Introduction

‘Your call is important to us.  Please continue to hold, an operator will be with you shortly…’

I am sure we are all familiar with this scenario, whether calling customer service at a large corporation or ringing a government department with whom we have no choice but to interact. 

Such an exchange is shorthand for an extraordinarily common occurrence today – hearing one thing, while all other indications suggest something else entirely.  Essentially, we are being told something which is manifestly untrue, while those doing the telling insist that this is not the case.  If our call really was important, we would not have to make several attempts to get through a telephone system designed to deter, and then wait endlessly for an answer while listening to execrable music on repeat.

Truth or dare

Of course, a little exaggeration and untruth has always oiled the wheels of both business and pleasure – but now something quite different is happening and on a much larger scale.  It has become quite routine to obscure the truth, in favour of something which either sounds better or makes people feel better, but which ultimately destroys the trust that is so necessary for healthy human functioning.  This is happening in all areas of life, in the personal and the professional world, and is I believe contributing significantly to the malaise across society, not least the so-called ‘mental health crisis’. 

It becomes increasingly hard to function if we don’t know who to trust and we can’t distinguish fantasy from at least some degree of fact. Back in 1936, in the poem Burnt Norton, T S Eliot famously declared, that “human kind cannot bear very much reality”.[1] I doubt that even he could have predicted our wholesale abandonment of the truth, and what is real, to the point where large sections of society actually deny the existence of truth, while at the same time insisting on the importance of ‘authenticity’ and demanding privilege for their own ‘lived experience’.

The modern concept of ‘identifying’ as something is a good illustration of this paradox.  It is perfectly natural to identify with someone’s experience or feelings, but we can only ‘identify’ as something when we know that we are not, in fact, that thing, even as we claim it as ‘our authentic self’. 

More or less 

Young people are increasingly confused by a world which on the one hand, tells them that their needs take priority because they are ‘worth it’ – that they are, in essence, the centre of their own universe.  At the same time reality tells a very different and far harder story. Employers frequently fail even to acknowledge job applications, or have artificial intelligence reject candidates minutes after the submission of documents; patients can’t get doctors’ appointments, or wait hours in hospital emergency departments for basic care; and increasingly emotional distress, rather than being explored and understood, is ‘diagnosed’ as a ‘disorder’ after a few box ticks.  Perhaps none of us matters very much, after all, in the scheme of things.

It is a cruel perversion of a message which lies at the heart of the paradox of being human, and which has sustained us for centuries – that each of us is both intrinsically valuable as an individual, but also one among many whose wellbeing must be considered.  In the past, that value was rooted in being known and appreciated by family and community, while at the same time accepting our responsibility and duty within society to strive for the common good.  As traditional ideas of family and community collapse, the message of value has become entirely narcissistic and superficial, and ideas of loyalty and service to a common cause have largely been abandoned.  After all, why should we care about anyone else, when nobody cares about us?

This elevation of style over substance seeds disconnection, anxiety and depression. Dating apps and social media show photos edited with today’s most fashionable filters, rather than real people.  ‘Tweakments’ and other cosmetic procedures are on the rise among both men and women, the underlying message no longer being ‘make the most of what you have’, but instead saying ‘reality is not good enough’ and possibly never will be.

Influencers are awash with advice on relationship ‘red flags’, many of which were regarded as normal behaviour between what were once rather quaintly called courting couples.  In her popular Substack, Girls, Freya India wrote recently about the current crisis of trust experienced by the younger generation, explaining simply that her generation did not lose trust, “it is what my generation did not develop”. She continues, “we doubt what it means to live, what it means to love, what it means to be a good person, why any of that matters.  Nothing is certain”.[2]

Lies, damned lies

It is increasingly common to hear people say, “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but…”.  When we look at what has happened – and continues to happen – on the world stage, it is hardly surprising.  Government responses to Covid are perhaps the most egregious example of those in authority bending the truth, while simultaneously entire populations were subject without consent to a real-time, real-life uncontrolled psychological experiment. Loss of trust is a dangerous development, because trust and truth-telling lies at the heart of the social contract between the governed and the government in a democracy.  When that breaks down, communities and countries become increasingly ungovernable and unstable, as nobody really knows what is going on, and nobody knows who to believe.

