The Lessons of the Confessional (and the Kitchen Table)
To understand why we become so sensitive to lies, we have to look at where we learned to use them. My own relationship with the truth started in a place of fear—and a heavy dose of sheer confusion.
I grew up in a world that demanded perfection. My father was a man of intense expectations, particularly when it came to report cards. I was a D student Through High School. When the grades fell short, his reaction was loud, swift, and heavy. The punishment was grueling—hours of isolation doing homework, followed by tense evening drills at the kitchen table.
If I misspelled a word or didn’t know what was, a yardstick was there to enforce the lesson. To this day, I still struggle with multiplication and spelling because of those kitchen table sessions.
As the oldest of four children, I was the scout trooper. I was the one who was supposed to be perfect, which meant I was the one who absorbed the impact of my father’s anger. To a child trying to navigate that kind of stress, a lie isn’t a moral failing. It’s a shield.
“Did you finish your homework?” Yes. “Do you know your spelling words?” Yes.
I lied to keep the peace, to lower the temperature in the house, and to survive. And once you do something often enough, it easily becomes a habit.
But then came the Church. At seven years old, as a Catholic youth preparing for First Communion, I was sent to the confessional.
The trouble was, I was a Tabula Rasa—a blank slate. I thought I was a pretty good kid. I didn’t know what “sins” were, but I was kneeling in the dark on my knees, facing a priest’s silhouette behind a screen, and I was expected to confess something.
So, I lied to the priest’s questions just to have something to say.
“Did you lie to your parents?” “Yes, Father.” “How many times?” I didn’t know. “Four.” “Did you have impure thoughts?”
At seven, what the heck did “impure thoughts” even mean? I had absolutely no idea. But the system demanded an answer, and “no” didn’t seem to fit the script.
“Yes.” “How many times?” “Two.”
Just like that, I was handed a penance, a rosary to pray, and a massive, manufactured guilt trip for things I hadn’t even done or understood. I had to invent infractions just to satisfy the ritual.
That was the day the program was loaded into my brain: Everything is your fault. And even if you didn’t do it, you’re still responsible for fixing it.
The Heavy Bag of Guilt
That program ran my life for decades.
When I divorced my first wife—after she systematically lied about spending thousands of dollars on horses while I worked my tail off as a top-producing real estate agent to support animals that ate while I was asleep—my father’s immediate response was: “What did you do?”
More guilt. Somehow, her lies were my failure.
In my second marriage, I faced a drug-addicted, totally enabled wife, two children, and a court system that blindly supported the mother regardless of the reality. More guilt. I carried the weight of a broken family on my shoulders, believing I should have been able to prevent the storm.
Even today, after nearly fifty years with the Love of my Life—the Bishop—that old Italian-Catholic program will try to boot up. She will look at me and say, “I’m not accusing you of anything. Get off the guilt thing.”
And I’ll answer: “I’m Italian Catholic. Everything is my fault.”
We laugh about it now, but the truth is, breaking that cycle of guilt and excuses is a daily practice.
Choosing Who Governs Your Mind
When you spend a lifetime carrying guilt that doesn’t belong to you, you become incredibly sensitive to the dishonesty of others. You see people online or in public telling blatant lies, making excuses, and avoiding responsibility, and your blood starts to boil. You feel that old, familiar yardstick-tension in your neck.
That is the trap.
The moment you let someone else’s lack of ethics ruin your day, you have handed them the keys to your mind. You are letting their behavior dictate your emotional state. You are volunteering to carry their bag.
I have stood on stages for decades telling audiences: “Never allow anyone else to dictate how you feel.”
Yet, there I was, letting the noise and deceit of the world drive me crazy.
If you find yourself holding onto anger, frustration, or resentment over things you cannot control—if you are letting the behavior of dishonest people run your life—there is only one piece of advice that works:
STOP IT.
We cannot force the world to live by our code of ethics. People will continue to make excuses, cut corners, and bend the truth to suit their needs. But they do not need your energy to do it, and they certainly don’t deserve your peace of mind.
Claim your own ground. Stand in your own truth. Put down the guilt that isn’t yours to carry, and let the rest of the world go by.