S7 Ep 89: Half-Truths: When What’s True Gets in the Way of Healing

What happens when something true becomes the very thing keeping us stuck?

In this episode of the Untangled Mind Podcast, Piper Harris explores the psychology of half-truths: beliefs that often begin with something very real- a betrayal, loss, painful relationship, frightening experience, or lesson learned through necessity- but gradually become conclusions about ourselves, other people, and the world around us.

We’ll look at how half-truths form, why they’re so convincing, how they become reinforced through our own behavior, and how to separate what happened from what we concluded because it happened. Most importantly, we’ll explore how living according to only part of the truth can interfere with the very thing we’re seeking: healing.

This episode was inspired in part by Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and a passage that asks an uncomfortable question about suffering: What does it feed?

For a deeper exploration of that question, read the companion Untangled Mind blog, “What It Feeds”

 https://www.untangledmind.net/post/what-it-feeds

#untangledmindllc #UMPodcast #Dostoevsky #BrothersKaramazov #halftruths 

Transcript

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Hi, I'm Piper Harris, a licensed professional counselor, and welcome to the Untingled Mind Podcast. This is a show for people who want to understand why their mind works the way it does, not just how to cope with it. Drawing from neuropsychology, neurophilosophy, and data-driven CBT, we look at how anxiety and trauma shape perception, behavior, and choice and what actually helps people change. I'm an integrative CBT therapist based in the Atlanta suburbs. Each episode is designed to teach you something concrete, how to recognize what's keeping you stuck, how to interrupt unhelpful patterns, and how to move forward with clarity and steadiness. Today we're talking about half-truths, the stories we tell ourselves that aren't necessarily wrong, but aren't quite complete either. We'll look at how half-truths form, why they can be so difficult to recognize, how they begin shaping our beliefs, our identities, our behaviors and relationships, and how living from only part of the truth can ultimately get in the way of the very thing we're seeking: healing. Thank you so much for those of you that have sent me messages about different topics to talk about on the Untingled Mind podcast. I've been taking some breathers, giving myself permission to not do as much as I do. And it's funny, if you've been following me at all over these past seven years, you know that I love to read. And oftentimes when I read something, that really kind of turns into whether it's a blog or a podcast series. Um, last year I did Burying Reality. Um, I also did an empathy series, and it came from a lot of different books that I had been reading. And so today is really no different. And so, half truths, we're gonna talk about that today when something true becomes the wrong story. So it's been a while, like I said, since I've recorded an uh episode, but what I've been doing is over, you know, months, I kind of pick up and put down The Brothers Caramaz Off by Fodor Da, I'm gonna say it wrong. Um, Theodore Dostoevsky. Say that 15 times fast. I'm gonna screw it up probably numerous times. But I've been reading it on and off because it's a pretty weighty book. And if you haven't picked it up, it's an oldie, but it's a goodie, um, and it's a beautiful story. And um you'll also be able to read a blog that I wrote about it. Um, he has such a way of writing these amazing stories, but also confronting you with life's questions. And so I came across something like just like that um this week as I was reading, and I haven't been able to leave it alone. So the brothers Kermazov, it's it's really like I just said, it's either his attempt to put every question of a human being might ever ever have into one book, or it's um a wonderful story. And I really have not decided yet. So earlier in this book, um what he does, and uh if you notice, I'm trying to say not say Dostoyevsky, I'm literally watching on Google how to say this correctly. Um, but all that to be said, in earlier in the book, well, he takes us into a Russian monastery, and it's where people they travel to seek counsel of the elder, and his name is Father Zasima. And so people come to him carrying all kinds of issues, right? So it's like family conflict, illness, so there's some pretty severe guilt, there's grief, of course, questions of faith. And so what these people believe, they believe that this man has wisdom, and they're coming to him because they hope that he might, you know, see something that they can't see. So um, one of the people who comes to see him is um uh a mother whose son has died, and it really is a really poignant part of the book. So her grief is absolutely enormous. She'd already lost all her other children, and this was her final child. So she traveled like hundreds and hundreds of miles, a really great distance. And keep in mind when he