The so-called ‘legacy media’ has earned that soubriquet as they have increasingly failed in their duty to investigate, inform and educate.  Some questions became too difficult to ask; it was undesirable to hold some politicians and public figures to account; and many swallowed too readily a government line, and effectively became the unchallenging mouthpiece of those with a vested interest in pushing a particular story line or viewpoint.  The ‘new’ media has produced some very interesting commentators and content creators – but how do we hold them to account, and assess the accuracy of what they are telling us, when the regulators that we rely upon can no longer be trusted?

Even law enforcement and the justice system has been infected to some degree.  The same violent message – usually wishing death or destruction on someone or something – appears to be judged very differently, depending on who is making the threat (or more likely holding the banner or ‘tweeting’ a message) and who is being threatened.  Truth has always been linked with justice, and unless we can accept the truth – or reality – of every offence (or perceived offence), and treat perpetrators and victims impartially, in line with the law, there can be no justice.

Not what it seems 

We also see this willingness to turn a blind eye to reality play out in small, very personal ways.  For example, there have always been couples who have held several events to celebrate their marriage, often in different countries or at different times. When family is scattered across the globe, it is a joyful way to include as many people as possible in a special occasion. It is entirely reasonable and understandable.  We did it ourselves.  Some countries require a statutory civil marriage before the couple’s preferred nuptials can happen.

However, in recent years there has been a significant increase in the ‘wedding-which-isn’t-a-wedding’ phenomenon.  Here, usually for reasons of expediency, a couple marries in a small, pared back ceremony, with few witnesses and a small, low-key celebration, often kept secret.  Sometime later – on occasion, much later – another ‘wedding’ is arranged, with much fanfare, many guests and no expense spared.  There may well be stag and hen parties and ‘pre-wedding’ gatherings.  On the day, the radiant pair exchange vows in front of a celebrant. 

It is all picture perfect, apart from one major flaw – it isn’t the ‘wedding’ which most, if not all, the guests believe that they are witnessing.  That happened when the couple was actually married.  This truth is steamrollered by the overwhelming desire to make the event what the people concerned want it to be, rather than accepting it for what it is.  Instead of either waiting for the big wedding, or acknowledging the earlier marriage ceremony, and inviting friends and family to celebrate at a later date, it seems that many want to have their wedding cake and eat it too.

A similar trend can be seen in the recording of births.  A birth certificate should be a simple factual document, recording the date and place of a child’s birth, their biological sex, and the names of the biological parents.  In various different countries, pressure groups have lobbied governments to change this fundamental understanding, to record instead parental preferences. Some would like both parties in a same-sex couple recorded on the birth certificate, despite that being a biological impossibility; and others, in cases of surrogacy or assisted conception, would like any reference to sperm or egg donors, or even birth mothers, overlooked in favour of the names of the parents who will raise the child. 

Many will say that this is the ‘kind’ and ‘inclusive’ thing to do.  This is particularly hard to understand when this attention to the sensitivities of parents results in another human being – in this case the newborn baby – being subject to a grotesque deception.  Not just any deception, but one which will sit at the very heart of their lifelong identity.  As and when the truth is revealed – which it inevitably will be – the psychological consequences for the child are likely to be significant.

Don’t confuse me with the facts

This desire to indulge a fantasy at the expense of the reality has leached out into the public square.  It was demonstrated most recently in the reaction to the clear and comprehensive ruling given by the UK Supreme Court on the meanings of the very ordinary terms, ‘man’ and ‘woman’ and ‘male’ and ‘female’.  There are those, including apparently the authorities at the Houses of Parliament, who hitherto appear to be unable to accept the truth and have publicly declared that it is ‘business as usual’ rather than abiding by the law as now clearly defined.

What’s you, what’s me, what’s real?

For therapists, this wholesale shift in the relationship between both individuals and institutions with the truth should be a significant turn of events, and set off alarm bells.  As clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Jaco van Zyl recently reminded us, responsible and ethical therapy includes “a commitment to reality orientation”.  He continues, “learning to integrate reality and to modulate emotional interference with reality-relating is the basis for psychological health, relational success, and properly functioning societies”.[3]  In other words, being able to identify and accept the truth is vital for our wellbeing as individuals and more widely.

