What You Need To Know About Lying to Your Therapist

 

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Clearly seeing reality is a waystation toward the goal of enhancing your wellbeing. As you might imagine, lying to your therapist impairs both your and your therapist’s ability to see that reality. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably lied to your therapist.

In their book, Secrets and Lies in Psychotherapy, the authors report that between 84 and 93% of clients lie to their therapists, often about multiple things. This isn’t terribly surprising since research has shown that the average person lies once or twice a day.

Consider your honesty on a first date. Odds are, you may be less than totally truthful. You may paint your job in a more positive light, talk about relationships with your children in a slightly more glowing way, or tell an anecdote about something, embellishing the details to make it more humorous or interesting. 

These are all normal lies told for the sake of impression management, to make us look a little better, appear somewhat more accomplished or take a conversation from merely interesting to scintillating.

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This Personality Test Reveals If Being 'Nice' Is Your Greatest Strength Or Weakness In Relationships

If you're the kind of the person who's always being accused of being "too nice", a simple personality test can let you know whether or not what they're telling you is the truth. 

After all, we all know someone who's quick to forgive and who only responds with kindness when they're on the receiving end of bad behavior. When someone drops the ball, that person is there picking up the slack. When someone says something insensitive, they go above and beyond to be understanding of that person's intent.

After all, we all know someone who's quick to forgive and who only responds with kindness when they're on the receiving end of bad behavior. When someone drops the ball, that person is there picking up the slack. When someone says something insensitive, they go above and beyond to be understanding of that person's intent.

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4 Marriage-Material Qualities To ALWAYS Look For (And 4 To Ignore)

As Daniel Gilbert described in his aptly named book, Stumbling on Happiness, we don't always know what will make us happy. The same can be said about finding partners for relationships that are likely to make us happy.

My clients and friends tend to have a laundry list of things to look for in a guy, who absolutely, positively has to be attractive and intelligent, love the beach (especially for watching a sunrise or sunset), speak a few languages, enjoy travel, desire many children, and many more.

You may want to reconsider that list.

While we say we want a handsome mate, if we also want an understanding one (as most of us do), recent research shows that the handsome partner who is not understanding will be a terrible disappointment.

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4 Qualities To Say "Yes" To In A Partner

As Daniel Gilbert described in his aptly named book, Stumbling on Happiness, we don't always know what will make us happy. The same can be said about finding partners likely to make us happy.

My clients and friends tend to have a laundry list of things they seek in their next mate, who absolutely, positively has to be attractive and intelligent, love the beach (especially for watching a sunrise or sunset), speak a few languages, enjoy travel, desire many children, etc.  You may want to reconsider that list.

While we say we want a handsome mate, if we also want an understanding one (as most of us do), recent research shows that the handsome partner who is not understanding will be a terrible disappointment. And it follows that the not-so-handsome mate who is very understanding will bring us more happiness.

The traits that reflect our deepest, intrinsic desires are most important in guaranteeing satisfaction with our partner. 

What we really need are: 

1. Warmth. This person desires intimacy with you. Read more here...

Am I As Crazy As Amazing Amy? Take The Test Here

When "Gone Girl," the book, came out, friends wondered if I'd ever worked with anyone like the main character, psychopath Amy, aka, Amazing Amy. Not to be confused with the garden variety narcissist, the psychopath has a much darker side.

The narcissist will exploit anyone for their own gain, believes in their superiority to others in all things and is vain, self-involved and infuriatingly entitled…kind of like Amy's husband Nick.

Gillian Flynn's Amy has the hallmark signs of the psychopath—her outwardly normal appearance masks her utter lack of conventional morality and the absence of all concern for the welfare of others.

Now that the movie is out, I'm faced with the question again. In answer I decided to post my own questions, including the important one everyone asks themselves: Am I as crazy as Amy? You be the judge. 

 

Have you ever:

1. Thought your partner might be cheating and:

a.       Looked through her phone—harmless enough, right?

b.      Followed her— if she's got nothing to hide...

c.       Installed spyware on her phone—she'll never know.

d.      All of the above

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How to Give Good Feedback

How do you give good feedback?  By good feedback I don’t mean telling people positive things.  I mean how to tell people negative things, the hard truths, in a good way.  It’s a kinder, gentler tiger mom approach.

