The Inner World of a Compulsive Liar

The following is the second post in a series on pathological lying. 

In the first post, Notes from a Pathological Liar, we heard from Jay, a man in his forties who created a web of lies that ended up devastating his fiancee and their relationship. 

In this post, we’ll look at how the lies are serving Jay — the psychological function that motivates someone to be chronically deceptive to those they care about. 

It may sound counter-intuitive to talk about how a destructive, self-defeating behavior can “serve” the person who is engaging in those behaviors, but even in the cases of the most self-destructive acting out, the actions are serving some function (often unconsciously) — often one designed to protect the person from a deeply held fear that something catastrophic will occur if their “true self” becomes known to others. 

That doesn’t mean that the behaviors should be left in place (understanding something doesn’t always mean condoning it). It does mean, however, that the first step in undoing patterns of lying and secrecy is learning what purpose they are serving so that those protections are not just abruptly stripped away, leaving the psyche more vulnerable than it was before.

This can be exceedingly delicate work, as you might imagine. When we’ve spent many years (sometimes a whole lifetime) unconsciously responding to childhood wounds by relying on certain defense mechanisms, it’s not something we can snap our fingers and change. But, change is possible and it starts with self-understanding. 

Once again considering Jay, let’s explore the functions of his chronic lying:

Hide humiliating realities and the shame within

Everyone has had the experience of lying to avoid embarrassment. If you’re late to work because you slept through your alarm, you may tell your boss you had trouble starting your car. Same result: you’re late for work. But different explanation, one that spares you the humiliation of being known as a slacker. And as long as you find a way to wake up on time (set another — louder — alarm; get to sleep earlier), you don’t need to examine why you lied. You aren’t hurting your employer by offering car trouble as the reason for your tardiness.

With Jay, however, he learned early on that he wasn’t just trying to hide embarrassment (which is an emotion that is usually fleeting, involves something you did, rather than who you are), but embarrassment’s far more painful cousin: humiliation. 

One of the problems with humiliating experiences is that when they occur in childhood and occur often, the experience of humiliation can take root within us; the now internalized shame/humiliation is carried within a part of the self, long after the distressing, shame-inducing event has passed. 

The roots of internalized shame expand deep within, choking off and preventing the wounded parts of the self from experiencing any potentially restorative connection with others. This kind of internalized shame can lead to struggles with self-loathing and patterns of self-destructive, self-sabotaging behaviors.

Humiliation can feel absolutely devastating, can make you want to run and hide, can make it feel unbearable to be around others who know of the humiliating fact you so desperately want to forget. 

These kinds of lies are practical and protective: rather than allow Jay to feel the deep wound of humiliation, the lies are like a magician’s sleight of hand maneuver, diverting the audience’s attention to an irrelevant spot while the trick is carried out in plain sight, yet out of sight at the same time. 

The problem is, chronically lying to manage internalized shame means Jay isn’t connecting with himself on some level. He’s offering a false self, an ongoing parade of narrative masks that stand in his place, and when he does that as an adult, with people close to him, he’s sabotaging his relationships. It’s hard-to-impossible to trust someone if you discover that much of what they told you about themselves is false. But he’s not only damaging his interpersonal relationships and dooming them to remain at a superficial level…he’s doing the same with his internal relationship, the relationship, if you will, with himself. 

Cut off from himself, he remains perpetually cut off from others (even those who are emotionally safe and encourage him to be vulnerable and more emotionally open). Internalized shame convinces us that without the walls of protection, further humiliation and rejection are inevitable. 

Lies designed to pull others into a more longed-for reality 

If you’ve had kids or have been around young children, you know how natural it can feel to encourage babies to do things: to crawl or walk or use a spoon. “That’s it! You can do it! Great job, you did it!” And along with the encouraging words, there are smiles and an upbeat tone and hugs. That’s not something most caregivers need to think about— they just react in this way, and the child absorbs these self-affirming responses by feeling more confident in themselves and their ability to explore and engage in novel experiences. 

This is called “mirroring.” And mirroring, a precursor to self-esteem, is hugely important to a child’s development.

When the child’s different emotions and reactions (both positive and painful) are acknowledged and reflected back in this way, the child learns that it is safe to bring these self-experiences to others; and ultimately, the child learns to naturally integrate the diversity of their experiences into a coherent, fluid sense of self. Children who do not have these mirroring experiences from their caregivers can struggle with the formation of a positive sense of self and poor self esteem can result (they’ve learned that parts of who they are are unacceptable).