Most human beings find living with uncertainty very hard, but a good therapist can help anyone who is struggling to hold the known and the unknown in tension.  We regularly invite clients to consider ‘what is you, what is me, and what is real?’, as we examine and disentangle relationships, events and environment.   We explore the need for control and certainty, and help people develop tools to assess and manage the circumstances in which they find themselves.

It would be reasonable to expect, therefore, that the increasing army of therapists and other wellbeing practitioners would champion carefully calibrated truth telling.  It should be a part of the therapeutic process, to encourage people to think about their thoughts, feelings and assumptions, and to test them against verifiable reality.  As Jaco van Zyl asserts, “psychological distress is, in the most simple terms, an ailment of not-thinking”.

Cuddly collusion and artful affirmation

In fact, the opposite seems to be happening.  Therapists collude with clients, sometimes even to the point that the performative sharing of their own difficulties, ’disorders’ or ‘lived experience’ is seen to be advantageous.  There is little sign here of any willingness first to “take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye”.[4] Instead, there’s a distinct feeling that deliberately blurred vision and an unwillingness to see clearly is somehow desirable – and perhaps distortion and dysfunction is even to be celebrated, rather than constructively corrected.  Instead of building resilience and personal agency to help clients overcome disadvantage, there is a growing call for affirmation, accommodation and adaptation to the client’s difficulties.

Why is this happening?  As public life becomes ever more brutal and lacking in grace, our unwillingness ‘to tell it how it is’ bizarrely increases.  The ubiquitous exhortation to ‘be kind’ is partly responsible, along with the concepts of ‘unconditional positive regard’ and its close cousin, ‘being non-judgemental’, which have left the therapy room and infiltrated all aspects of life. Then there is the widespread adoption within the counselling and psychotherapy world of critical social justice (CSJ) theory, and the binary divide between the oppressed and their oppressors.  We have overlooked the importance of responsibility and agency, individuality, and the consequences of lives lived on whim and without challenge. This usually ends up treating nobody very kindly.

In many ways, it is a clear illustration of the pendulum swinging too far.  Attempts to ‘be kind’ and to ‘be inclusive’ were – and often still are – well-intentioned.  We have, however, forgotten the well-known adage that sometimes we have ‘to be cruel to be kind’.  Giving everyone what they want, and accepting or including everyone and everything without question, is not generally good for individuals or society.  Safeguarding requires discernment and judgements to be made.  We can see this if we compare it with raising a child – a parent who never says no, affirms everything their child says and does, and accepts all behaviour without challenge is unlikely to raise a happy, well-adjusted and competent adult.

Being cruel to be kind

As professionals working in mental health, we have no excuse for entertaining these ideas.  A recent study from the Netherlands demonstrated that “lying decreases self-esteem and increases negative affect”.[5] Lack of self-esteem and self-worth underlies much of the distress that we see daily, and yet still we are swayed more by the prevailing mood of the times, underpinned by an unhealthy ideology which challenges the very idea of truth, while our professional bodies do little to uphold tried and tested professional standards.

We see this most clearly in the area of gender ideology.   Adults – parents, teachers, clinicians – have colluded in the telling of a monstrous lie to children, that it is possible to be ‘born in the wrong body’ and that they can ‘change sex’, or that in effect they can opt-out of growing up.  In some cases, other children have inexcusably been required to endorse this lie in classrooms and other environments.  While the Supreme Court ruling made clear that it is not possible to change sex, there are still those who wish to perpetuate this untruth, on the grounds that the ruling applies only to the provisions of Equality Act of 2010. Such pedantry raises the absurd prospect of people being able to change sex in some circumstances and not others, which would be comical were it not so damaging.

Mounting evidence points to the emotional distress and complexity which underlies gender confusion in children. A recent study from Finland, examining the experience of detransitioners, found that the patients reported “that the need for transitioning in the first place was not the transgender identity or gender dysphoria, but reasons related to the maturation process and unresolved psychological stressors”.[6] The study also discovered that assessments relating to these patients revealed “childhood trauma and severe challenges in parenting and attachment”.