Your kid does poorly on an exam, your friend blows a job interview, your spouse doesn’t reach their weight loss goal for the week, etc.  How to respond?

It’s not your job to soften the blow.   Telling someone they did as well as they could gives the message that their best isn’t good enough.  It also frees them from feeling bad.  Feeling badly because you did poorly is motivating.  You get the message that you’re not doing as well as you need to do.  That makes people try harder.

Focus on the change that needs to be made.  If they understand why they failed, they can look at other actions to take in the future.  The idea that you can make changes and do better is motivating and increases confidence.

Focus on controllables.   The focus is on what they did, not what they are.  Focus on effort, not ability.  Focus on new strategies, planning and persistence, i.e., on grit.  It’s not that they’re not good enough, it that they didn’t do something they needed to do, and that thing is under their control.

Be honest.  People can tell when you’re not being honest and it undermines any feedback you give now or in the future.

Good feedback might include some of the following ideas.  Maybe you studied but you didn’t study the right way; next time you may want to try focusing on writing notes, memorizing more, or starting sooner.  Perhaps you need to use a different strategy in the next interview; next time you may want to be more enthusiastic, have a better explanation for your interest in the position or be better prepared with your job history.  It’s great that you’ve been careful with your carbs, but maybe you need to be getting to the gym an extra day or two.

Good advice for others, and good advice for ourselves.  See how well you can tell the hard truth the next time you need to give feedback.  And maybe you need a little more honesty with yourself.

For fun: Don’t ask me no questions. Lynyrd Skynyrd

Ask me no questions...

I was reading an article recently about the fear parents have when their kids ask them about the past. Do they tell them the truth about their sometimes sordid past, that they smoked marijuana at 15, when they first had sex, whether it was in or out of wedlock, or not? Do they withhold the truth? Or do they out and out lie?

In many situations, we don’t tell all. Sometimes it’s to avoid judgment, sometimes to avoid hurting someone, and at other times, it’s to manipulate for other reasons. What happens in relationships when truths are not shared, be they romantic relationships or parental ones, friendships or collegial?

What about the times we pretend we’re happy with things as they are in a relationship? No, I don’t really want to go out with the boys and play poker, smoke and get plowed. I’d much rather stay home with you and watch Titanic, honey. A small matter, but what happens when it’s something bigger? What happens when you want to climb Mount Everest, or your Mount Everest, and he doesn’t want you to?

I often hear people talking about how they’d like to …, want to …, would rather…, wish they could tell someone …, only to stop in mid-hope by the fear that someone will disapprove, cut them off, withhold affection, leave them. It’s not a pleasant prospect. And I’m not just talking about lovers. Think about all the things you haven’t told your parents, siblings, friends. Think about the things they haven’t told you.

So we have some situations here that come up often. Are we going to try to manipulate our kids by not being honest about the past, pretending to be the kind of person we’d like them to be? Or the person we wish we’d been? Are we going to keep a relationship going based on pretending to be someone who we’re not?

So here’s my bottom line. Tell the truth. Possibly the world’s foremost expert on lies, Paul Ekman, in Telling Lies, says we all lie. I can see it. When she asks if the dress looks okay on her, don’t say it makes her hips look big, tell her the color makes her eyes look greener. When your kid asks what drugs you did as a teenager, you might give him the short list. But apart from a little nip and tuck on the truth, tell it like it is. For kids, this would be in an age appropriate manner. And, like the woman and the dress, consider what the person is really asking. She doesn’t want to know if she looks fat, she wants to know if you think she looks good, if you love her even though she’s put on a few pounds. Your kids don’t want to know what drugs you did, when and with whom, they want to know if they should be using drugs or hanging with people who do. They want to know if they can make mistakes. They want to know if you’ll love them no matter what. So just show them the love...that’s all we really want, isn’t it?

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything. Mark Twain