WHEN I WAS A LIAR
I lied a lot when I was young, but I never thought of myself as a liar. The first time I spoke any particular lie, I generally felt a twinge of uneasiness, nervous that someone might question me. Usually, though, by the second or third telling, I fully believed what I was saying and I’d vociferously defend my lie as truth.
I lied so often that it became the norm. Exaggerations, made up conversations or events, rationalizations. All kinds of lies. It never occurred to me that I was lying, because that’s just the way my mind worked. It went there automatically.
The goal of my lies was always to draw attention to myself, to get people to think more highly of me and/or to like me. I wanted to be smarter and braver and kinder and funnier and more interesting than I believed I was. So I just made myself all those things in my head.
It wasn’t until I was almost thirty years old that I came face-to-face with my own dishonesty. It must have been winter because I remember there were coats hanging on the backs of our folding metal chairs in the church basement where our support group met weekly. Together, we wrestled with the effects of growing up in alcoholic homes.
A young blond guy who didn’t often speak sat across the circle from me, squirming. Finally he said tearfully, “I’m feeling a lot of confusion and shame. I lie a lot. I make stuff up. I’m not sure why I do that and I don’t know how to stop.”
The harsh neon lights seemed to dim, and I actually felt as if time had stopped.
“Oh my God. Oh my God, that’s me,” I said to myself. I’d had no idea.
God has graciously taken away this shortcoming over the years. Once in a blue moon I’ll find myself exaggerating, but I recognize it right away and chuckle fondly at my silly inner child who still wants attention any way she can get it.
It’s so wonderful to know that I will never again have that sinking feeling when someone says, “Wait a minute, I thought you said…”
The President’s Pathology
All this to say that I understand the man in the Oval Office. He is not well. While his disorder is clearly way more complex than mine was, I understand his desperate need for attention.
Sadly, there’s not much chance of the man getting help for his issues. He thinks that psychotherapy is “a crutch” and has said, “I don’t like to analyze myself because I might not like what I see.” Trump is trapped behind a one-way mirror: he sees everything in the world through his own distortions, but he can’t look back inside at himself. It seems that until he’s driven from office one way or another, we are stuck with his pathology.
I just thought you might want to know that I’m pretty sure he believes all his lies. He has to believe them in order to feel OK about himself because underneath, I imagine his self-esteem is about as low as a human being’s could be.
Thanks for the WordPress word prompt, one-way.
Writing with Spirit 
Dec 04, 2017 @ 14:28:21
Absolutely. Hit the nail right on the head.
Nov 28, 2017 @ 18:27:16
I asked my husband the other day if he thought there were any “honest” politicians who never lie. I hate to say it, but I don’t think so. And that’s sad.
Nov 28, 2017 @ 19:50:43
I think that sometimes people are honest when they start out in politics, but after they’ve been involved a while, they do lose their integrity.
Nov 28, 2017 @ 15:46:33
You just gave me a serious ‘wow’ moment! I wonder why both of us have been dealing with this lying thing- it could be related to ADHD, but I doubt that that’s the entire reason. I have lied (and felt guilty afterwards) in many things, to many people, including whether I did my schoolwork, but not because I was being lazy, but because I was struggling with it. Whenever I had asked for help, I learned it so slowly that I would end up angering even the most patient of teachers. I thought that I was not inconveniencing anyone by doing this, but over the years, I have experienced the negative effects of repeated lying. I’ve been trying to stop, but my family doesn’t quite believe me yet, which is perfectly reasonable. Now, I have to figure out whether the hard, brutal truth is appropriate or not- I appear extremely rude when I talk to people because I don’t know what truths are offensive and which aren’t. I exaggerate a lot, but I use it mostly when telling my friends and family about funny situations that have actually happened to me. I’ll make the hyperbole obvious by using extreme story-telling body language to illustrate my story. Afterwards, once the laughing ends, I’ll summarize the story very briefly in a manner that’s closer to the truth. Sometimes, when I was a little younger, I accidentally lied- I would answer the opposite answer than I actually meant, and then would quickly correct myself. This caused people to think that I had said the truth the first time, and lied the second time, so now I try to think about the answer to the question before I blurt it aloud.
Nov 28, 2017 @ 19:50:00
Yes, exactly. I think that I lied to make myself feel “good enough.” If we are a little different – whether it’s our ADD or your sexual preference or whatever – perhaps it makes us want to be accepted and “OK” even more. I think it’s best to tell the truth about myself and my own experience, but mostly to keep my mouth shut about other people. It’s safest! Glad this touched something in you. It’s all a process. 🙂
Nov 28, 2017 @ 14:05:18
Well, this one hits pretty close to home…(Homey?) at least for me. It’s still something that I struggle with at times. Recovery and spirituality are helping me (well, I’ve made some assumptions about church basements here!). One of your best posts, IMO. But I wonder how and why you feel sure that Trump can’t “look back inside himself.” Is it true that he feels no hint of remorse? That he is irredeemable? I’m not so sure that this is the case. You say that “he has to believe them in order to feel okay about himself.” Here, for me, is the heart of the matter: I don’t think that he actually does, deep down, feel okay about himself. I think he tells lies because he does NOT feel good about himself. That was true of me as well. I have a friend who has been sober for 23 years. She told me once, “I didn’t drink because my life was all that wonderful. I didn’t drink because I was all that happy with myself.” I didn’t lie or exaggerate because I felt adequate, happy, content or peaceful. Maybe Donald Trump lies precisely because he experiences himself as tiny and fraudulent. And maybe that means he deserves our compassion, however bent we may judge him to be. I’m not saying we should give him a pass; the stakes are far too high for us. But maybe he lies because he is more afraid of us than we are of him.
Nov 28, 2017 @ 19:45:52
I think that’s absolutely true. That kind of “coping mechanism” – the numbing alcohol or the lies or whatever – will never fill that bottomless pit of neediness, that desperation for love & esteem.
When I allow myself to feel what might be going on in trump’s soul, it is horribly, horribly depressing. What happened to that little kid to make him like that??
Nov 28, 2017 @ 10:09:50
At least you felt guilty and were ashamed of your lying. Our president, and, it seems many of our illustrious politicians feel no shame at all.
Nov 28, 2017 @ 10:37:01
“Depraved” comes to mind.