Why Addicts and Alcoholics Lie (and What To Do About It)-2020

Now, if you've got a loved one with a drug or alcohol problem, I bet I know what your number one frustration is. Your number one frustration is the constant, never ending lies. And I bet you even wondered in the past if you're dealing with a pathological liar. And a lot of times the lies don't even seem to make sense. It doesn't even seem like the lie is even connected to the addiction. So why, for the love of God, is it so difficult to get the truth out of them? Well, that's what we're going to cover in today's video. So, hey, for those of you who don't know me, I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and you are watching Put the Shovel down, the YouTube channel dedicated specifically to help you understand the psychology of addiction. So you can outsmart it, you can beat it, and you can get back to living the life that you want to live. Because I know that you are sick and tired of this addiction running the show. So make sure you subscribe, and I'll make sure you have all the information you need to stay five steps ahead of addiction. Now, in this video, I'm going to tell you the three main types of lies that people with substance use disorders usually tell. And I'm going to start with the most obvious and move into the deeper, bigger, more important types of lies. So make sure you watch the whole video to have a really thorough understanding about what's happening here. You know, people ask me all the time, like, what do you do? How do you respond to the constant lies? And how do you get them to start telling you the truth? And my answer to that is always, well, the first thing you gotta do is you gotta figure out why they're lying to you. Because the answer lies in the why. So the first and most obvious reason why your loved one is lying to you is to avoid being in trouble. Naturally, you want to avoid the consequences. You don't want people mad at you. So when your loved one comes home and you say, have you been drinking? Are you high? Have you been using? Their natural instinctive protective reflex is going to be to say no. I mean, most of the time they're going to be denying this before they can even sort through and process what you ask them. It's a reflex. Almost as fast as when the doctor hits your knee with that little hammer. And sometimes it can be really frustrating to be standing on the other side of that. I mean, it can be like a little kid who's got their hand behind their back. And then you say, what's that behind your back? And they say nothing when it's so obvious. But it's an instinctual protection mechanism. And those types of lies are usually the most obvious. Now the second type of lie that you might encounter with an addicted loved one is when they lie because they're embarrassed or ashamed or humiliated about their behavior or choices or that things they've done related to their addiction. Now this type of lie is a little easier to understand and at least have a tad bit of empathy for. And sometimes you might even find yourself lying for your loved one to protect your own self from the embarrassment or humiliation of the problem, or to protect them from the embarrassment or humiliation of the problem. This is often the reason why people lie in therapy or in group therapy. Unless you're talking to your like court ordered probation officer therapist, there's not a lot of consequences. It's not like you're going to be in trouble or you're going to get your car taken away or your kids taken or something. If you talk to your therapist. It's more that it's really embarrassing and shameful and a lot of those things you just don't want to say out loud. And so to be honest, a lot of times when I perceive that someone is maybe omitting or not telling me the whole story for this particular reason, I let them off the hook on it just a little bit. I sometimes even let them off the hook a little by not making them give every single horrible detail about it. Because my most of the time I don't need every single little horrible detail about the issue. I just need to know the big picture of what's happening. And there's no sense in making them suffer any more than they already are, especially in the counseling process. So for example, when they come in and they tell me, yeah, I drank, I drank four beers. But I already know because I heard from their wife yesterday that they drank eight. It's really not necessary for me to get into it and, and go back and forth and say, no, I heard it was eight. Especially if I know the reason they don't want to say it is because it's humiliating. But there might actually be another reason that they're telling me four and not eight. That's not because they're embarrassed or humiliated necessarily. And that is the number three type of lie. So let's move on to that one. The third category of lies has to do with self denial or lies to themselves. And to be honest, this is the more important question, way more important than why do they always lie to me? Because that's a little bit obvious, right? The bigger, more complex issue at hand is why can't they see it for themselves? Why are they lying to themselves? Because that's the domino that really needs to fall. And if you can get someone to get out of self denial and to stop lying to themselves and to take some action to fix the behavior, the other kind of lies tend to get better on their own. And so instead of focusing all your energy and attention on those other types of lies and trying to force the truth and trying to force compliance, spend your time and energy trying to understand the psychology of addiction. Why is it that they cannot see the problem? Are there things that you can be doing to help them see the problem faster? Because guess what? There are. And that's what this channel is all about. So these types of lies are normally like subconscious types of lies. So they're not typically purposeful. It's honestly like their brain's way of protecting them against this piece of information that might very well crumble them. It's really hard for a person's ego to see that whole mess all at once. So when you're dealing with denial, my advice to you is not to try to rip the whole sheet off all at once. My advice to you, and this is the way that I do it, is to sort of peel that denial back layer by layer by layer by layer. Not all at once, and not with a like super direct, like blast to the face type of rip off the denial. In fact, when you come