The Lie That Sinks All Friendships and Wellness Programs

Fostering isolation, nullifying R U OK? Day, ending connection – here’s the lie that sinks all friendships and wellness programs.

In September in Australia, we celebrate a largely corporate focusing day called R U OK? Day. Usually it lasts longer than the individual day, with employee assistance programs and community ambassadors pushing very heavily for the day to be visible, represented, and that the goal of the day be fully realised – that we should push at more meaningful conversations with the people we work with and do life around, and check in with how people are really doing.

Having worked in a large variety of offices being a contract based software consultant, I’ve seen a lot of successful attempts at ensuring employees ask their co-workers questions in a non-threatening, non-judgmental way. That we be not too pushy, not immediately offering a solution or judgement when someone opens up about something, and that we treat people with value and respect. These are all great sentiments and I’m very grateful that such wisdom and opportunity is mandated so widely across so many different industries.

However, there still remains one glaring problem with days like R U OK? Day or sentiments with encouraging coworkers to look out for each other. It’s the same problem that affects all corporate and community driven wellness programs in general. I’ve also seen it affect friendships, marriages, and every other type of relationship you can think of.

It’s that you are a liar.

Stay with me here. Because this is what the facts are telling us.

The UK-based Mental Health Foundation interviewed 2000 different people around their conversations with people. Respondants reported saying “I’m fine” to a friend, co-worker, spouse or other person 14 times a week, but only 19% of respondants meant it. 81% of respondants were fully aware they were not genuine about their personal wellbeing. 60% of the respondants also expected the answer given by the other person to be a lie.

Again in the UK, 5000 people were interviewed for a study by Censuswide and 34% of respondants said they would rather lie than have what they self-described as an awkward conversation about their mental health or wellbeing. The highest reasoning being that they did not want to burden someone else with their problems, at 26%.

A 2020 study on the impacts of lying to friends directly correlated dishonesty with greater depressive symptoms and poorer friendship quality. I wrote more specifically on this topic of friendship in You Need To Stop Lying To Your Friends

A 2024 British Journal of Psychological Study study found that regardless of the intention when being dishonest, lower self-esteem and in increase in negative emotions followed dishonest practices or responses.

This is a topic you could go nuts researching yourself, or even use an AI tool like NotebookLM or whatever your favourite is to pool what all the research continues to resoundingly tell us: your level of honesty is at the scene of the crime every time.

I wonder what side of the statistics you find yourself on?

By “your”, of course I mean “our”. I did a big reflective piece earlier in the year entitled The High Cost of Ignoring Your Mental Health, And My Huge Regret, where I noted a lack of pure honesty with more people regarding some situations in my life, especially earlier rather than later, being a real blocker to achieving and maintaining my own wellness. I had to be the strong one, right? I frequently found myself in roles where I was caring for others, but not as forthcoming with people who needed to know about how things really were, especially people who were in a situation to help. Sure, I told some close friends, but I was not always direct with other individuals affected by a current state of affairs, and I also waited way too long to talk at length with a professional about it.

I had a huge mental health blowup at the end of 2016 into the start of 2017. Even though I had had some severe panic attacks in 2014, I adamantly insisted with a counsellor at the time that it was purely due to some career based factors, and did not allow it to be the case in my mind or in those describing the situation that there were other factors in my life contributing to these challenges.

I put on a loooooooot of weight when I got sick here and into the recovery period there, and have had quite a difficult time trying to get back at least to where I was. After years of different types of approaches on losing it though, I’ve finally settled into a winning combination of things that have been working (10kg down in the last few months so far, and new belt and pant purchases have been required which has been really great).

But it’s also been interesting that as the weight has been coming off that there have been memories or experiences that seem to also be ejecting themselves out of the body and mind as that has been happening. This is kind of what prompted me to be thinking on the topic here.

