Maxim Number 6 is short and sweet. Quite simply: “Truth hurts.”

How often are we triggered to anger by the words or actions of others? Perhaps someone makes an unflattering comment about how we look, or worse, how our children look. Perhaps someone challenges our heart-felt political views or world outlook. Or perhaps some dude sets us off by “man-spreading” on the bus, or some woman by “culturally appropriating” a hairstyle or a prom dress.

There are millions of ways for us to get triggered, but the alert and awake among us recognize a certain commonality among all of them: The trigger says much more about the triggered than the triggerer.

When we are triggered, it’s usually because the offender has exposed or announced some underlying truth, or feared truth, that we’d rather deny than face. Consider, for example, that no mentally healthy person gets deeply offended when someone else calls him fat. Why? Because he’s not and he knows it. Likewise no educated person gets deeply offended when someone else calls her ignorant. Why? Because she’s not and she knows it.

But the chubby and ignorant among us (or at least those of us who secretly fear that we may be chubby or ignorant), readily take deep offense to most any criticism of weight or intelligence, whether of our own or someone else’s. Why? Quite simply because the criticism hits too close to home. And, rather than face our own discomfort over these matters and get to the bottom of it, or rectify it, we usually just instead seek to deny or mask it.

How? Well, denial takes many faces, but there are two particularly common ones. The first is “false bravado”—that is, pretending that we are fiercely proud of something for which we are actually secretly quite ashamed. Example: In a nation where two out of every three people are either significantly overweight or clinically obese (with one out of three being the latter), is the “body positive” movement really any surprise? Are its proponents TRULY proud and TRULY comfortable with their and America’s fat rolls and sad state of physical health, or are they simply employing false bravado to deny and mask their secret shame?

Denial can also manifest as an extreme post-modernist worldview—a philosophy that denies the underlying reality of most worldly distinctions (for instance, between beauty and ugliness or between the male gender and the female gender, etc., etc., etc.) by insisting that these dualities are mostly or purely a product of social conditioning rather than underlying, natural fundamentals or principles. Consequently, for a post-modernists, the average male’s preference for blondes or for a certain waist-to-hip ratio can’t possibly be biological and innate but must instead simply be a consequence of Madison Avenue’s brainwashing men to prefer blonde, thinnish women. Likewise, little girls’ preference for dolls and cooperative play (as compared to little boys’ preference for machines and competitive play) must too be a consequence of social conditioning rather than anything innate.

Post-modernism is egoically convenient because it lets us off the hook. It makes others responsible for our present discomfort. There’s no reason why I should loose weight in order to be more physical appealing to the opposite sex. After all, its preference for fit bodies is purely a function Madison Avenue’s brainwashing! No, I don’t need to change, rather those “Mad Men” bastards on Madison Avenue need to change! How dare they “impose” their “narrow” definitions of beauty on us! How about some fat models in your ads, guys! Swollen cankles are beautiful too, baby!

Aren’t such claims obviously just false bravado fed by an all-too-convenient post-modern worldview?

“Truth hurts” was one of the hardest and most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned. When I’m triggered, I now instinctively look inward (whereas I once blamed outward). I search inside for the REAL root of my anxiety. Is the criticism that I just received (or thought I received) valid? My severe adverse reaction to it sure seems to suggest so, or at least to suggest that I believe it MIGHT be so. Perhaps I should lean into that discomfort rather than denying and avoiding it? Yah, perhaps I should.

And I did. And that made all the difference.