The Problem with "MY TRUTH:" Why Mental Health Requires Reality

“My truth.” “Follow your truth.” “I’m just speaking my truth.”We hear these phrases everywhere. But what exactly do we mean by truth—and what happens when we confuse our subjective experience with objective reality?In this episode, I’m breaking down why that distinction matters so much for our mental health and our relationships.Mental health isn’t the absence of pain. It’s our ability to live in reality without denial, deception, or distortion—and learn to thrive there. That means reality has to matter, even when it hurts, even when we don’t like what it tells us, and especially when it tells us we’re wrong.I’ll unpack the difference between objective truth and subjective truth, why both matter, and why confusing the two creates serious problems. Your feelings are real. Your experiences matter. Your interpretation deserves to be heard. But none of those things automatically become objective facts simply because you experience them deeply.We’ll also look at what this does inside relationships. So many conflicts become unnecessarily destructive because two people are arguing over whose subjective experience gets to become the reality. Instead of learning the other person, we demand agreement. Instead of saying, “This is how I experienced it,” we insist, “This is what happened.”There’s a better way.We can learn to speak precisely. We can distinguish what we know from what we feel, remember, interpret, or believe. We can honor someone else’s experience without surrendering reality. And when reality shows us that we’re wrong, we can simply say it:I was wrong.Because mental health requires a commitment to two things: face reality and embrace your humanity.