty. If people shut down around you, avoid having vulnerable conversations with you or are afraid to open up to you. This is important information. This doesn't mean you need to feel ashamed or anything along those lines. I'm never here to shame anybody because we act the way we do for a reason.

But it is something that you need to address for yourself in order to improve your relationships and improve your relationship with yourself as well, because if you're brutally honest to other people, the likelihood is that you're also brutally honest with yourself.

You are doing yourself a disservice by not addressing your unhealthy communication [00:12:00] skills. Also to address the other side of the argument, not all discomfort means harm is being done. My whole podcast is about learning how to deal with discomfort. The reason that that is, is because a lot of people dunno how to deal with discomfort and therefore think that whenever they feel uncomfortable that they're being attacked, that they're being harmed, that they're being wronged.

It is important to learn the difference between feeling discomfort because something has hurt you, but it's a necessary truth for you to grow and feeling discomfort because you actually are being attacked or wronged or someone is being mean to you. you feeling Discomfort doesn't automatically mean that there's abuse or being mean. Growth feels uncomfortable. It's just a truth of life. You're going to feel discomfort when you grow. And so when you are met with healthy honesty and you feel uncomfortable by [00:13:00] that, or try to decipher what type of discomfort you are feeling.

Helpful questions to ask yourself when you're being met with honesty and discomfort are, is this feedback specific? Is it about my behavior?

Is it said calmly? And is there room for discussion? Are they listening to my response because If it is not specific, if it's attacking your character or it's said aggressively, or they're not listening to your response, they just wanna yell at you, then that's not healthy communication and you are valid to feel uncomfortable by that and set a boundary. But if you feel discomfort and it is specifically about something that's been bothering the other person, something that can com can improve your relationship or improve your personal growth, that is healthy discomfort.

So why do people identify themselves as a brutally honest person, as an excuse to be nasty [00:14:00] and rude?

Patterns of this behavior are often linked to family dynamics. Where criticism was seen as a bonding exercise, if you got upset from criticism from your caregivers, your parents or your siblings, and you were met with confusion as to why you were upset, that can be confusing as you grow up because you learn that Uh, there shouldn't be any reaction to this harsh criticism.

It can also come from having parents with low emotional intelligence that then passes on to their children because children repeat dynamics that they witness. It could come from a belief that being soft or being kind is weak and avoidance of vulnerability. Sometimes it's a fear of intimacy getting close to people.

Sometimes it's a fear of being wrong.

Sometimes it's a fear of not being the dominant one in the room

saying something [00:15:00] harsh and rude in an honest conversation is easier for people with low emotional intelligence and low self-regulation than saying, I felt in, I feel insecure, or

 That hurt me, or I felt left out.

It is a deflection because of the fear of vulnerability.

The consequences of being unnecessarily harsh to people You'll just be stuck for life with people who have low self-esteem, who are willing to put up with your disrespect and being consistently humiliated and let down, which provides a weak support system and a lack of people who are gonna tell you the truth.

You will continue this way in a loop of self-destruction and self-sabotage. And isolation and insecurity,

and you'll never learn how to properly communicate. So you'll never have those truly amazing vulnerable, deep relationships that come with being able to self-regulate and communicate [00:16:00] effectively.

 There are obviously neurodivergent exceptions to not being able to understand empathy,

but in this episode, I'm purely talking about people who

do this from a place of unhealed wounds

who take it out on other people without even knowing that they're doing it or why.

So how do you practice real honesty without being destructive?

You need to regulate your emotions. You need to learn nervous system regulation, which may take a lot more than just listening to this podcast. Um.

But just specifically in situations where you feel that urge to be brutally honest. and you want to stop yourself because you want to nourish your relationships instead.

When you feel like you are getting escalated. You need to wait.

Things like moving your body and actively slowing down your breathing can really help to regulate your body.

Getting your thoughts together, writing things down if you can, or if you want to, you know, you don't have to always talk about [00:17:00] things right then and there. You can ask to have the conversation later on. You can write things down and journal or speak to a camera about it.

Whatever helps you just chill out. And calm your nervous system before having a vulnerable conversation.

You need to ask yourself the motivation for telling someone something that could potentially hurt their feelings. You can ask yourself things like,

do I want to help this person? Do I want to nourish this relationship with this information, or do I just wanna win the argument? Do I just want to belittle this person and put them down so that I feel superior? Do I want change or do I want relief?

Would I say this in the same tone tomorrow? Will I

be able to repeat this confidently when I've calmed down?

If that answer changes with time, then just wait.

