I talk to a lot of people who have mental health issues. A week doesn’t go by that I don’t meet someone new who tells me a piece of their life story, and I glimpse at the desperation that eats them up inside. The desperation is usually for things we all hope for — a better life, a life not feeling this way. A life more “normal.”
But after talking to people over all these years, I still can’t wrap my head around people who tell me they lie to their therapists. I just don’t get it.
I take my car into the mechanic. I tell him what’s wrong with my car, or more specifically, the odd noises or strange odors coming from my car, because honestly, I have no idea what’s wrong with my car. Those symptoms lead the mechanic to have a few hunches of what to check out that might be wrong with my car. He checks them out and lo and behold, diagnoses the problem — a faulty fuel pump. Problem solved, and my car and I go our merry way.
Same with my doc. I went in for a regular checkup last week. My doc is the nicest older French guy you’d ever meet. He looks like a character right out some classic French film set in a small country town. He’s very personable, talks very softly, and asks all the right questions. He never lets his kind attitude get in the way of his information-seeking. Now, if something was wrong with me, I’d say, “Hey, doc, my arm hurts when I do this.” After he gets done saying, “Well, then don’t do that!,” he would take a look at my arm and try and figure what’s going on. Even if it were an embarrassing problem, I’d find a way to get beyond my embarrassment, because, well, that’s his job and I’m paying him to do his job.
I see no reason a therapist shouldn’t be the same.
You pay a therapist for the time you spend with them. Their one and only job is to help you find a way to feel better, help you stop repeating unhealthy behaviors or patterns of behavior that are no longer working for you, help you live a better life.
If you lie to your therapist, especially about something important in your life or directly related to your problems, then you’re wasting your and your therapist’s time. If you tell your therapist all about your depression, but leave out the fact that your mom just passed away last month, that’s an important, valuable piece of information that would be helpful for the therapist to know in order to help you better. If you tell your therapist you have low self-esteem or always feel insecure about yourself, yet leave out the fact that you purge after eating almost every meal, again, you’re only impeding your own recovery and treatment.
These are plain and simple lies, called lies of omission. And they prevent a person from moving forward in treatment.
I believe the reason many people leave out this kind of information is the same reason we have trouble mentioning embarrassing things to our family doc — we’re embarrassed by what we need to say, and feel the doctor might pass some sort of judgment on us. Whether it’s a rational fear or not doesn’t really matter, does it? One of the reasons many people seek out psychotherapy in the first place is to help combat irrational thoughts and fears, so in that context, it makes sense many of share this fear of being judged or embarrassed.
And yet, if you do nothing else in therapy, you should find some kind of way to share this sort of pertinent information with your therapist. It doesn’t have to be in the first session. But it does have to happen at some point.
Your therapist won’t judge you, and they won’t be embarrassed by what you tell them. They won’t criticize you for not sharing this information with them sooner. All they will do is use it to find a way to better help you and help you move forward.
92 comments
Funny that you bring this up. I run into the same situation in my profession (personal trainer). It seems that new clients are so worried about impressing me that they are willing to work beyond their limitations (which is okay since I’m there to stop them), but also don’t tell me important information about their health history or dietary habits until I either catch a slip while they are talking or they tell me about it well after a program has been designed and inititated with them. It’s not only frustrating for me to do all this work and have to go back to square one, but they are putting themselves at risk for their delay.
It’s hard but I guess people sometimes don’t want to own up to their own limitations or failings. But none of us are perfect and just as most of us have a lot of similar feelings (but never share them with others), most of us have a lot of similar issues or problems we grapple with in our lives. It’s nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about. None of us are perfect.
I think that’s completely off base, sort of blaming the victim. Many of the issues people go to therapy for are terribly painful. They’re difficult to reveal and, only revealable after a long period of comfort with someone.
