Socrates was Right [(Thou) Know(est) Thyself]
When times feel dark, both figuratively and literally, winter holiday traditions and messages sometimes light the way. Whether the menorah lights of Chanukah or Kwanzaa, the tree lights of Christmas, or the candles of Yalda (and likely, others I don’t know!), people come together to support each other with hope, comfort, love, and shining the way to a better tomorrow.
In honor of that, I would like to share a principle that I hold onto. This idea helps me to connect with people who may perceive and believe very differently from me. It helps me put aside the natural tendency to judge what feels foreign or strange, and instead bring curiosity and compassion.
When people tell you about their identity or experiences, they are right.
When someone tells me about their hard day, they experienced the day as hard. When someone tells me they find something fun or funny, they do. When someone tells me that something I said or did was hurtful, they are feeling hurt by my action.
Right =/= Objective
Now, this is not a statement about objective fact. This is obvious when it comes to preference opinions, like with the person who finds something funny. It’s easy to recognize that I don’t have to find it funny too, and that’s okay. We can have different taste in humor.
Harder is opinions with impact, like the potentially hurtful statement. It’s your opinion that what I said was hurtful. My opinion may differ. In many cases, the value of caring for others’ feelings may be more important than assessing whether it was hurtful or not, but in some cases other values, like justice, may take precedence. Either way, both perspectives are, ultimately, opinions.
It’s even harder to recognize when it comes to a statement about what happened or didn’t. When I was a young child, I got into many fights with my brother while playing games that took the following form. He would say I cheated, I would say I didn’t. Our perspectives were about fact. The games had rules: only one of us could objectively be correct. (In retrospect, knowing each of us at that time, I would now assume that my brother was generally correct.) However, we both fully believed in our perspectives. And when we each presented our argument to our mother, when she interceded, we both gave her the truths of our experiences. Not objective truth, but subjective truth.
Psychosis, small scale and big
The small scale
This last idea was extremely important for my team, who worked with young people and their families going through what was societally identified as psychosis. I describe psychosis this way for a reason. The parents might see their child as psychotic; hospital staff might diagnose it that way; most people around them might, as well. The young person, however, likely does not. It’s common for families to get embroiled in arguments over what is true, just as my brother and I did. Unfortunately, clinicians often get caught up in the arguing as well. See, for example, my post on the concept of “insight.”
Somehow, clinicians have formed the belief that we need to perform “reality testing.” As if reality is something I have and you may not. When the truth is, none of us have it. We all have only our subjective truth. We experience the world, facts included, only through our perspectives.
Here’s an example from my team’s work. For a young man we were supporting, whether or not his neighbor really was sending messages trying to ruin him was of secondary importance. What was most important was that he was scared, confused, and felt like he was facing this alone because everyone was telling him he was wrong. When we all recognized each of these components – the fear, the beliefs, the sensory experiences of the messages – as subjective truth, we and the family could become a team with him to figure out a safe way forward together.
The big scale
Right now, we’re grappling with the fact that the people in our country hold many intersecting and conflicting subjective truths. Just like with the scared young man, or my brother and I disputing over a game, we are often arguing over facts. We also argue over many opinions.
These arguments are important. This is how we help our country progress. How we take our individual selves, with all our faults, frailties, and fantastic talents, and make something that rises bigger than the individual sums. If we are only the talents of one, we only rise to their height. Together, we soar much higher.
And yet even when we disagree, it is crucial that we continue to recognize the humanity and (subjective) truth in each. Too often, we put our belief about what is true or false ahead of listening to the ready truth of people’s experience about themselves. We don’t have to agree about the objective truth. But to deny their subjective experience leads to a destructive battle instead of working together to improve our society.
People must always have the lead in defining their own experience.
Here’s what I mean.
Example: Health and Human Services and “Sex-Rejecting” procedures
Recently, the US Health and Human Services (HHS) put forward a proposal for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to “bar hospitals from performing sex-rejecting procedures” for children. I’m not going to go into the science (i.e., working towards objective truth) – there are others well more expert than me to do so, and I have a more basic point to make.