When he was a child, the mirroring function was not fully and consistently met by Jay’s mother, since there were many periods where she didn’t have the resources or the ability to care for herself, let alone a dependent child. So early on, Jay experienced a sense of isolation and loneliness, and because his emotional experiences were not held and validated by his caregivers, his inner world started to feel tenuous and muted; in short, he couldn’t rely on his own subjective experiences as real or vitalizing to the self.  

When fantasy and imagination replace reality

Fantasizing and using one’s imagination is an important and healthy part of our development. The young child who transforms a bed sheet into a superhero’s cape and saves the world from evil is playing with the fantasy of limitless power and grandiosity; a sense of empowerment and efficacy that acts as a vitalizing counterbalance to the frustrating limitations of the real world that we all must learn to navigate.  

While under ordinary circumstances children fantasize about alternative realities as a way of expanding the self, Jay began to rely on fantasy as a replacement to the painful realities he couldn’t escape. Elaborate fantasizing became his escape, a way of filling in the holes of neglect that left him feeling alone and different, less-than and rageful.   

As Jay’s fantasy life continued to compensate for the lack of parental availability and mirroring, his fantasy life started to supplant reality. The lies he began telling reflected a preferred world, each lie an attempt to find someone who would believe him, and in doing so, Jay would finally have something he desired reflected back to him about himself. 

Each believer of his lies turned into a momentary stand-in for his absent mother, each believer someone who could delight and show interest in Jay in ways that eluded him. But for this to happen, Jay needed to (momentarily) forget that what was being mirrored back to him were his own untruths, lies that covered up how sad and humiliated he felt in his core. 

In short, Jay’s lies became a way to manage how others viewed him, but more importantly, when his lies were believed by others and they reacted in the ways Jay hoped they would (by being impressed or interested or concerned or indignant on his behalf), then Jay became more convinced of his own untruths, a lie-turned-reality that required confirmation by the mirroring presence of those who believed what he was saying. 

But the “benefits” built on a foundation of lies are always fleeting, and because of this, more lies are needed to fill the internal emotional void that Jay has been trying to fill. 

The treadmill of creating a more interesting version of self

One of the consequences of emerging from childhood without a healthy sense of self is an adult who feels the need to prevent others from seeing the parts of themselves that are deemed uninteresting, vacuous or, even worse, despicable. We all have things about us we’d rather keep hidden (from ourselves and from others), but in Jay’s case, there wasn’t a particular part of himself that he tried to cover up.

The pathological or compulsive liar often doesn’t discriminate when it comes to which parts of themselves to reveal and which parts are to be concealed by creating falsehoods (or by withholding information from a significant other that should be disclosed). As time goes on and the lies keep mounting, the compulsive liar becomes less and less discriminating. Ever-expanding swaths of misinformation and coverups become the norm, an automated hide-and-seek that is designed to keep others off-track and at a distance.   

For Jay, being seen was incredibly threatening. And this compelled him to make a false self he presented to others, a fictional character whose life would ultimately get him what his true self fails to achieve (adoration, love, acceptance, compassion, and most importantly, a guarantee that he would never be rejected, humiliated or abandoned).  

Not unexpectedly, this chronic pattern of lying leads to a degree of isolation and loneliness since the chronic liar cuts themselves off from any meaningful contact with others. Like the director of a play, Jay had to be constantly vigilant to missing his cue or fumbling his lines (by telling the truth). Hiding behind an elaborate, expanding system of lies became mentally overwhelming, a full-time job with no respite in sight. By the time Jay entered psychotherapy, he was exhausted, with little awareness of the enormous toll his pattern of lying was having on his mind and body. 

For Jay, (and others who struggle with chronic deceitfulness), only so much emotional contact could be made with others, even with his fiancee. Too much closeness put the fictionalized version of himself in great peril. 

And whenever he sensed that she was getting close to the “real Jay,” he unquestioningly did what he had learned to do for too long, deny himself the possibility of being accepted and delighted in by those who really did love and care about him.

*****

Rich Nicastro, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist based in Austin, Texas. He has worked with individuals and couples for 25 years and has extensive experience working with trauma survivors and those who struggle with compulsive lying and secrecy. Dr. Nicastro offers teletherapy to clients throughout the United States. To determine if you’re in a state in which he is licensed, click here.