wrote this book, it was about 150 years ago. Um, but essentially she'd been really kind of wandering from a holy place to a holy place, carrying this grief with her, carrying his little sash. I mean, it's such a poignant part of the book. And um what happens is um Dostoevsky, I'm gonna get better at this, he makes this observe this observation about grief and um laments and lamentation that really stopped me. So this is what I want to read to you. He writes this there is a silent and long-suffering sorrow. It withdraws into itself and is still. But there is a grief that breaks out, and from that minute it bursts into tears and finds venting in finds vent, excuse me, in wailing. This is particularly so with women. So that's a whole nother thing. Ladies don't get upset, but it is no easier to bear than the silent grief. Okay, so there's either wailing or the silent grief. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to reopen the wound. Such grief does not desire consolation, it feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. And that is what caught me was that word feeds, because there's absolutely no question, no question at all, that this woman's grief is legitimate. Her son is dead, she has no other children left. I mean, it it it there's we're not denying the grief here, but there's a a cognitive distortion here, and there isn't some like really clever reframing exercise that's going to make losing your child acceptable. I'm not saying that. What Father Zasama does, he doesn't when she approaches him with her grief about her lost son, he doesn't dispute that she's suffering at all. And he doesn't tell her that she's grieving incorrectly or that she should get over that. Um, but he sees something else. And so what he sees as you read on in this part of the book, she has a husband at home. And keep in mind, her husband has lost a son too, and other children. So while she's been traveling from holy place to holy place, carrying this grief of hers, she left behind another person who was grieving the same child. And so the elder, Zasima, can find comforts her, excuse me, but he also tells her, you need to go home. And I've been thinking about that scene because it really illustrates something that I see pretty constantly in therapy. And frankly, something that all of us do because we're human. We build our lives on half truths. I'm not saying lies. I'm not saying lies. We build our lives on half truths. That's a very important distinction. I'm not talking about denial, and I'm not talking about knowingly deceiving ourselves. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not even actually necessarily talking about what we traditionally call cognitive distortions. I'm talking about something way harder to identify because the thing at the center of the story may actually be completely true. The problem is what we have built around it. So that's what I want to talk to you about today. What half-truths are, how they develop, how you can begin to recognize your own, and maybe most importantly, what do you do once you find one? So, what is a half-truth? This is kind of difficult. When I use the term half-truth, I mean something pretty specific. A half-truth occurs when we take something that's true and allow it to support a conclusion that that truth itself cannot fully support. So usually there's a fact somewhere at the beginning. So, say something happened, someone betrayed you, someone left, um, your parents were emotionally unavailable, you experienced violence, you failed at something that mattered a lot to you. Um, you trusted someone who proved they were untrustworthy, you were humiliated, you were rejected, whatever it is, we're starting with reality. That's what happens. It's the start. Then human beings do what human beings do. We try to understand what happened. And that's not necessarily a pathological thing. Our brains are prediction machines. We need to make sense of our experiences because understanding what happened helps us really anticipate what might happen next, right? So an event then becomes an interpretation. The interpretation then becomes a rule, and eventually the rule can become a way of living. So let's use an example of betrayal because it's kind of an easy one to see. So let's say my husband cheated on me. That's a fact. Um, so then something might be well, someone I trusted was capable of deceiving me. Also true. Do you see how someone can kind of walk through this cycle? Then maybe you move to people can't be trusted. Now we've changed categories. You're not describing what happened anymore. We formed a conclusion about people. And then maybe what happens, it goes to if I don't pay close attention, I'll be blindsided again again. Now you have the rule. Okay, so we got my husband cheated on me first step. Then the next thought is someone I trusted was capable of deceiving me. Both of those things are true. Then you moved to people can't be trusted. So you've changed the categories. You're not describing the actual event anymore. You're you're changing to a conclusion about people. And