Dear Jennifer,
I lie a lot. Even typing those words to you, someone I will never meet, makes my heart beat faster and I’m not sure I’ll be able to send this to you. Sometimes I lie about big things and usually I lie about little things that don’t matter. But then I have to keep remembering that I lied about them and often add new lies to keep them from being discovered. Help?
— Lost in a Shame Spiral
Dear Lost,
You are not alone. Before I get into that, I want to start with something else. Somehow you summoned the courage to send me your truth and that, dear one, is worthy of being honored. Breathe into that for a moment and settle your heart.
I don’t know the statistics for lying. I would guess that almost everyone, barring nonverbal infants and people with no regard for others’ feelings and esteem, lies more than once a week. Some of our lies are small and insignificant, and others are big and heavy to carry around. For most of us, lying feels incompatible with our desire to view ourselves as honest people who seek open, truthful communication with others.
So why do we lie?
The reasons probably vary and are situation-specific, but they likely boil down to two primary reasons:
- Sometimes we lie to protect others’ feelings (“That haircut is fabulous!” or “I would love to get together, but I have to work”)
- And other times we lie to protect ourselves from scary consequences (“I’m not sure what happened” or “My phone battery died and I couldn’t respond”).
From an early age, we are taught a very confusing message. We are told that making mistakes is a necessary part of learning, and that we should accept responsibility for our mistakes, learn from them, and use them to guide future decision-making. That all sounds reasonable and good until we learn that mistake-making typically involves negative consequences (AKA “getting in trouble”). These consequences range from “not a big deal” to “life-altering with high stakes” (e.g. rejection, falling from grace, abandonment), and it isn’t always predictable where the judge or jury will place our current mistake. Who wants to sign up for confessing with those possible outcomes? No thanks. It’s easier to lie and increase the likelihood of remaining safe.
From Judgment to Curiosity
Several years ago, I found my way to a training program in self-compassion. Over time, I began to approach my own lying (yes, Lost, I struggle with it too) with curiosity instead of judgment. Today, when I find myself not speaking the truth or omitting key information (lying by omission), I pause to explore what is going on for me in that exact moment and what is getting in the way of my being truthful and authentic. I typically find one of two triggers.
- Sometimes it comes down to a trust and safety issue. I don’t trust the other person and I fear the potential consequences.
- More frequently, it boils down to shame and associated emotional experiences that are undesirable, like feeling inadequate and vulnerable to being rejected or abandoned.
Shame is a powerful emotion. It debilitates us and shakes us to our inner core. There is very little that we would not sacrifice to avoid the humiliation of having our least shiny pieces be discovered and displayed for public viewing. Shame also has the potential to become dangerous when we do not address it in a healthy way. It pulls us to isolate and distance ourselves, and away from what we actually need to heal: Love, compassion, and bigger picture thinking.
Understanding Shame: The SHAME Framework
Before we try to address shame and the connection to lying, let’s try to understand them a bit. I appreciate a good mnemonic acronym, so let’s think of shame as having five basic components (SHAME).
- Secrets. When we think of our shortcomings and failures as secrets that we must protect from being discovered, we lose our ability to broaden our perspectives and learn new approaches to dealing with our struggles. In other words, we cannot reach for growth with both hands when we need one (or both) to shield our secrets.
- Harsh judgment. We struggle to handle our mistakes and shame-inducing behaviors with self-compassion and acceptance of ourselves as life lesson learners. Instead, we are prone to bullying self-talk that is far more severe and harsher than any judgment we could ever receive by another person. It brings us to our knees when we need to move forward resiliently.
- Anticipated rejection & loss. We predict that others will view us as unworthy of their attention, time, energy, and love if they knew our truth. Since we don’t want these people to pack up their toys and leave us alone, it is understandable why we struggle with truth-telling in our most important relationships, isn’t it? What we fail to appreciate is that withholding our truth never allows our predictions to be proven wrong. People cannot surprise us with love, forgiveness, and grace unless we give them an opportunity.
- Mistake intolerance. We understandably associate mistakes with painful stimuli, like sad faces scrawled in a teacher’s dark red pen on the top of our papers, or watching other students earn trips to the class treasure chest for good behavior while we remain in the audience struggling with disappointment, bitterness, and shame. It makes sense why we learn to be intolerant and avoidant of mistakes…and why we are vulnerable to lying and other cover-up methods to keep our mistakes from being discovered.
- Esteem threat. We are mammals whose survival depends on being interconnected with other humans. When we worry that our mistakes could result in others’ devaluing us, withholding acceptance or love, and abandoning us, our survival mechanisms get triggered, our reptilian brain takes over, and lying becomes a fight-flight-freeze response to a potential threat. Esteem threats, including self-esteem threats, keep us stuck in our secrets and mistakes, and they hinder our growth and progress.
How to Step Out of a Shame Spiral
So, what should we do when we find ourselves trapped by our secrets and lies, and trying to survive a shame spiral? We breathe, dear Lost, we simply pause and breathe.
We choose to hold our secrets, our lies, and the ugliest pieces of our beautiful selves in gentle hands, and we allow self-compassion and grace to pour over, into, and through us.
We embrace that we want what every person wants — to be loved and valued, and to belong.
We accept the uncomfortable truth that sometimes that common human desire will propel us to make choices that are incompatible with our best selves. That is not making excuses for bad behavior. It is instead choosing to examine our choices with self-compassionate eyes, so that we are able to move forward, find the life lessons from our struggles, and remember that we are more than our secrets and mistakes.
Then we search for people who can hold our truths and see us as more than our shortcomings and vulnerable pieces. There is healing that only occurs when we summon the bravery to share something vulnerable, and our truth recipient accepts it with compassion and grace. It reminds us that we are human, and that there is beauty in imperfection and wisdom gained from our life lessons and mistake-making.
Then we engage in soul-searching. We remind ourselves who we are and what matters to us, and then explore big questions. What got in the way of my being truthful and authentic? What could I do differently next time so that my choices align with my core values and desire for honest and open communication with the people in my life? Are there any repairs that I need to make so that I move forward from this experience without unresolved pieces? What are the life lessons I learned from this and how will I carry them with pride instead of shame?
Then, dear Lost, we move forward resiliently, without the weight of our shame and secrets slowing us down.
Ubuntu, fellow traveler.
— Jennifer
