The afternoon I told someone the complete truth
How radical honesty creates unbreakable bonds
It was a random afternoon in 2008—a warm breeze, Berlin university campus grass under my feet, nothing special at first glance. Little did I know that this was going to be one of the most important afternoons of my life.
I was the first to start—agreeing to this exercise, which my then-new best friend and I had decided to try together. It was the first time in my life that I came, well, fully clean.
The first time since early childhood that I told someone the truth. The unabridged, complete, painful, shameful, hurtful, beautiful truth. The truth about myself.
At that moment, and for hours after, I felt a bouquet of emotions I hadn’t experienced in a very long time—not all pleasant. But through the discomfort, something else started to accumulate as well: a deep, almost disorienting relief.
When it finally hit, pure joy came tumbling after, as if the doors to a long-locked cellar in my heart had swung wide open. I felt as if the weight of a lifetime had been lifted—the weight, as I would realize, of lying and withholding. Not only to others but mostly to myself.
That open space—and a non-judgmental counterpart receiving it all—felt like a gift I didn’t even know I’d been searching for.
Have you ever noticed the subtle but constant pressure of what goes unsaid?’
The Catalyst Honesty
A few weeks earlier, my friend shared a book: “You have to read this.” It was Brad Blanton’s Radical Honesty.
That afternoon was the direct aftermath of absorbing his message: that most of us are, consciously or not, almost always lying—to others, yes, but most of all to ourselves.
Blanton claims that lying is what makes us sick; that the path to healing and genuine connection is paved by sharing the truth, even the awkward or embarrassing bits. Especially the awkward or embarrassing bits.
Why Do We Learn to Lie?
Years later, I repeated the exercise. I even recorded it and made my future wife watch it in the first weeks of our relationship—this was my way of starting on a blank, honest slate.
Lying, it turns out, is a developmental milestone. According to current research, it starts around age three. There’s a well-known experimental setup: The parent covers an object, asks the child not to peek, then leaves. The moment is simple but profound: Most kids peek. When asked if they looked, the child is confronted with a choice—tell the truth, risk punishment, or try out a little white lie. This is when humans discover something powerful: The other cannot know for sure. You can try lying. It gives you a sudden glimpse of power. But it also brings the slippery slope—the need to remember your story, to cover new lies with more lies, to carry the guilt or shame of being found out.
As children, we quickly learn to tell half-truths, to omit, to fudge a little—especially when the emotional incentive is high enough (survival, belonging, love, or just getting a cookie). But the habit grows, layer by layer, until we hardly notice the constant work of managing these little (and sometimes big) fabrications.
Consider breaking up here for reader clarity and flow.
We’re taught lying is bad… except, sometimes, it’s encouraged. Stories of ‘noble lies,’ white lies, and ‘protecting’ others muddy the water. Family, school, and society layer in more complexity: morality, ethics, shame, respectability. All this combines into a web inside, shaping what we call “my truth”—when I choose to speak up, how much discomfort I’ll tolerate, and the pains I’ll swallow in silence.
The House of Cards and the Cost of Withholding
No surprise, this can create an enormous house of cards. But there’s something more subtle and, in a way, more damaging: withholding. Often, withholding is praised as tact, politeness, or maturity. But in reality, it can be pure speculation—imagining what others will feel if we speak, when really, we’re mostly afraid of the discomfort inside ourselves.
What makes withholding so draining is that it’s invisible, even to ourselves. The world rewards ‘nice,’ but beneath the surface, the cost is ongoing and compounding.
To me withholding feels like shoveling snow in a blizzard. Every shovelful you don’t toss away, every feeling unshared, piles up, making the burden heavier and heavier. If you don’t clear it out regularly, eventually the shovel is too heavy to lift—paralysis, or a sudden collapse.