then you go further and you create the rule, which is well, if I don't pay close attention, I'll get blindsided again. You hear the rule? So from that rule can come behavior. And maybe it's like I check, I mean, you know, I'm monitoring everything, I'm looking for inconsistencies. The person becomes really highly attentive to changes in tone or schedules or phone calls or text messages or facial expresses expressions, and probably not even from the cheating spouse, right? And so, because that person is constantly scanning for evidence that people can't be trusted, they will almost certainly find some. And so, what I want to say is human beings are inconsistent. People forget things, people communicate poorly, people okay occasionally behave selfishly. We all do. Someone will eventually do something that can be incorporated into your existing conclusion, that rule, right? And so then you go, oh, see, I knew it. I knew it. Now the original betrayal, the original cheating spouse is no longer simply something that happened to me. It's become this lens through which you evaluate what is happening now. That is a half truth. Does that make sense? So we go from an actual betrayal, an actual event, and then all of a sudden it's overlaid on life, but we're we're walking through life with a half truth. And here's what makes these things so difficult. The belief didn't come from nowhere, right? There was evidence for it. That's why simply telling someone that they're being irrational usually doesn't do anything. It doesn't help anything. And in many cases, they aren't actually being irrational. Their conclusion made a tr made tremendous sense, right, in the environment in which it developed. It absolutely did. So if you grew up with a parent whose mood could change without warning, you become really good at reading facial expressions, and it probably really made sense. So if asking for help repeatedly resulted in disappointment, you had to learn to rely on yourself because it made sense, right? So if vulnerability was used against you, withholding vulnerability made sense, right? Do you see how we do this? So if something terrible actually happened when you weren't prepared for it, trying to anticipate every possible possible future problem actually makes sense. But the question isn't always, what did I learn or why did I learn this? The question isn't always that, why did I learn this? Sometimes we actually know exactly why. That's why I'm saying I'm I'm walking you through this. Sometimes we actually know why we do this. A better question that we need to start asking because of these kind of half-truths that scroll their way in there, is asking, is what I learned there still an accurate description of what is happening here? Those are totally different questions. Does that I hope that makes sense? It makes sense in my mind as I say it. And I'm using my hands a lot. I know I said I was gonna start using video, and I'm just over it. You guys, I don't like seeing myself, and so you're just gonna get my voice. So, how are half-truths become really convincing? And there's seven several reasons half-truths are really, really difficult to recognize. One is generalization. So our brains are supposed to generalize. That's what we're it that's its job. So if I touch a hot stove and I burn myself, it would be really inefficient if I had to touch a stove every single time to decide if hot stoves might burn me, right? So we learn from experience. The brain has to generalize. The problem is that human relationships are far more complicated than our hot stove. Something can be true of one person without it being true of all people. Something can be true in one environment without it being true in another. Something that protected me at 12 may interfere, you know, at 12 years old, may actually interfere with my life at 40. Does that make sense? But the nervous system doesn't always make those distinctions really well. So something like, um, so my father was dangerous, okay, that idea, that thought, that belief can become angry people are dangerous. Does that make sense? Do you hear that? How we do that? Then perhaps what happens is then conflict is dangerous, and then disagreement becomes dangerous. And eventually I can be sitting across from a perfectly safe person who disagrees with me and is experiencing the interaction through a rule created decades earlier. So the original truth remains dad was dangerous, you know, my father's dangerous. The half-truth is that the current person must be dangerous because something about this moment resembles something about that one way back when, when I was five years old. Another reason that um half-truths um survive is confirmation bias. We've talked a lot about this. In fact, I just had a session we were talking about this. Once we believe something, we become really, really good at finding evidence for it. So if I believe nobody cares about me, I will notice every single person who forgot to call. The person who remembered to call me may not even carry the same psychological weight. You'd think that we would notice