How To Respond To “I’m Just Being Honest” Excuse 

You don’t have to fight against or accept offensive vague honesty. If you want useful feedback, ask for specific fact-based feedback. If you want to defend yourself, acknowledge their perspective and clarify your perspective. If you want to ignore it and move on, acknowledge your fault and change topic.

Have you ever worked with someone who was rude or aggressive with you and still told you, ”No offense, I’m just being honest”, “I’m just sincere”, or “Just being real”?

How do you respond to someone who tries to justify with excuses why they are being rude, offensive, or insulting you?

Here are proven strategies to respond to people who are rude and still try to justify it with comments like, “I’m just being honest,” “I’m just being truthful” or “That’s just the way I am.”

Remember that their truth is not universal.

Truth is relative: their truth may not be your truth. What is right for them may be wrong for you and vice-versa. Don’t allow someone to dictate the rules on your behalf.

Find out if it is judgement disguised as honesty.

Is their honest comment about your intentions? Remember that they don’t know your intentions unless you communicate them. Here are some examples of judgement disguised as honesty.

• “You are lazy.”  That’s often a poorly informed judgement. You may have a good reason to act in a certain way. For example, if you are taking care of a sick family member.
• “Your ideas are stupid.” Based on who’s judgement, what criteria, and which context?
• “It’s your fault that I feel this way.” Blaming others for one’s problems and negative feelings is not accurate because feelings are based on our own interpretation of facts.
• “You are too young / old.” Ask yourself, so what? Why does this matter?

Recognize the purpose of their honest communication.

Consider the goal of their honest communication.

Is their goal merely to vent off their frustrations? Honesty is helpful if it is about one’s feelings, life, and ideas. However, is not helpful if it is about judging other people. To move the conversation towards helping them express their frustrations you could say, “I am sorry you feel that way,” “It must be hard,” or “Is everything ok with you?”

Is their goal to help you grow and make better choices? Then, how the message is delivered matters. Get them to share a factual, specific, and non-accusing feedback for best results. For example, “Could you please share a specific example of that?”

Or is their goal to show how powerful they are? Sometimes people are aggressive and rude to play power up and show they are the alpha. In this case, if you want to increase your relative power compared to them, then stand up, take up more space with your body, keep eye contact, and don’t back away.

Probe for specific helpful feedback.

A mature way to handle honesty that is unhelpful judgement is to probe further for specifics when you don’t understand where their judgement is coming from, to share your perspective, or to partially agree with what they say without getting emotional about it.

• For example, you could ask, “Could you give me a specific example of when this happened.”
• If they accuse you of being too young for something you could say, “What is it about being young that is a problem?”
• If they accuse your ideas of being stupid you could say, “What is it about my ideas that are stupid.”
• If they blame you of hurting their feelings you could say, “What is it about what I said that makes you feel that way?”
• If they say that you are lazy you could say, “What is it about what I do that is lazy?”, “I can understand why you may think that I am lazy. My child has been severely sick this week.” Or “You are right, I am laid back.”

When other people play a more aggressive and negative communication, play back at a higher mature note that not only helps them express themselves appropriately but also shows them by example how to communicate in a powerful, effective, and respectful way.

To learn more about how to confidently and effectively be respectful and kind when you handle hard conversations, click here to get this free crash course on how to be assertive without being rude and without being aggressive here.