I learned to lie early. A chaotic home life can be tucked behind a toothy grin and good grades, no problem. If you look like a kid who has it all together, approval abounds. The constant anxiety that goes along with all that pretending is just part of the deal.
All these years later, my instincts are still to create a perfect image. I fight the urge to answer, “I’m fine” no matter who asks. It takes real effort to push past a lifetime of conditioning and just tell the truth.
I wonder if others also feel like they’ve peddled enough BS for a lifetime? A reader of these stories reached out last week after I revealed what I really think about the periodic disconnection in my marriage.* She wondered why we all don’t just tell the truth.
I have a hunch: no one wants to be judged. Every time I hit send on these stories, I wonder whose thought bubble is saying, “Jeez, Elizabeth, TMI.”
I will tell you something about speaking the truth though. It has become my new favorite bauble to hold up to the light. Because it’s a relatively new practice, however, it’s uncomfortable. I wish people who received it would be gentle. Sometimes they are not and it hurts.
But, like a big gorgeous salad, I know it’s good for my health. Telling the truth has benefited every aspect of my life. I no longer come down with “mystery illnesses” that take me out for months at a time. I have withdrawn from spaces where I feel muzzled. I have extracted myself from relationships that don’t serve me and transformed the ones that needed healing. My friends know me better. Strike that: everyone who wants to, knows me better. Revealing who I really am has helped me feel more alive than ever.
Martha Beck writes about this phenomenon in her latest book, The Way of Integrity, Finding the Path to Your True Self. Her theory is that telling any kind of lie does lasting damage. Whether it is meant as a kindness, to avoid confrontation or to save your own behind, any untruth wreaks internal havoc.
When a friend makes a mean joke about us and we say nothing, that breaks trust with ourselves. When we let the moment pass, we have “gone deaf to our own pain.” Our instinct to take ourselves out of harm’s way is blunted. We trust people who don’t deserve it. We remain in bad relationships.
Clearly there is a payoff to lying, that’s why we do it so much. Telling people what they want to hear wins the popularity contest every time. We are well trained to tell and receive the sweet little lies about how great we look when we do not or that a friend “forgot” to include us in a group outing when in reality they did it for reasons we need to hear.
When the stakes are higher, lying can be about survival. Sometimes it’s just not safe to tell the truth in an abusive relationship or an oppressive institution. If the truth is too dangerous to tell, we can bridge the chasm inside us by telling the truth to ourselves—noticing where, why and to whom we lie.
Shielding ourselves from the truth has deep roots. As kids, we may have been called upon to keep it together when something bad happened. The only option was to abandon ourselves. The “just-world hypothesis” explains that to feel safe, children must believe that the world is fair, that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. When something bad happens, a child believes it was because she was bad.
Nearly all of us have this sort of self-blaming lie buried in unspoken childhood assumptions like my own: “if I hadn’t been so demanding, mom wouldn’t have left.” It took me a long time to unearth this fiction that helped make sense of a painful situation. Blaming ourselves when we did nothing wrong splits us off from our truth. The more suffering we’ve encountered, the more reason we’ve had to punish ourselves.
The toll it takes is obvious. Pretending all the time is exhausting. Acting happy when we are bummed out or lying to impress people requires a ton of effort. Maintaining a perfect image drains our brain power and takes up a ton of mental space. It slows down the rest of our thinking. Studies show that people who present “an idealized image of themselves” have higher blood pressure; elevated cortisol, glucose, and cholesterol; and a lowered immune system. Lying and keeping secrets have been linked to heart disease, cancer and emotional problems like anxiety, depression and “free-floating hostility.” In sum, it’s worth it to come clean.
The evidence that all this truth-telling has brought peace into my life is all around me. I have been going through a hard time with one of my children. Anyone who has called to ask about it has heard the complicated truth. I don’t feel judged (mostly). It’s still difficult to share the hard stuff but I do it anyway. I call upon the friends who’ve confided their difficulties because when you tell the truth, you create the space around you for others to do the same.
Deciding to open yourself up can dramatically improve your well-being and it can happen within days. One study concluded that just making the effort to stop lying significantly improved physical and mental health. Subjects reported feeling less sad and tense.They got sick with sore throats less often and had fewer headaches. Their relationships benefited as well: they reported happier personal lives during the weeks they intentionally told fewer lies. The relief comes when we begin by being honest with ourselves. We can go from a life of suffering to calm and peace without changing a thing on the outside.
When we have the courage to tell the truth, we get the sense that it’s all going to be okay.
Love,
Elizabeth
WRITING PROMPT: How do you feel about sharing the truth, even when it’s messy? Do you have a hard time trusting people?
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