those more. Nope. We we notice the ones that actually confirm our belief. So if I believe I'm always the one who has to take care of everything, I'm gonna notice every time someone fails to anticipate what needs to be done. And I may be less interested in even examining how often I actually allow other people to take responsibility without me intervening, right? So you have this confirmation bias that you you have to do everything on your own. And so then you're not even willing to examine if somebody's actually offering to get in and help. And so then that leads to another mechanism, and that is our behavior, our behavior can help maintain the half truth. So um, suppose I believe that other people are unreliable. Great. So then I don't delegate, right? Because I I believe that people are unreliable. But because I don't delegate, nobody has much opportunity to demonstrate reliability, right? Because I already believe they're unreliable, so I del I don't delegate anything because I know they're not they're not reliable, but I'm not giving anybody an opportunity to demonstrate differently. Then I become exhausted from doing everything myself. And eventually I say, see, I have to do everything. Well, maybe, or maybe you've created a closed system in which the belief determines the behavior, and the behavior prevents us from gathering information that might actually challenge the belief. And that's important because half-truths are not merely things we think, we live them, and when we live according to them so long, they begin producing evidence of their own. Right? I got this just from the book. It's wild how this happened. So, what also can happen is when a half truth becomes an identity, and this is where things get really, really difficult. At some point, the story can move from like this happened to me to this is who I am. I see this all the time. So maybe it's um I'm the person nobody chooses, maybe I'm, you know, I'm just the only competent one. Maybe it's the belief that um I'm the one um who can't rely on anyone. Maybe it's um I'm damaged, maybe it's I'm difficult to love, maybe it's I'm the strong one who doesn't need anything. Um, maybe um it's I'm the person other people take advantage of. Notice that some of those identities don't even sound negative, right? So, like I'm incredibly independent. Okay, that's that could be true, but sometimes what we proudly call independence is an inability to tolerate dependence. Ah, yes, that's what we're doing. I know this is a lot, it's mind-bending to me too. Just stay with me. These are not the same thing. Okay. The statement I take care of everyone, okay, perhaps you do. But what happens when someone tries to take care of you? Ah, Piper, why are you pushing my buttons? Keep keep hold on, hold on. Okay, how about this one? I've heard this one in session. I don't tolerate disrespect. Okay, good. That's great. But what qualifies as disrespect? Can someone disagree with you? Can someone tell you no? Can someone disappoint you without you becoming a bad person? Without them becoming a bad person. Do you see what I'm saying? This is why examining our half-truths can become very uncomfortable very quickly. And we're no longer simply evaluating a thought, we are touching on identity. And human beings defend identity way more aggressively than we defend the ordinary original thought or idea. Y'all, I can't tell you how much this happens in my practice. It's it's pretty routine. It's pretty routine. And I, you know, maybe it's the industry, and I think it is, that's in part, that we've been told that um affirmation and compassion are the only way to go. But gosh, just even reading the section where Father Zasama, he's calling people, like he told the woman, go home. I don't reject your pain, losing your son. I don't reject that. In fact, I sit here in pain with you, but go home. You've created an identity around the lamentation, around the sorrow and the you know going throughout the earth trying to find comfort. But you've forgotten there's someone that needs comfort as well at home. You created an identity around this when you have an identity as wife. Oh, you ve, right? This is hard. So, how do you find one? How do you find a half-truth? I think the first thing that you need to do is separate what happened from what you concluded because it happened. We tend to collapse those into like the same sentence. So someone might say, Well, my mother was emotionally unavailable, so always I always had to take care of myself. Stop there. Stop there. Hold on. My mother was emotionally unavailable, so I'll always have to take care of myself. Okay. These are two, at least two claims in that sentence. Number one, my mother was emotionally unavailable. Okay, that is a claim about history. We can examine what happened and determine whether that description fits. Now take the next part of the sentence. I've always had to take care of myself. That's different. Now we're making a much broader statement about relationships, about dependency, and maybe the person's whole life. Maybe there were times when