When we here the term radical honesty for the first time, we usually think about sharing our thoughts, our interpretation of situations. That is though actually not advisible, because your interpretations are debatable. And this is exactly what is happening usually, you get arguments because your creating situations where you argue over who's interpretation of any given situation is right. Here’s what changed everything for me: I realized that the key to radical honesty lies in confessing your feelings—the emotions your were feeling in or because of any situation. Your feelings are yours. If you say "What you said, made me feel sad", then I can't say "No, it didn't". But it opens up a space for me to tell you how this now makes me feel. And then begins the process of working through these motions, thus letting them go and resolving the whole thing.
That is not easy, but it works.
You can go one level deeper, and that would be to sharing the actual, unfiltered sensations that arise in your body. This is why I prefer to call it ‘sensual honesty’ —a concept where you share your sensations honestly, taking vulnerability to another, more embodied level.
It’s only fair to say there’s a vast difference between telling somebody what you think and sharing what you’re sensing. What sets sensual honesty apart is its focus: telling the truth about what is happening in your body right now—the sensation, not the thought.
When you say, “I’m angry,” that’s a thought about a feeling. When you say, “My chest feels tight, my stomach is buzzing, my hands are clammy,” that’s a direct sensation—a physical signal your body is sending in real time.
Why is this so powerful? Sensations cannot be debated, criticized, or even misunderstood the way stories can. They’re real, grounded, and—if you pay attention—are the foundation of all emotions and thoughts.
The Sensual Honesty Framework in Action
How do you practice sensual honesty?
Notice what is happening in your body as you interact with someone—heat, tension, butterflies, numbness. Name that sensation then even if it feels awkward “Right now, I feel a tightness in my throat and a flutter in my stomach as I share this with you”. Allow both you and the other person to process; don’t rush to fill the space. You’ll be amazed at how quickly an honest moment of shared sensation can break tension, invite intimacy, or clear away decades of habitual patterns.
I made plenty of rookie mistakes in the beginning.
One was to guess what of the truth I was about to share will be a truth bomb, and which won't. The reason for guessing was that I was still terrified of potentially dropping a truth bomb. A truth-bomb is a piece of honest sharing that has the potential to trigger intense emotional reactions on both sides. In thus developed the truth-bomb matrix. It shows that your chances of what is going to be a truth-bomb or not is only right in 50% of cases - which is essentially guessing. That insight was helpful to me to stop overthinking and start sharing these more often.
Another classic? The so-called “drive-by shooting honesty.” That’s when you drop a truth bomb and then vanish, leaving the other person reeling without the chance to respond or process.
It quickly became clear: Honesty is not a monologue. Sensual honesty—real honesty—requires presence and patience. It asks you to stay, to witness, and to hold a shared space as whatever arises comes up.
In the beginning I had to setup regular Honesty sessions with my wife, every Wednesday evening, where we sat down, look each other in the eyes and shared all the feelings and sensations of situations of the past week, that didn't find space to be expressed.
It was during these episodes where I came to realise that these moments of sensual honesty are like cups of creme brulée. Especially in times when you share a truth bombs, I experienced that something broke. In the beginning I got very scared because I though I had completely broken something. At one point I thought I had actually broken my relationship. But if you manage to sit through it and keep sharing your sensual truth, you work through and can see that actually something just broke open. Like when you crack the crust of a creme brulée with your spoon. And what you find underneath is just delicious pudding.
Sensual Honesty for a Renaissance Life
Why is sensual honesty the heart of what I call a Renaissance life? Because the foundation of true change is the willingness to experience—and communicate—the reality of your desires, needs, and boundaries as they actually manifest. When you show up with sensual honesty, resentment and pretense have nowhere to hide. And in that courageous vulnerability, you’ll find a new strength and ease in every type of human connection.
I teach a full Sensual Honesty protocol inside my group, The Renaissance Society. This includes practical exercises, peer support, and guided practices to help you live this principle every day.
If you want to learn more or experience the practice yourself, send me a message with the word “honesty.” I love helping people rediscover their own aliveness, authenticity, and connection.
To more honesty (and more pudding!) in your life,
Nicco
Your sensual honesty song waits here: