How are you?

How would you answer that question if I asked you face-to-face? Is it genuine?

This answer can change depending on the time of day, what you were doing before I asked you this question, how you slept last night, when you last ate… basically anything.

You might instinctually give the blanket answer of “good” or “fine”. But is this answer authentic? When should you even answer authentically?

Emotional honesty is the ability to be truthful and mindful about one’s own feelings. While it’s a simple concept on the surface, it can be incredibly challenging to confront and accept raw emotion. Maybe you’re angry toward someone you never thought would hurt you. Maybe you’re at fault for an accident. Or someone you love is sick or hurting. These negative emotions can be difficult to accept or acknowledge — or both. But once you do, you’ve made the first step toward understanding why you feel like that and how to move past it.

It gets tricky when emotions are so vast and nuanced. One can experience a range of emotions like resentment, anger, denial, disgust, melancholy, depression, and disappointment. The more that you can identify and understand your own emotions, the easier it gets.

Being emotionally honest has a large focus on being honest with yourself. But it also goes past yourself, too. The scariest part is expressing it to others because of the vulnerability you’re facing and the dangerous unknown of how someone will react. Most often we embellish the reality of our well-being to avoid conflict or uncomfortable situations.

Now, I’m not advocating for you to unpack your past and recent traumas and disappointments to the grocery store checkout clerk who just wanted to kill some awkward silence with casual small talk — I’m saying that people who are close to you will only know your struggles and feelings when you let them know.

So, how are you? Do you need a hug? Or hate being touched? Are you “fine”, or are you fine. Any answer is alright.