that was absolutely true, but here's the kicker. Is it still true? Is it still true with everyone? Is it still true now? Those questions don't change what happened with the mother. We're not asking you to deny the pain at all. What we're saying with those questions is you've got to examine what's been built from it. We have to. We have to start examining it. And another thing that I listen to is for absolute language in here in the office. So when I hear absolute language, like all Always, never, everyone, nobody, can't, have to, people always leave, nobody understands me. Um, I can't trust anyone, I have to stay in control. Those words aren't automatically evidence that something is wrong. Some sometimes never actually means never, but absolute, absolutes, excuse me, deserve investigation. Because reality tends to contain a lot more variation than your protective rules do. Those are protective rules. But that's based on the past. Where are you today? Right? So, another question that I think is way more useful is what have had what could have or what would have to happen for you to conclude that this is this belief is no longer true? Think about that one. What evidence would you accept? If you believe nobody can be trusted, what would a trustworthy person have to do before you allowed their behavior to count as evidence? If you believed nobody can be trusted, what would a trustworthy person have to do before you allowed their behavior to count as evidence? Okay? If if you believe you're unlovable, what would someone have to do to demonstrate otherwise? If you believe you can't tolerate anxiety, what experience would demonstrate that you can? And this is where it gets really interesting. Sometimes, sometimes there's no answer. Every possible piece of contradictory evidence has already been accounted for. So it might be something like, well, they're only being nice because they want something, or they don't really know me, or just wait, eventually they're gonna leave. Or I only got through that because someone helped me, or it wasn't really that difficult. If every possible outcome can be absorbed back into your belief from the beginning, then you're no longer dealing with a conclusion we're evaluating. You're not, you're not doing, you're not dealing with the conclusion we're evaluating. We're dealing with something closer to the article of like faith. And that deserves our attention as well. Does this make? I hope this makes sense. And again, I know in my mind it makes a ton of sense. Half truths are really good at working their way into how we see self and how we see world and people around us. What the half-truths permit and don't permit. Okay, let's talk about that. There's another question I think we have to ask a lot more often. What does believing this permit me to do? Okay, or maybe even more importantly, what does it permit me not to do? And this is where things can get uncomfortable in the therapy room. Because beliefs don't simply explain our lives. Sometimes they're authorizing our behavior. So if I believe people can't be trusted, then suspicion feels justified, right? And if I believe nobody will help me, well, I don't have to risk asking. And if I believe conflict inevitably ends into abandonment, then I always avoid difficult conversations. Or if I believe my anxiety is telling me something is dangerous, then avoidance feels like protection, right? And again, I want to be very careful here because this is where people sometimes hear responsibility as blame. That is not what I'm saying. Understanding the function of your belief is not the same thing as accusing someone of deliberately creating it. Most of these things have been developed for a reason, but something can develop for a very good reason and still become enormously expensive. Enormously. So maybe the better question is what is it costing me to continue organizing my life around this half truth? That's a question you can ask without disproving anything. And listen, maybe people have disappointed you. Maybe your family really is difficult. Maybe you have been abused and used, maybe you have been betrayed, maybe your anxiety does have roots in something terrible that happened. Fine, I'm not denying that. We don't have to argue about any of that. But what does it cost you to continue living as though that truth describes every single situation you encounter? What relationships does it alter? What opportunities does it eliminate? What conversations don't happen? What risks become impossible? What part of your life has become smaller because this particular half-truth has been given authority over others? Sometimes that's a much more productive question than is this belief rational? Because maybe it is rational, but it also may be ruining your life. Both can be true. And this this is what needs to be done more in therapy. And for some of my clients, I've done a lot of this lately, confronting them with the contradictions of their their I have they they proclaim their diagnosis, right? But they do it in lieu of looking at how their belief of the diagnosis, and