The ban is to “bar hospitals from performing sex-rejecting procedures on children under 18,” suggesting that this makes it so that “the US government will not be in business with organizations that intentionally or unintentionally inflict permanent harm on children.”
There are a few messages here, designed to invalidate people’s subjective truths. What are they? First: we know better than you about how to understand your body. Such as what is rejecting, and what is affirming. Second, children’s self-perceptions are less valid. And third, we can judge better than you which harms are valid and which are not.
The government knows what harms are real
Let’s start with the idea that the government can avoid doing business with organizations that inflict harm. This idea is completely disingenuous. Hospitals routinely perform procedures that are not necessary and make permanent changes. Circumcisions. Cosmetic surgeries. In fact, nearly all actions taken by healthcare workers have the potential to, at least unintentionally, “inflict permanent harm.” If the US cannot fund potential harm, then all funding of healthcare must cease. Period. So therefore, this sentence really doesn’t mean what it literally says. Instead, it is choosing to see as valid certain harms, and treat others as invisible. How it does this: subjective bias.
Children may be less adept at reasoning… but basic self-knowledge, too?
Why single out children? There are of course biological developmental considerations; but people use these to support both perspectives. Additionally, this statement might come from the belief that children can’t think through ideas of gender/sex as well, and are more impulsive about making decisions. More impulsive, perhaps; but we can address this easily. Thinking through the ideas? Adults aren’t exactly in agreement about how to understand gender/sex.
But there’s a more basic message: a child’s basic subjective truth of ‘who am I’ is less valid than an adult’s. I don’t see why this would be. Children sense it just as well as adults, even if they don’t have as sophisticated words for it.
Sex-affirming or sex-rejecting?
And so we come to the primary message: we know what is rejecting of who you are, and what is affirming. As usual in our current western culture, this comes in part from assuming biological reductionism: we will take one aspect of biology, and decide that this is the primary layer to identify you. And on top of this, that the biology is fixed in place. But even putting these assumptions aside, there is an imposition of society’s subjective truth on the individual’s. All of the hurt, confusion, and aggravation that comes out of the mismatch between the person’s sense of self and impositions of systems around them become attributed solely to the individual.
Attributed as pathology. According to reporting by The New York Times, the HHS report “prioritized the role of psychotherapy, an intervention that is also supported by little evidence, but that the authors argued had fewer risks.” (NYT, 12/18/25). In the current system, psychotherapy here falls under the diagnosis “gender dysphoria.” While the diagnostic manual tries its best to emphasize that the gender belief itself is not considered delusional, it’s hard to reconcile this attempt at respect with the simple fact of individual diagnosis. As with all diagnoses, the manual is saying, ‘It’s your dysfunction, deal with it.’
It’s like getting short-changed on your paycheck, because HR has you down for the wrong job code. And you go to your manager or HR, angry and worried about the problem and your ability to pay your bills. And you are sent to psychotherapy.
Summary
This has been a challenging post to write. I think that’s because it is hard to walk back and forth across the line of subjectivity and objectivity. We need both. I don’t want anyone to read that I don’t think objectivity is important. It is an essential aim. But also, one that is always out of our grasp. The universe, including our corner of it, is consistently more complex than we think it is. Listening to others’ subjectivity helps me stay humble to this fact.
But most importantly, listening and valuing the subjective truth of others’ lives helps us work with them instead of against them. We don’t have to agree with them objectively. But honoring their subjective experience helps us recognize that we don’t have all the answers and that through caring about others, we make our communities better.
Post-script
You may have spent this entire post shouting at your screen: but what if the person is lying? Well, that depends. People lie for motivated reasons (to save face, for gain, attention, evasion, mischief/pleasure, etc.), usually external. Sometimes, there are clear reasons for the person to lie. Usually, when people step into major socially controversial or pathologized actions, overall external motivation points very much the other way. People lie the other way (e.g., I’m not trans), out of fear. The motivation to describe oneself publicly as trans is, instead, internal. And internally, we very quickly get into deep, subjective waters.