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Do You Find It Strangely Easy To Lie?

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gigi2690

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It’s amazing how easy it is to lie, including convincing most of my friends that I’m a horrible liar. I suppose it's my emotional distance that allows me to easily lie to all except the closest of friends. I’m an expert at lying to myself. I dislike ice cream, French fries, all chips except tortilla, and most processed sweets because I convinced myself I did as a teenager. I used to like them all. I became very good at lying to myself. It made it easier, convince myself I had a good summer. Convince myself that my life was normal and everything was okay. That there was no abuse or neglect. I think part of the reason my past is so blurry, is because I’ve stitched in so many lies. A messy patchwork quilt where truth and fiction have become muddled.

I don’t lie to promote myself, or to be right like I suppose some do. I lie to bury harsh realities and to deal with my anxieties. Recently I’ve started telling the truth, to both myself and others. It’s been hard. I’ve been migraining at an increasingly frequent rate. I’ve made my parents’ eyes brim with tears they wouldn’t let fall in front of me. I’ve been laid bare. Not completely honest mind you, but more. It’s as refreshing as it is terrifying and difficult. But I think it’ll be worth it. I certainly cannot keep living a life married to lies just to allow myself to breathe.

I guess I wonder. Is this ease in which I lie common to PTSD or is it because I had to lie to my abuser so often to keep her pacified? Is it specific to my abuse, or something many experience? And if it's felt by many, does it get easier?
 
Interesting question gigi2690. I think as far as lying to ourselves, that it is pretty common. It's a matter of survival. A girl in my group brought up that her therapist said that she was brutally raped and she seemed shocked by the word brutally. She never attached that to her experience but admitted all rape was brutal. I've felt the same way, distancing myself from what I've been through, because facing it full on, is very scary.

As for if we lie more to others, I'm not sure. I will tell little white lies when first getting to know someone because I don't trust them enough to lay out all my emotional baggage right off the bat. I think it's good that you are being more honest and I can only imagine that it will get easier with time.
 
I am a very honest person. On a rare occasion I might tell a little white lie to avoid hurting someone.
 
I have such a very hard time telling a lie! It's because I have been lied to so many times and devastated by the truth.:(
 
I try to be as honest as possible but I did once have the habit of lying if someone asked me about scars, which I try to keep hidden (although 2 are on my face). When I was younger, I would just randomly make stuff up when they asked about my face, such as: I got bitten by an elephant, aliens abducted me, skydiving, got my face stuck in a meat slicer, etc. It was easier than telling the truth. People don't really want to hear the truth so I hide it from them. It's just easier. Now, instead of lying, I just change the subject until they stop asking. They usually get the hint.
 
No one ever asks me about the scar on my face. I had a birthmark removed years ago. Occasionally someone will ask me about the scar on my neck from my thyroidectomy. And no one can see the other scars I have on my belly. So yup I'm an IT now. :laugh:
 
By the response I'm getting, lying to hide mental and physical scars is common (I definitely do that), but the pervasive protective way I cocooned my mind in lies to myself and others may stem from my specific trauma. I had to lie to my abuser to keep her satisfied, and to people in my life to keep the abuse hidden. I worried that there would be death on my hands if I told. Iies became a tool.

Thanks for the responses. This helps answer my question.
 
People don't really want to hear the truth so I hide it from them. It's just easier. Now, instead of lying, I just change the subject until they stop asking. They usually get the hint.
Best way to deal with it. ;)
 
I fool myself sometimes, I hide the truth from people when it is the best course of action but I seldom tell lies. I have lied (It would be a lie to say I have never lied!:rolleyes:), but I honestly don't lie very often.
 
Hi Gigi. I wanted to respond to this, but this is a rather difficult and triggering issue for me right now, so I think this may only be a brief response for now.

I understand what you say when you talk of your abuser requiring you to lie. Mind did likewise, in a somewhat different way. He would force me to concoct lies about things that had happened to me, to explain the origin of injuries for example, and then to tell the lies over and over again to absolutely anyone and everyone. Once was never enough. A simple statement of false facts was never enough. No, for him, the fun was in the humiliation and mental torment, so he would require the lie in the first place, then question me aboutit more and more, requiring ever more detail and dishonesty, and then have me tell the story publically, repeatedly, so that he could shame me for my stupidity, carelessness, or whatever was at the heart of my having hurt myself in the fictitious story.

My childhood was an endless series of mistruths, and he taught me to live lies as though they were reality.

As a result, I learned to lie easily, quickly, and very, very well. It's an evil disgusting skill that shames me to the core. Sadly, it's not something that's easy to leave behind. I have spent almost all of my adulthood obsessed with telling the truth to compensate for this innate tendency. I've slipped up once, spectacularly, and nearly paid a terrible price for it, but mostly I am too terrified of lies to do much more than tell the truth about the big stuff.

But in terms of the little stuff, lying is 2nd nature to me. Everything from the innocuous "of course I'm fine", when I'm not, to lying to get out of social situations I don't want to attend, making up reasons why I can't go somewhere/do something, etc. Disgustingly ashamed of it, but so hard wired to do it that it's taking my whole life to learn not to I think.

Sorry, guess this response went a bit far didn't it.

But I do understand what you say. It's hard when we are taught that safety can be found only in lying, because that's a lesson that's burned so deep into our brains that maybe it never goes away.

Maddog
 
My childhood was an endless series of mistruths, and he taught me to live lies as though they were reality.

As a result, I learned to lie easily, quickly, and very, very well. It's an evil disgusting skill that shames me to the core. Sadly, it's not something that's easy to leave behind. I have spent almost all of my adulthood obsessed with telling the truth to compensate for this innate tendency. I've slipped up once, spectacularly, and nearly paid a terrible price for it, but mostly I am too terrified of lies to do much more than tell the truth about the big stuff.
The behavoiurs we learned in early childhood are the hardest to break. But I do respect you for admitting you do have an issue concerning this. That is showing you are not in denail about it. Which in a way is a good thing. It all takes time to deal many problems in life not just this. Even worse with us trying to fight this damn PTSD.
 
My childhood was an endless series of mistruths, and he taught me to live lies as though they were reality. As a result, I learned to lie easily, quickly, and very, very well. It's an evil disgusting skill that shames me to the core. Sadly, it's not something that's easy to leave behind.

Thank you for your feedback maddog. I know what it's like trying to address a triggering subject in your own mind let alone written and posted for viewing. As sorry as I am that you experienced what you have, I do gleam a small amount of comfort from knowing that this ease with which I lie is felt by another. That it isn't a fault of my soul, but something ingrained into me in my youth.

My therapist likes to say that trauma leaves a photocopy on the brain. That things are placed over our mind like a blanket. It's hard to see what's around it, but it can eventually lift. I like to believe that. That this lying is just layered over me because it was required and through reflection and choice I can convince my mind that I no longer need to lie. That I can toss that part of the blanket from covering my eyes and thoughts.

gigi
 
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