yes, we we are acknowledging the traumas you've gone through, but what happens is they organize their life around that. A belief that then becomes a rule. What's it costing you? And it's my job. It is my job, just like the elder in this book saying, Hey, I see the grief, but go home. There's another character in the book. And he's an idiot. I mean, he's a total idiot. He goes to the Father Zosima for help with um uh family, family argument. He's kind of like the clown of the family. He he acts out, he's goofy, he's just like, hey, look at me. You know, he's that guy. And Zasama is really funny, you know. Instead of like playing into it or like chastising him, you know, saying, What are you doing, man? Like, you know, this is a holy place. Why are you acting like a fool? He didn't do that. Zosima didn't do that. Father Zosima didn't do that. He also didn't ridicule him, he didn't, he didn't do anything. You know what he said? He looked at the guy, and the guy's like, Oh yeah, I'm here to hear everything from you, holy man. Like he was really putting him down. And, you know, the character was really good. He didn't feed into it. And you know what he said to him? Stop lying to yourself. He also said, stop basically sleeping around and being gross. But he in general, he said, stop lying. Not just to other people, but stop lying to yourself. You're acting like a buffoon and acting like an idiot because you're lying to yourself. And Zosimo was just like, stop lying. It was great, and that's what we need to do in therapy more. Compassion and affirmation are only part of it. So, so we need to find the other half. So, what do we do when we identify a half truth? And listen, it is not easy to find a half truth at all, and is very uncomfortable. And that's what I want to say to you. I love it when my clients are willing for me to confront their half truth. They'll look at me and I can see they're pissed. And then they step into the conversation. They say, Okay, actually, yeah, I can see that. Okay, let's talk about how you've created a rule from something that happened in your life, an artifact in your life. You created a rule, and now that rule is actually creating the very distress in your life that you you came to me for. I love it when they're able to step into me with that. And others can't. Others get pissed and they leave. And I get it. Sometimes we're not ready to confront it. So, what do we do when you identify half-truth and you don't have a piper sitting across from you? We do not replace it with positive affirmation. Please don't do that. Please don't. You all know how I feel about affirmations. If someone betrayed you, the answer isn't to stand in front of a mirror and announce people are trustworthy. That that no, that's not truthful. It's just the opposite generalization. It's stupid. Don't do that. The goal is not to replace an uncomfortable half-truth with a pleasant one. That is not the goal. The goal is a complete truth. And I think one of the simplest ways of beginning to do this is with the word and not but, and. So, for example, my father was dangerous, and my husband is not my father. How about this one? I learned that relying on other people could result in disappointment. And there are people in my life now who have demonstrated reliability. How about this one? I have experienced something terrifying. And feeling afraid now does not automatically mean I'm in danger now. Or I was betrayed and the person sticking sitting across from me has not been my betrayer. Or I could protect myself then, and I have choices available, and I have choices available. I couldn't, excuse me, I'm reading this one wrong because I wrote all these down. I couldn't protect myself then, and I have choices available to me now that I did not have then. So see how the and doesn't erase anything. That's why I like it. We are not denying anything. We're not asking you to pretend the first half didn't happen. We're adding information that the existing story has excluded. And then comes the part that therapy sometimes spends way too much or way too little time on. You have to behave as though the other half might be true. Because intellectual insight is not enough. You can sit in therapy for years saying, I know my husband isn't my father, while continuing to respond to your husband as though he is. You can know that avoidance maintains anxiety while continuing to avoid, right? You can understand perfectly well why you struggle to trust while never giving another person enough opportunity to demonstrate that they're trustworthy. At some point, the new truth needs evidence. And evidence usually requires behavior. So ask, if the other half were also true, what would I do differently? Not for the rest of your life this week. Maybe that means I let someone else handle something without supervising them, right? Maybe I tolerate uncertainty without checking. Maybe I have a conversation I've been avoiding. Maybe I stay in a situation long enough for my nervous system to discover that the anxiety can rise and fall without catastrophe. Maybe I can allow someone