Why Do People Lie? The Importance of Communication
We’ve all lied at sometime. We’ve all been lied to. We even lie to ourselves? We believe in being honest, so…why do people lie? The importance of communication can shed some light on this situation. As teenagers, we probably have all lied to our parents at some point. We lie to get our own way, but behind that is that we didn’t want to get a no or have our parents angry or upset with us. As adults, we may lie to our personal and primary relationships.
We lie in two ways:
1. We lie to ourselves about ourselves. We deny aspects or parts of ourselves because they are out of alignment or incongruent with how we see ourselves. As an example, I would say I never steal. I say this because I believe strongly in not stealing. But, as I take a serious close review, I have taken some pens from work and made some personal copies at work on a business copy machine. So in reality, I was stealing. Once I became aware of this, I made amends for this behavior and stopped this behavior.
2. We lie to others. This comes up a lot in couples therapy. What I notice is that one person will lie to the other partner because over time, they have tried to tell the truth, but the consequences became too heavy to tell the truth. One partner either yells or screams or talks about it for days and days and makes the other person pay for it for months and years with no resolution, only pain. So, to avoid this pain, they lie.
So, the importance of communication suggests that there is a need for a different kind of communication. What’s also needed in the partnership is an individuation from each other so each person can be their own individual person and see the other person as a separate person. Our partner has their own thoughts, feelings, strengths, and weaknesses and family history. This is a time to get help, and to learn communication tools so that each person can learn to listen and to learn to be truthful.
Counseling can provide a safe environment to explore the broken patterns of communication and to build trust and build better communication skills. Ultimately one must learn to forgive when the trust has been rebuilt and to be able to tell the truth. Both people need to have ways to communicate where both people can stay engaged in the process. There are some fair fighting rules I will talk about in another post.
To get to know yourself better and take the time to figure out where you are going in life, I recommend you read The Journey (Babmadizwin). This workbook was created by my good friends, Robert and Terri TallTree. The essence of this book is based on Native American wisdom that I think you’ll find useful and deepen your understanding of yourself.
To Your Highest Good,
Laura Meehan, MA
Integrative Counselor and Coach
Founder and Liberator of Allowyourlightoshine.com
Ambassador of Cure for Boredom on Howtoliveonpurpose.com
