Thread by @JonathanShedler

Increasingly common for people to say "my truth" when they mean "my experience."

You can have your own experience, belief, understanding, feelings, perspective, point of view, conviction, etc.

You don't have get to have your own "truth." Truth doesn't reside in an individual.

2/ One might say it's just an expression but it's insidious. Emotional maturity involves the capacity to call into question one's own perceptions & interpretation of events. Experience can be reflected on, understanding can change & evolve, and misperceptions can be corrected.

3/ Describing personal experience as "truth" insidiously erodes our capacity to reflect on and revise our understandings. "My truth" signals (to self and others both) that the experience is not open to question. It insists on being treated as objective fact & so negates a

4/ fundamental psychological truth: that our thoughts & feelings are not synonymous with external reality. All bona fide forms of psychotherapy understand & address this. If our perceptions & self-perceptions are treated as immutable facts, psychotherapy would be impossible.

5/ Emotional growth would be impossible. In contemporary psychological theory, the recognition that our thoughts and feeling are not synonymous with external reality is called "mentalization." Where people speak of "my truth," mentalization is easily derailed.
TBC

6/ When mentalization fails, we may slip into what's called "psychic equivalence" mode...
... "a mind-state where no distinction is drawn between the contents of the mind and the external world—where what is thought in the mind is assumed to be automatically true." (wikipedia)

7/ For example, a person who feels hurt by something another person says or does automatically presumes that the person deliberately & maliciously *intended* to harm them. In their mind, this is an absolute & unquestioned fact. Any capacity to consider other possible explanations

8/ or interpretation of their experience is lost. The capacity to accurately perceive and function in the world is damaged—because there is no longer recognition of a distinction between thoughts and feelings and external reality. And from certainty the other person intended to

9/ harm, it is a small—very small—step to "the person is evil, a monster, they must be destroyed."
Emotional maturity holds in mind that thoughts and feelings are thoughts and feelings and not an infallible gauge of what is real or true. "Psychic equivalence" is like the

10/ egocentrism of a young child who has closed his eyes and therefore believes no one else can see him. In a child, it's cute. In an adult making decisions with real-word consequences, it's disastrous.
Perhaps speaking of "my reality" is just just an expression. But we can

11/ ask whether it's an expression that invites emotionally mature or immature ways of thinking and experiencing.
There is more at stake than meets the eye.

12/ If you liked this thread and want more insights on psychology, psychotherapy, and mental health:

✅ RT the FIRST tweet of the thread to share the ♥️
✅ Follow me @JonathanShedler

Thanks for reading 🤝