If you’re more interested, I wrote a lot more about this journey in the above post as well as in 6 Things That Helped Me Get Through Depression And Anxiety and I’m Just A Man (2016 In Review)

In being more honest earlier and seeking help when I’ve needed it more quickly, I’ve been able to avoid a larger blowup. For example after the birth of one of my children (although in truth it happened with every child) I had quite a significantly traumatic set of experiences and I felt a severe dip in my mental health, immediately reaching out for some extra counselling to help me through it. I felt utterly gutted that during what is supposed to be a time of great joy, I was having to deal with some external factors that were anything but joyful, and needed not to lose my strength at a pivotal moment in life and family.

I’ve always endeavoured to be quite an honest person and an open book, and indeed in a vast majority of areas of my life I have been. Hopefully over the years you as a reader of my work have gotten a sense of that as well. I am regular with friends and mentors, open with my wife, and invite other men in my life to hold me accountable and speak life into situations where I’m not doing well or I’m making mistakes.

However, it hasn’t always been every area, and indeed for fear of hurting some other people I kept the light dimmer for far too long, as I write in more detail in my other posts.

All this to say, when I say that you’re a liar and you’re perpetuating the lie that sinks all friendships and important relationships in your life, I get it. I get why you want to hide how you’re doing.

You don’t want to crush someone else who is already struggling with their own things.

You don’t want to undermine the work you’ve put in to get to the position you are today.

You don’t want to invalidate someone’s else privacy no matter how impactful their actions are on your state of mind, or even your physical health.

You don’t want to keep talking about the same thing over and over again.

You don’t have the money or don’t want to spend it on repeated professional involvement.

This and many more reasons have the unfortunate side effect of keeping us trapped in isolation, perpetuating cycles of mental illness and destruction, caught on the merry go round circling over and over and over around the same old stuff that never seems to go away.

And yet it is honesty that will lead to answers, healing, and true connection in life.

It’s very hard for someone to fall in love with you or be friends with you, even to work with you, if you’re always wearing a mask. If you always put up a certain face, don’t be surprised when you feel alone, because all people are able to see, reach, or connect with, is a shell that continually hides the truth.

Now some things are also still true here – you could be a gossip rather than discussing something in a helpful way, some people genuinely can’t handle it, some people aren’t safe to tell, some people would be put in an unfair situation if you overload them with certain information. I get it. I think we all do.

But you need to let the right people in. You need to live with the lights turned on.

Until honesty is given its time to shine, every wellness program, community outreach, or bid for connection with a friend or a lover is fundamentally wasted because both participants in the exchange aren’t doing their part.

Now absolutely we need to keep reaching out to people and providing opportunities for people to share and open up, don’t get me wrong here. I think all of these programs are absolutely fantastic. I love that R U OK? Day is encouraged for the entire month, I love that all these assistance programs exist, and I love being a part of communities where we can actively engage with others and reach out when people may not be able to handle things on their own.

But we’ve spent so long blaming the people asking the questions and reaching out to others for why loneliness and mental health decline remains.

Maybe it’s time to point the finger at the second part of the equation – the one who chooses to continue to lie, to be evasive, to remain dishonest about their own state of affairs, and continually experiences no light or change in their lives.

I have witnessed the decline of so many great people in my life – friends, family, coworkers, public figures – and every single time, the stupid decision before all the other stupid decisions in their life has been isolation, evasion, dishonesty, or living with the doors locked and the lights turned off.

All these decades later, it continues to be true that the one who isolates themselves rage against all sound judgment. And all these years later, it also continues to be the case that the truth you know sets you free.

You can’t control anybody else in your life. You can’t control a lot of the circumstances in your life. You can’t erase the past. You can’t get anyone else to try harder or do differently.

You can control you.

And you can control your own personal level of honesty.

Today, you can continue to tell the lie that sinks all friendships, wellness programs, and well intentioned actions in your life to try to give you a place to speak safely and show your truest self.

Or, you can break the cycle, either one you’ve stumbled into yourself, a generational one in your family, a perpetuated muting in your corporate structure, or a habit born out of remaining Timon and Pumbaa level friends with the people in your life, and tell the truth.

Live with the light turned on.

And in doing so, you will invite everyone else around you to do the same.

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How about you? What do you think is the lie that sinks all friendships and wellness programs?