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X-ray vision and understand the neurobiology of being relationally, socially, and behaviorally human means we get to free ourselves from scary beliefs that behaviors are character flaws, a representation of who our children are at their core, solely designed to manipulate us, or a reflection of our worth as a parent.
Lying is actually a completely normal human behavior.
Think about it- when was the last time you lied?
Be honest with yourself (ha, I chuckled at the irony).
It probably wasn’t that long again.
Ask yourself…why?
Be honest!
There are all sorts of reasons floating into your mind I’m sure- but they all land somewhere near the truth that we only lie because we are afraid of what will happen if we don’t.
We only lie because it doesn’t feel safe to tell the truth.
And when I say safe, I’m don’t necessarily mean physically safe.
It could be relationally safe.
It could be if I don’t lie, I won’t get what I want. And the relational repercussion of lying is deemed less bad than the possibility of not getting what I want.
Sometimes lying happens when we feel safe enough in a relationship to know that the relationship will withstand the eroded threat of the lie.
Sometimes lying happens because we are actually prioritizing the relationship in the moment.
Sometimes lying happens because we cannot tolerate the idea of what could happen to the relationship, even if it’s just for a moment, if we told the truth.
Sometimes lying happens because we cannot tolerate the idea of what could happen inside us (shame, dysregulation, etc.) if we told the truth.
There really are quite a lot of explanations for lying but ultimately it almost always comes down to it’s not safe to tell the truth.
What happens if you allow that to really sink in?
Does it change anything for you about how you see the behavior of lying? It’s OK if it doesn’t, I’m just prompting you to notice!
One of the biggest challenges with the behavior of lying isn’t actually the lie- it’s how being lied to makes us feel.
YOU HATE BEING LIED TO!!!
Your brain shouts all sorts of things! Things like:
Do you think I’m stupid?
You are a pathological liar and that scares me!
You are causing me to question my own experience in reality and that scares me!
I must be a terrible parent to raise a liar.
Liars can’t even have positive relationships and ultimately go to jail.
Truly. Those are scary thoughts.
And when all of us have scary thoughts, we often act in scary ways.
And then the fear increases for everything and the lying doesn’t ever stop.
What if you could replace your own scared thoughts?
My child doesn’t think I’m stupid- they are scared.
Continual lying is a behavior that will have negative long-term consequences but worrying about that in this moment doesn’t help me deal with the real life now problem.
I am a good parent who struggles sometimes- like all parents.
If you could replace those scared thoughts with true thoughts, you have one more moment of regulation.
Then you can ask yourself “why is this happening?” and maybe you can address that problem.
Or maybe your kid is too dysregulated in the moment for you to do much of anything beyond disengaging and not insisting on the truth. Remembering to think about what is driving the lie will help you remind yourself that you aren’t just ignoring the behavior or allowing your kid to behave bad. You are using your thinking brain to realize your child is too dysregulated for you to deal with the behavior in the moment. Then you can shift your focus to offering connection, regulation, and felt-safety.
Lying is such a common and sticky behavior challenge that I created a thorough 90-minute webinar that gets into the nitty gritty. The webinar looks at the why even more closely than this article could and then moves into concrete, actionable steps to take in the moment of the lying. The Lying webinar is a part of the webinar library that is available to all members of The Club.
Robyn
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