Using specific language can really help.

So like I said, you need to talk about behavior specifically rather than [00:18:00] someone's character.

 you need to name the impact that it has had on you or the relationship with this person, and you need to invite a response to start a discussion.

You could say, when this happened, I felt like this. I would prefer if this happened. What do you think?

This reduces shame activation in the other person because you're not attacking them in any way, and you're inviting their perspective too.

Stay engaged in their response.

If you give feedback to somebody or brutal honesty, and you then walk away or shut down because you've said your piece. Or you mock their reaction or make them feel silly for being vulnerable. That's not honesty, that's emotional immaturity and it's rude. So how do you deal with someone who is being rude and labeling it as being brutally honest?

you need to separate honesty from [00:19:00] delivery. Honesty simply means telling the truth. Maturity is about how you communicate that truth.

If someone is honest and emotionally immature, that is a recipe for miscommunication.

Being direct and being honest does not require being demeaning towards someone I.

If someone else's honesty regularly leaves you feeling embarrassed, shameful about yourself, small or attacked,

That's poor regulation from them.

However, you do need to remember the important distinction between discomfort and feeling the shame, embarrassment, and feeling attacked because remember that discomfort can be healthy.

If someone regularly makes you feel embarrassed or shameful, you can meet this by saying things like, I'm open to your honesty, but not with disrespect. You can be direct without being rude.

If you want me to hear what you're saying, then say it in a way that I can actually receive.

Therefore, this is not you [00:20:00] rejecting their feedback at all or shutting down. This is just you re rejecting their contempt.

Something else you can do is not reward the so some people use brutal honesty to feel powerful.

To avoid vulnerability, to justify impulsive reactions.

If you defend yourself emotionally every time and get defensive, you reinforce this dynamic.

Instead, you need to stay neutral and don't rush to overexplain yourself in a response.

You simply need to say, I'm not engaging with you when it's delivered like that, thirdly, you need to watch their pattern of behavior, not the words that they say. Do they soften their tone when you tell them that what they've done has hurt you? Do they respond when you set a boundary

or do they double down and call you too sensitive or continue to attack you?

Someone who values honesty and you will care about the impact they have on you.

People make mistakes and someone with [00:21:00] good intention who causes harm

without knowing will care when you are hurt.

So it's important that you communicate to them that what they've said has hurt you.

Someone who values their ego over you will care more about defending their delivery than repairing their relationship with you and caring about the impact it had on you. Don't internalize what brutally honest people say.

Brutally honest people tend to value themselves on being real.

But being unfiltered does not equal emotional intelligence.

Finally, you can set a boundary that doesn't require agreement. You don't need them to admit that they're being rude to you.

You can say things like, you don't have to see it as rude, but I do and I won't stay in a conversation like that.

If honesty is important to you, delivery matters to me.

You have to follow through with that boundary.

Brutally honest people who lack empathy, love to portray this strong persona to the world. They [00:22:00] love to portray themselves as unbreakable, as

emotionally resilient,

but the combination of being harsh and brutally honest and lacking empathy signifies insecurity.

You don't have to tolerate disrespect just because someone calls it truth.

Please, please, please always treat yourself with compassion. That is the most important thing always.

If you are listening to this and you are realizing I've been too harsh,

I hide behind brutal honesty, or you're recognizing that you may have hurt people that you care about, this is good. This is self-awareness, and self-awareness is a very underrated skill.

But just because you're realizing these things doesn't mean you need to be ashamed.

And if you're listening to this and you are thinking that. You've been shut down by someone who was "just being honest";

you are not weak for wanting delivery with care.

You don't need to harden up and you don't need to be less sensitive. You are strong just from realizing that you deserve better. So I'll leave [00:23:00] you with some reflection prompts to ask yourself. Upon finishing this episode,

when do you use honesty to avoid vulnerability?

When do I reject feedback because it's uncomfortable.

Do I equate intensity with strength?

What did communication look like in your childhood

and when have I tolerated disrespect, disguised as brutal honesty?

Brutal honesty is truth delivered for growth

Being a dick is truth delivered For relief, superiority and control. Honesty is necessary for growth. Being harsh is not. Delivery matters. consent matters or regulation matters and impact matters.

You can be direct without being demeaning,

and if your honesty repeatedly damages connection, it's time to reassess how you're using it.

Thank you so much for listening to episode 23 of Things We Say in Therapy. I'll see you next time. If this felt [00:24:00] uncomfortable, that means something clicked. Sit with it. I'll see you again. Bye.