In some cases, pathological lying can be a result of childhood trauma, such as neglect or abuse. People who did not get their needs met as children may begin lying as a coping mechanism, in an attempt to get the love and reassurance they crave.
If you have questioned whether you have PTSD from your spouse or partner due to their lies, you may be making too much of the lies. Lying is not usually enough to create PTSD, but trauma is a real effect of lying.
Lies might also be a coping mechanism for low self-esteem or past trauma. Despite these short-term benefits, compulsive lying often backfires in the long run. A habitual liar may feel extreme stress from keeping track of their falsehoods.
Lying is another common issue in children who have experienced trauma. All kids will lie on occasion. This doesn't indicate trauma on its own. However, a child who has experienced trauma may lie in excess.
When you live with a mental illness like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), telling little lies may be a reality of your life just to make it through. Maybe you say, “I have a headache,” instead of telling people you're experiencing an intense flashback.
In some cases, pathological lying can be a result of childhood trauma, such as neglect or abuse. People who did not get their needs met as children may begin lying as a coping mechanism, in an attempt to get the love and reassurance they crave.
Fear of danger (perceived or real), causes the brain to have a stress reaction, which leads the child to protect themselves by telling the lie. So, can you understand why a child with a trauma history might be prone to lying? The child isn't trying to be manipulative or defiant.
When we engage in deceit, our respiratory and heart rates increase, we start to sweat, our mouth goes dry, and our voice can shake. Some of these physiological effects form the basis of the classic lie-detector (polygraph) test. People vary in their ability to tell a lie due, in part, to differences in the brain.
The three emotions most frequently experienced by people when they are lying are fear, guilt, and somewhat surprisingly, delight.
Lying allows a person to establish perceived control over a situation by manipulating it. It's a defence mechanism that (seemingly) prevents them from being vulnerable, that is, to not open up and reveal their true self to another person.
People who lie repeatedly often have a desire to be in control. When the truth of a situation doesn't agree with such control, they produce a lie that does conform to the narrative they desire. Such people may also worry they won't be respected if the truth can leave them looking poorly.
While some people lie more frequently than others, it is not typically a sign of a mental health condition. Pathological lying is different. It may be a sign of an underlying mental health condition, such as a personality disorder.
While pathological lying isn't a defining feature of anxiety as it is with other disorders, such as NPD, anxiety and compulsive lying can sometimes go hand in hand. People with anxiety disorders may lie to protect themselves from anxiety triggers or to handle things like a fear of rejection.
They alter our reality, reframing it through the agenda of the person who doesn't want the truth to come out. Being lied to makes you feel insecure – your version of the truth is discredited. It also makes you feel unimportant – the person lying to you didn't value you enough to tell the truth.
Lying is like the denial, but more active and intentional. Whereas denial is a flat out “nope, not me” in response to accusations, lying includes more data and more engagement. Lying can include adding information (a tactic used in many lies, by the way), or leaving out important information.
Lying and denial are central to gaslighting because it makes the victim question their reality and even start to believe the lies despite knowing their untruthfulness. The victim must keep a record of what is said and what happens to help them confirm the truth.
We lie to save face, to avoid hurting other people's feelings, to impress others, to shirk responsibility, to hide misdeeds, as a social lubricant, to prevent conflict, to get out of work, and many more reasons.
Lying can be cognitively depleting, it can increase the risk that people will be punished, it can threaten people's self-worth by preventing them from seeing themselves as “good” people, and it can generally erode trust in society.
A constant stream of lies becomes so mentally taxing that your brain gives up. “It's called cognitive load,” Konnikova writes, meaning that “our limited cognitive resources are overburdened.” Lie detection is difficult work, and your brain can only handle so much.
Impact of Deception on a Relationship
The more lies they tell, the less you trust them or have faith in their honesty. Diminished compassion and empathy: Lying makes it harder to detect someone's emotions, which in turn, can diminish the compassion and empathy you feel toward that person.
All this deciding and self-control implies that lying is managed by the prefrontal cortex—the region at the front of the brain responsible for executive control, which includes such processes as planning and regulating emotions and behavior.
People who lie pathologically often tell lies about things that don't matter, for no apparent reason. They may do it unconsciously and may not even realize they're lying in the moment, although they can often tell afterward.
Even repetitive lying to a partner can be a form of abuse, since a survivor may begin to doubt their own experiences and instincts, becoming brainwashed into believing anything their abuser says.