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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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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Why People Create Fake Online Relationships

I am quoted in this article about why people create imaginary relationships online at YourTango.