What You Need To Know About Lying to Your Therapist
Even though honesty can be difficult, lies will keep you from moving forward in your life
If we indulge the human propensity to understate, exaggerate, and alter facts for whatever comfort or false security a lie might accord us, we forfeit our capacity to see reality clearly, and see only a world of our own invention. Lin Jensen
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.
Your first therapy session is a little like a first date. Your therapist is trying to get to know you, and you them. It makes sense that you’re not going to reveal all the details of your life in the first session, particularly those you consider unflattering. It also makes sense that you are trying to impress, with more, or sometimes less, veracity.
Over time you may reveal, to your date, or your therapist, that you had a brief affair with your boss, your beach house is really a shack two miles from the water, or instead of the occasional drink, you have three or four, or more, daily.
And maybe over time you don’t reveal more. I’ve seen clients continue some major lies for months, or even years. The unmentioned affair, alcoholism of an important family member or history of abuse may not come to light until a client returns for therapy after a break, or until their fifth therapist.
The Lies Clients Tell
Commission. One type of lie we tell our therapist is that of commission, intentionally telling an untruth.
Many impression management lies are lies of commission. Disingenuously saying you were more social, drank less, controlled your anger better, or were nicer to your spouse or kids is this type of lie. It’s easy to lie about what you have or haven’t done — there is no one to dispute your claims.
Omission. Another lie we tell our therapists is that of omission. Because I did not specifically ask whether you are having or have ever had an affair, you omit that important fact even though it’s central to your current anxiety. If I fail to check in with you on homework, but you know it’s something you ought to reveal, like how much (or little) time you spent relaxing or working out, that’s omission.
Other common lies. Many lies are about the therapy relationship. These, like most others, can be either commission or omission. Often people don’t reveal that they aren’t benefiting from therapy (omission), or may say they are, when they’re not (commission). People conceal negative feelings toward the therapist (omission) or deny them, when asked about such feelings (commission).
The Reasons Clients Lie
Fearing judgment. Sometimes people lie about not doing the work between sessions so their therapist doesn’t think they’re a slacker. You don’t want to disappoint them or have them think less of you. There may be shame and embarrassment. People lie about sexual matters for similar reasons. Sometimes it takes time to feel safe enough to reveal a hard truth. Clients often minimize their problems, afraid the therapist will think they’re too disturbed to work with, or might try to hospitalize them if they’re honest, though this latter is extremely infrequent.
Denial and avoidance. Everyone likes to avoid an uncomfortable truth, so we minimize, even to ourselves. The affair is no big deal. I’m not really drinking that much. My brother wasn’t actually abusive. You may try to avoid the pain you expect to feel if the truth is revealed. You may deny the truth out of fear the therapist will recommend something, like ending the affair, cutting back on drinking, or confronting a relative, and you’re not ready for that.
Being too nice. When it comes to lies about the therapy process, often clients don’t want to hurt the therapist’s feelings by saying they’re not benefiting. They also fear abandonment by the therapist for expressing such beliefs. Even when they’ve benefited, people don’t want the therapist to think they’re ungrateful, or mean, by saying they believe the work is finished.
Why Lying In Therapy Matters
Your therapist can’t help you when you’re not being honest. Your therapist is not a human lie detector and probably does not know you’re lying.
How can you get the help you need with your affair, drinking or relationship with your parents, when you don’t reveal the issues? If I think you’re going to the gym four times a week and still feeling tense, then I might explore what else you could be doing to de-stress, which just adds one more thing to your plate that you probably won’t do, another thing to feel bad about. Instead, talking about why you’re having trouble getting to the gym is much more fruitful.
It feels uncomfortable to reveal what seems like a weakness, poor judgment or a lack of determination, but your therapist is trained to help you cope with your feelings and self-criticism, not to judge you. Revealing yourself honestly will help your therapist understand what you need. It enables your therapist to validate your choices (because even the bad choices generally have a logic), feelings and beliefs, which can be very liberating. It can also help you be more honest and trusting with others in your life.
Similarly, if your therapist doesn’t know how you’re feeling about the therapy, they can’t make adjustments or help you confront difficulties. If you’re honest, they may help you realize that not asking for what you need, and then leaving when you don’t get it, is how you behave in other relationships. Sometimes your feedback helps the therapist realize that you need more understanding and less nudging.
It’s not just one lie. When you start with a big lie, you must come up with other lies that support it. What you did during the week has to be adjusted to account for the fact that I don’t know you’re having an affair or spending hours at your local bar after work. As anyone who has maintained a significant lie for an extended time knows, it takes a lot of energy. Instead of that energy going into the change process, it’s being siphoned away to maintain the lies. It’s wasted energy.
What To Do When It’s Difficult To Be Honest — Remember…
Successful relationships are built on trust. Like the first date, you don’t want the therapy relationship to be based on a big lie. Even if you have trust issues — and who doesn’t — this is the person you want to try to be honest with, so they can help you. It’s an opportunity to learn that someone important can care for you no matter your imperfections.
Your therapist is not your parent. You’re not going to have to sit through Thanksgiving dinner with them after revealing your truth. Your therapist does not have expectations for how your life should play out or the choices you need to make. Your job is not to make your therapist happy by being a “good client” who always follows recommendations. They know you’re doing the best you can. If you could do it all yourself, you wouldn’t need a therapist.
Your therapist is a professional. They are not a friend whose feelings you might hurt. Even if you do hurt their feelings, after all, therapists are people, they’re probably pretty adept at getting over it.
Once you come clean, your therapist can applaud you for being brave enough to tell the truth. Together you can identify what is actually keeping you from moving forward in your life and figure out what to do about it. You can feel good about being honest and being accepted for who you really are.
Even though we all routinely alter the truth in various circumstances, psychotherapy, unlike your first date, is one of many situations in which the benefits of presenting reality as it is far outweigh the costs.
An earlier version of this article was published at YourTango.com.
Visit me at www.drjudithtutin.com to learn more about me and my work.