at someone like that, what they do is they put up more shields and walls and you get more denial, which leads to more lying, which is going to make you want to pull your hair out. So here's the deal. Family members I know, because you always tell me this, is that you just want them to be able to tell you the truth. If that's truly the case, if you really, really, really want them to be able to tell you the truth, then you need to discern why the lying is happening. If they're lying to you because they're afraid of some huge consequence, then the way to get them to tell you the truth is to try to stay out of the trap of wanting to punish them. Now, you've got to understand the difference in natural consequences and punishment. I don't mean that you run interference and that you make their life great. I mean, whatever they make, they make let them clean them up. What I'm talking about here is that if you hear a piece of information that you are then going to impose some sort of punishment on. Like, for example, if you tell your loved one, if you relapse one more time, you're out of here. Like, I'm divorcing you, I'm taking your kids away, or I'm not paying for your college anymore, then guess what? They're not going to be able to tell you that. And you probably wouldn't either. And to be honest, I wouldn't either. So be reasonable about it. That's another one of those reasons why I say, don't put out big home contracts. Don't do the if then statements. Now, that doesn't mean that sometimes there aren't natural consequences to their behaviors, like, you're not going to pay for their college forever or you're not going to endanger their children. I'm just saying if you're constantly coming at them with the if this happens, then this is the punishment. Now, punishment is different because this is like you doling it out and say, because I found out this piece of information, you know, you're grounded from this, that and the other. You're restricted. And you know all of those punishment type statements, that's going to keep someone lying to you to avoid being in trouble. Now, if you think your loved one is lying to you mostly to protect themselves against the shame and humiliation, what you have to do is you have to take a really empathetic approach at talking to them. And you have to have a real sort of like, understanding attitude. Now, I know you might be thinking, screw that, I'm sick of their crap. And they're the ones that have been bad. Why do I have to do all the work? I totally get you. And that is a 100% fair way to be thinking and statement. But as some of you already know who watch my videos a lot, this isn't about being fair. This is about winning. And if your goal is to have your family member telling you the truth and they're lying to you because they're humiliated, then you're going to have to figure out a way to decrease that humiliation. Now, the way that counselors do that is we sort of normalize those feelings for them. We say, you know what? If I was in the situation, I think I'd feel that way too. And I might have even handled the situation the same way that you did. Now, that's not saying you approve of what they did or that they made the right decision. That's saying, I understand you, which is going to let that wall come down and more truth come through. And here's the good news. The more you can get them to say the truth out loud to you, the faster they're going to see the truth for themselves. And the more you come at them directly, the more walls are going to build up, the longer and more lies that they're going to be telling you. So remember, get strategic here. Our goal is to be five steps ahead of this thing. Now if you know that your loved one is lying to you mostly because of their own self denial, the best way to deal with that is to back up out of the way. Because most often family members, it's almost like they're standing in front of the person screaming, yelling, waving their arms, saying danger ahead, danger ahead, danger ahead. Blinking light, like alarm sounds going off. And they do that so much for so often that the person like literally stops paying attention to them. Like, think of it like when your check engine light is like always going off in your car and eventually you decide it's just the sensor, they start ignoring you just like that. And usually you're just a distraction from them seeing the problem that is right in front of their face. Sometimes all that trying to get them to see the problem is actually blocking their view of the problem. So if your loved one is lying to you because they're lying to themselves, your job is to back up, try to be neutral as possible. Now that doesn't mean put yourself or them or children or your loved ones in unsafe situations, because safety trumps what's therapeutic. So if it's an unsafe situation, you deal with that. Outside of that, your job is to back up, neutralize, stand over here and so that they can see that problem more quickly. And if you want to put that process on super overdrive and you're ready for this to be done, and you want them to get out of denial, then combine that backing up, being neutral with the not fixing of the consequences that we talked about in number one, along with the empathy that we talked about in number two. And if you come at it with that three pronged approach, you will win this war. Because that is how you get someone to truth. That's what counselors do and it works. Now realize it is way much harder for you to do that as a loved one than it is for me to do that as the counselor. Because what they're doing isn't really affecting me, it's affecting you. So I don't want to minimize that. I don't want to say like, why can't you do it? Like I can do it like I 100% get the fact that it's a totally different ball game. But what I'm telling you is these are the methods that work if you want truth from your loved one. These are the things that I want you to do. Now to make sure you're doing that correctly, I want you to watch these videos. I've put them together in a playlist for you called the Psychology of Addiction. And in that playlist, we talk about all the ways that people with substance use disorders think, all those denial mechanisms, why they stay stuck in those behaviors, because the more you can understand it, the more strategically you can come at it. So I'm going to put it right up here. All you have to do is click on it and start absorbing that information and making decisions differently.