Compulsive Lying

This week I'm talking about compulsive lying, and why the picture most of us have of it, someone cold and calculating who's worked out exactly what story gets them what they want, is usually wrong. Most compulsive lying isn't strategic at all. It's automatic, it's fast, and often the person doing it couldn't tell you why they said it either.

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Happy Friday everybody. I've got an interesting one for you today 'cause it's about something that most of us have got slightly wrong in our heads I think. And that's compulsive lying. When people hear the phrase compulsive liar, they often picture somebody who's cold and calculating who's sat there working out exactly what story is gonna get them what they want. And yeah, sometimes that's what it looks like from the outside, but that's rarely what's going on underneath. Most compulsive lying isn't strategic at all. It's automatic, it's fast, and very often the person doing it couldn't tell you why they did it either, which I know sounds like a bit of a cop out, but it's usually the truth. Here's the bit that trips people up, you see. We assume that a lie needs a decent reason behind it, but compulsive lying very often doesn't have a reason. Somebody will lie about something nobody was even asking about. You know, what time they left the house, whether they enjoyed a film that they didn't even watch, whether they've read a book that they haven't. Small, pointless, oddly low stakes lies. And if you stopped and asked them, why did you say that? The honest answer would just be, I dunno, it just came out. And that's actually the bit that tells you something real is going on rather than someone just being economical with the truth now and then. There's an old clinical term for the more extreme end of this, which was pseudologia fantastica, which is a brilliant bit of Latin and basically means fantastic false speech and describes lying that is elaborate, ongoing and wildly out of proportion to any benefit that the person's actually gonna get. And what marks it out from an ordinary lie, the sorry I'm late traffic was terrible kind of lie that we all tell most days, is that it isn't really about getting away with something. Instead it's about maintaining a version of reality that feels better than the one the person's actually in. 'cause underneath most compulsive lying, what you're looking at is usually shame, not deceit. Shame being that horrible whole body feeling of there is something wrong with me. Which is different from guilt. 'cause that would be I did something wrong. So if you grew up in a system where the honest version of you, your grades, your family, your feelings wasn't quite good enough or wasn't safe to say out loud, you learn very young that a slightly better version of the truth gets a warmer response. And your nervous system doesn't need you to decide that consciously. It just starts doing it the same way any survival strategy gets wired in once it's worked before. Once it's wired in it tends to spiral, which is worth knowing whether it's you or someone you love. One small lie needs protecting, which sometimes means adding another one in just to keep it consistent and each on its own feels tiny and manageable. It's only stepping back that shows you how much has been invented and the person doing it often loses track, not because there're some evil psychopath who should have kept a spreadsheet of all their lies, but because the fabrications were never really about facts in the first place, they were just about protecting a feeling. And feelings don't come with any sort of paper trail or anything, which is why if you are on the receiving end of this with someone turning detective, trying to catch 'em out, that almost never gets you any extra honesty from them. Instead, it tends to do the opposite because when somebody's cornered, under threat with adrenaline already up, nobody's nervous system suddenly decides that transparency is the safe option, not while it feels like an attack. What actually helps on both sides of it is making truth telling feel survivable rather than punished. So it isn't a quick fix, it's not easy. Repairing this is definitely slower than we'd like, if I'm honest. But meeting them where they are is the bit that actually works, long term. There is a lot more to this. As you could imagine. The personality patterns it can sit alongside, what's actually going on in the brain, what to do if this is someone in your own life. And you can find more over on the full episode on Patreon from a few weeks ago if you want to go deeper. Anyway, time for me to go Enjoy your weekend and I'll talk to you again soon, if not before. Take care.