to disagree with me without immediately defending myself. Maybe I have actually ask for help. Gosh, I got one of those phone calls last week and it meant the world to me. Something small enough that you're not recklessly abandoning everything you've learned. Just something small. You're not abandoning the first part. But it has to be real enough that reality gets an opportunity to answer back. Because ultimately that's what we're trying to do. We're collecting evidence, not evidence about what happened to you 20 years ago. We already know that happened. We already have all the evidence. What we need now is evidence as what uh evidence of what is true now. So, what else is true? That brings me back. It brings me back to Dostoyevsky. Oh, did you guys hear that? That was pretty good, Dostoevsky. Ooh, I had a nice little accent with that too. Anyway, that grieving mother story doesn't become false because Father's Osama tells her to return home at all. Her child is still dead. She still loves him and she is deeply grieving. I'm telling you guys, find this excerpt online and it's heart-wrenching. Nothing about his response asks her to surrender any of those truths. He didn't. All he simply sees is he sees something else, and he simply says, Hey, there's a husband at home. And that's another person who loved that child, and that is another person who is grieving, and that's another relationship that still exists. That's another truth. And maybe that's a question I really want to leave with you today. Think about one thing you know to be true about your life. Not something obviously irrational. I'm pick the thing from you have evidence for, okay? The thing that you could defend, the thing that happened, the thing you understood about yourself for years. Don't argue against it. Instead, ask what else is true. If you constantly live in your half truth and you build identity over the half-truth, and you only live through the rule of the half-truth, you are therefore, I believe, increasing the distress you say you want to release. It's true. So what else is true? And sometimes it's really saying, you know what? I have created a self around um what happened to me, and I don't want to put it down. That's great. Okay, then you have both truths out there, but you gotta confront it. That's what good therapy does. It confronts us with our half-truths and said, I'm not denying what took place with you, I'm not denying your pain, I'm not denying any of that, but what's happening today? How if you created a life based on 20 years ago's pain? And ask yourself, what else is true? What conclusion did I derive or draw from what happened? What evidence have I stopped allowing into my story? What would I have to see before I permitted myself to reconsider the conclusion? Ask yourself, what does this belief allow me to do? What does this belief cost me? What does it protect me, so-called protect me from doing? And if another truth exists alongside it, and it will, if you really truly do this this introspection in this work, you need to ask if there's another truth that exists alongside your other half-truth, what would I do differently if I allowed that truth to matter too? Because, you know, listen, the most difficult half-truths are not the things we've gotten wrong, and it's not us lying to ourselves, they're the things we've gotten right, and then allowed to explain it too much. You don't have to abandon what's true in order to stop living by half-truth. You have to discover what else is true. It's mandatory. And I really challenge you if you're in therapy or you've jumped from elder to elder, and that's in the blog I wrote about, if you jump from counselor to counselor, because maybe they confront you with the half-truth and say, Nope, then you have to understand you're willing to live your life by half truth, and you really don't actually want to be better, maybe yet, because for you to find a more fulfilled life, you have to rearrange your life and not organize it around your half truth. You can create identity around your pain. You absolutely can. But what else are you missing because you do that? Well, thanks all. Uh, I hope this sat with you. I'm telling you, you gotta get into those books, y'all. And you have to be open to learning because this one got me all kinds of tangled up, and it's a beautiful story. And if you've never read Brothers Karamazov, number one, it's gonna take you a long time to read it. Um, it's great. Be open to these things. Have a blessed day, and I'll catch y'all later. That brings us to the end of this episode. Thanks for joining me. I hope you learned some tools that can equip you to untangle your mind and untangle your life. If you're curious about working with me for your anxiety or trauma, head on over to my website at untangledmind.net to connect with me. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review me on your podcast listening platform and share it with your friends and family. As always, thanks so much for listening to me, Piper Harris with the Untangled Mind Podcast. I'll talk with you next time.