On the heels of the UK’s Cass Review, a new report released by the US Department of Health and Human Services, notes the importance of taking into account emotional distress and other psychiatric issues in gender-confused children, and advocates for psychotherapy as an alternative to medical interventions as “the best available evidence indicates an unfavorable risk/benefit profile for the prescription of hormonal and surgical interventions for adolescents with GD [gender dysphoria]”.[7]

The US report also notes that “social influences have plausibly contributed to the dramatic increase in adolescents presenting to pediatric gender medicine clinics over the past decade. Adolescents’ need for belonging and acceptance can be met by online communities and spaces centred around identity.  The growing use of identity labels such as ‘transgender’ and ‘non-binary’ among adolescents is an important topic for social science research”.  In failing to take this into account, and confront the truth, we are failing young people with possibly catastrophic consequences for the future.

Listen and let them speak

This reluctance to face the truth is not confined only to gender issues, however.  I recently read an article in Therapy Today, the journal of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), about school absenteeism.  Quoting Jo Holmes, the BACP’s Children, Young People and Families lead, the piece declared, “It’s important to avoid the term ‘school refusal’ because that puts the onus on the child, implying that somebody is asking them to go to school and they are saying no”.[8]   This is, however, exactly what is happening. I have frequently explored this with children.  Explaining that they are making a choice not to attend immediately gives a child a sense of agency which is otherwise missing, and is often the first step towards finding a solution.  

Renaming the situation ‘emotionally based school absence’ (EBSA), and blaming external factors, does the opposite. Undoubtedly, many schools are inadequate and unimaginative in meeting some children’s needs.  There may well be “many very complex reasons why the child feels unable to attend school, from socio-economic factors such as poverty to discrimination, bullying and high anxiety”, but non-attendance is ultimately the child’s choice, and it is their particular reasons for that choice which are paramount.  There is a deeper message being sent, loudly and clearly, if only we would listen. 

Conversely, what agency does a child have over wider social circumstances?  If absence is blamed on factors beyond a child’s control, how likely are they to return to the classroom? In any case, anyone who has ever spent time in a developing country will know that poverty is a great incentive for education.  Even in the UK, my own father was a case in point – coming from a very deprived background, he set his sights on grammar school from a very young age.  His single mother had repeatedly told him that education was ‘the only way out’ of the circumstances into which he was born.  That was true, and he learned early in life the power of both competence and resilience.

Conclusion

 As therapists we need to rediscover our vital role in reorienting our clients to reality, and to offer hope and encourage growth.  We need to tread carefully, cautiously – and, yes, kindly – but also speak the truth without fear or favour.  The tide of misery is unlikely to be turned unless we do. Finally, we also need to remain aware, as psychotherapist Padraic Gibson warned last year, in an article in Psychology Today, that “many types of ‘lying’ also involve self-deception – whether it’s justifying our choices or shaping our reality to fit our desires – and play an important role in how we perceive and interact with the world around us.”[9]Mental health practitioners, it would seem, are not immune from this.  At a time when many therapists have abandoned any pretence of neutrality, or of presenting a blank canvas, we need to remember that we have a professional duty to ‘bracket’ our own beliefs, desires and assumptions, and focus once more solely on the person in front of us and addressing their needs ethically and competently.

We can’t afford to leave this ‘on hold’.  It is too important.

[1] Eliot, T S, Burnt Norton, from the first of Four Quartets, 1936.

[2] India, F, Why We Doubt Everything, Substack, 17 April 2025, https://substack.com/home/post/p-153031277?selection=cec4e128-4564-447e-b33f-ab6c176c0ba6

[3] van Zyl, J, A Critical Response to the Irish Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy - Part 2, Critical Therapy Antidote, 20th May 2025.

[4] The Bible, Matthew Chapter 7, v5.

[5] Preuter, S et al, The costs of lying: Consequences of telling lies on liar’s self-esteem and affect, British Journal of Social Psychology, 30th December 2023.

[6] Kettula, K et al, Gender Dysphoria and Detransitioning in Adults: An Analysis of Nine Patients from a Gender Identity Clinic from Finland, Archives of Sexual Behaviour, 18th April 2025.

[7] Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria – Review of Evidence and Best Practices, Department of Health and Human Services, 1st May 2025, https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-05/gender-dysphoria-report.pdf

[8] Scrimgeour, H, Anxious and absent, BACP, Therapy Today, June 2025.

[9] Gibson, P, The Psychology and Impact of Lying and Self-Deception, Psychology Today, 29th January 2024.