Why Your Brain Won’t Let You Lie to Yourself
What New York taught me about fake gratitude, health, and growth 🧠
When I first moved to New York, I told myself all the right things.
This city, I said, was good for my growth.
It was the epicenter of culture, creativity, and ambition. Every corner pulsed with energy. Every block had a story. Every late-night conversation over a glass of wine was supposed to mean something.
I told myself I loved it.
Spoiler: I did not love it.
I wanted to. I tried hard, just like I’ve tried hard at times, to feel grateful when I wasn’t, to stay “positive” when things felt hollow. But you can’t strong-arm your nervous system into believing something your body knows isn’t true.
New York taught me: the body knows before the brain admits it.
The Myth of “Fake It Until You Make It”
Self-help culture often tells us that we can change our lives by changing our thoughts.
Write down your blessings. Force a smile. Feel gratitude until it feels real.
But neuroscience tells a different story.
When you force gratitude, when you say you’re thankful but feel none of it, your brain doesn’t play along. The neural circuits that regulate emotional state, motivation, and physiological health are sophisticated, but not gullible.
Researchers studying emotion regulation often emphasize that the brain cannot be “tricked” into wellness by pretending to be well. When you insist you’re fine but your nervous system disagrees, your physiology follows the truth, not the script.
It’s the same reason I could walk through Central Park in the fall, watching the light spill between skyscrapers, and still feel disconnected. The postcard moment didn’t fool my brain. The story I told myself (“you should love this”) didn’t match the story my body was living (“you’re exhausted, overstimulated, and lonesome”).
You cannot out-think a mismatch between truth and experience.
The Brain’s Truth Detector: Context and Choice
The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is our brain’s context-setting region, making it impossible to “fake it.” It determines whether what you’re experiencing is self-chosen and meaningful or forced and performative.
When you choose something challenging, such as an ice bath, a long run, or a tough conversation, your mPFC interprets it as voluntary stress and activates resilience and anti-inflammatory pathways.
When you’re pushed into the same thing, the body responds with inflammation and resistance.
That’s why a “positive mindset” only works if it’s grounded in truth. Your mPFC knows when you’re pretending. It can’t be tricked into peace.
Genuine Gratitude vs. Performed Gratitude
A fascinating fMRI study (Kini et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2016) demonstrated that the brain responds more strongly to the intention of an action than to its potential benefits. When participants received money, their gratitude circuits, especially in the prefrontal cortex, lit up only if they believed the gift was given wholeheartedly and not reluctantly.
Gratitude isn’t about the thing you receive; it’s about the meaning behind it.
Likewise, saying “I’m grateful” when you’re not doesn’t light up the same circuits. It’s cognitive noise, not neural nourishment.
In New York, I kept saying, “I’m lucky to be here.”
And I was, but the intention behind that statement wasn’t wholehearted. It was survival.
It wasn’t until I left that I felt genuine gratitude not for what New York was supposed to be, but for what it actually gave me: perspective, humility, and a deeper understanding of what real alignment feels like.
Growth Mindset and the Desire to Be Healthy
Dr. Carol Dweck, who coined the term growth mindset, defines it as the belief that abilities can be developed through effort, learning, and persistence. However, even she warns that a “fake growth mindset” is a trap, pretending to embrace challenges without truly accepting discomfort or failure as part of the growth process.
Health works the same way. You can’t fake wanting to be well.
True health, like growth, depends on honesty. It starts with acknowledging where you are—not where you wish you were. As neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett notes, the body constantly predicts and budgets its energy based on what it expects to happen next. When you lie to yourself about your internal state, you deplete that system’s resources.
Real growth begins when you stop gaslighting your nervous system and start listening to it.
That’s the essence of a healthy mindset: not forced positivity, but truthful awareness.
The Science of Sincerity
When gratitude is genuine, when it comes from a lived, sincere place, the body changes. It is measurable.
Genuine gratitude reduces inflammatory markers like TNF-alpha and IL-6, calms the amygdala (the brain’s fear center), and boosts neurochemicals like serotonin, which increase motivation and focus.
But those benefits only come when gratitude is authentic.
The brain literally resists being tricked.
So, if you’ve ever felt that forced positivity doesn’t work for you, that’s not a weakness. It’s biology. Your nervous system is protecting your integrity.
The Takeaway: Stop Forcing, Start Feeling
You can’t fake peace.
You can’t manifest authenticity.
And you can’t lie your way into gratitude.
When I left New York, I stopped pretending. I started noticing smaller things that felt true: the warmth of morning light, the sound of birds outside my window, the sound of my boys laughing down the hall, and the ease of an evening with nothing demanding my attention.
That’s when my gratitude began to work not as a performance, but as a physiological shift.
Because our brain is not fooled easily, it knows when we mean it.