I’m fascinated with John Grohol’s “Why would you lie to your therapist” article since I wrote a book dealing with the dangers of what I call “Emotional Dishonesty” in our society. The late psychiatrist John Viscott commented on this phenomenon throughout his book “Emotional Resilience.” It was after 4 years research exploring the dangerous aspects of “hiding what we feel and faking what we don’t” that I completed my book, “Emotional Honesty & Self-Acceptance: Education Strategies for Preventing Violence” (Xlibris, 2000). Viscott actually found there was a correlation between emotional lies and lack of progress by some of his patients, who simply had problems revealing what they were truly feeling in therapy sessions. He used a simple technique of giving these non-progressing patients an audio tape of their therapy sessions. After listening to the tapes, many problem patients told Viscott that they couldn’t believe how often they lied about their feelings in therapy. The theory behind my book, and current work teaching pre-teens to use healthy coping skills for dealing with upsets, is based on the simple principle that emotional dishonesty seems to have reached a crisis levels in America. I believe violence, suicide and self-harmful acts in America result from a cultural dishonesty and denial of emotional pain. Neuroscientists now know that emotional pain is real and exists in long-term memory despite one’s efforts to pretend “I’m O.K.” These deep pain memories are what may trigger both harmful behavior toward others as well as self. This process is now being explained by examining brain scan imaging results that show emotional pain registers in the same part of the human brain as physical pain! Our brains too often confuse the two. One result is fear that an emotional wound arouses an instinctive fear that “Something terrible is wrong with me” when I feel emotional pain. Kids I work with in grades 4-6 school classrooms learn about these brain dynamics, and how to regulate them. Yes, pre-teens can learn brain-based coping skills for getting over emotional wounds. I call this prevention-focused work Emotional Health Education. In classrooms it’s called Brain Works for Kids. In March, 2008 we will launch a free, innovative online learning center (www.copingskills4kids.net) to help pre-teens. The Internet may be the fastest way we can prepare a new generation for the emotional turmoil of adolescence. At the same time, we want to introduce these online public education tool for kids, we can also encourage their parents and teachers to use brain-based coping skills principles at home and school.
Some patients don’t consider certain relevant issues as relevant. Your patient might want to be treated for their insecurity, but is actually OK with their purging after every meal.
I am so glad i read this article today. I have a friend whom only recently has conceded to seeking psychological help for her mental health issues. She has a very difficult time opening up to anyone about her problems and feelings. Everyone including therapists. In a recent conversation with her, she mentioned to me that she had been to several therapist. When I asked about how it was going and if she felt that it was helping her. Snickering she responded that she had been to a few but was not happy with any and did not feel that they would be able to help her much. When I asked her why, she responded that she was running circles around them. And further explained that she knew more about many of her issues than they did. It seemed as if she was playing some sort of mental game with them. I really wish I could help her understand that, as this article says, it makes no sense. You are paying this person to help “fix you”. Why would anyone want to run circles around the person who is going to try to help you. The person whom you are paying to help you. If anyone has any helpful ideas or words of wisdom for me to share with my friend it would be greatly appreciated.
Well, speaking for myself only, here are some of the reasons I lied to my therapist in my last session.
I’m still conflicted about whether I want to be in therapy, partly because I’m not confident about the process of therapy and whether it can help me.
I don’t yet trust my therapist, partly because I’m not confident that this therapist has the skills or experience to handle my problems, and partly because the ability to trust is one of my problems in the first place.
As you mentioned, the shame factor comes into play. The particular question the therapist asked me concerns a behavior I am very much ashamed of. Knowing on an intellectual level that I “should” tell the truth has not, so far, enabled me to overcome the trust issues mentioned above.
I know that the logistics and effort involved in starting over with another therapist (or even worse, “shopping” for a therapist) are completely beyond me right now, and that if I quit this therapist, I won’t try therapy again. So I continue to show up, week after week, slowly expanding the horizons of what I am able to discuss, and lying about what I have to. Am I wasting my money? I ask myself that every week.
i lie to my therapist about what i’m feeling towards her. i’m embarrassed about these feelings, and when i do try to share them they come out wrong. those are that i feel too dependent, that i want more than what she can give me, and that i find these feelings to be a sort of weakness in me.
I believe that if your intention is to eventually come clean, when you find a good comfort level with your therapist, that’s okay… We all need time to acclimate, and while the patient-therapist relationship is second nature to therapists, it’s foreign to most individuals (which many therapists tend to take for granted).
But I know people who’ve been in therapy for *years* and still have trouble talking about certain topics, or just out and out lie about them to the same professional they’ve trusted for years. I think that’s what I’m really struggling with understanding, and must be shame-related, because I can’t find any other reasonable explanation…
John Powell says in “Why am I afraid to tell you who I am” – that basically it’s because this is all I’ve got, and if you don’t like me then there’s nothing more… Therefore, we assume roles, wear masks and play games – maybe it’s hard for clients to think that the therapist will have unconditional positive regard towards them when they themselves do not have this same regard for themselves – and once the game’s up – there’s nothing left – pretty scary
because they don’t tell you anything you need to know, nor do they give any advice a silence or a hmm response doesn’t really help so what’s the point in saying anything. it’s taken me a year to realise that not all therapists may be quite so unhelpful. i’ve had to do my own research and help myself being able to access a uni library really helped, i think i’m ready to seek out someone who may pick up any bits i may have missed
Nonsense. Therapists are human and will release confidential information at the drop of a hat. It could be child custody, illegal proceedings. Court ordered subpoena. Simple chit-chatting with the therapist’s cocktail party friends. If someone thinks therapists are given attributes uniquely in deference to the rest of humanity, I suggest they send their children off for weekend holidays with their priests.
Of course patients only partially reveal themselves and try to put themselves in a good light. This is what the thinking individual self does. Thought rehashes the past to make things better. It rehearses the future again to boost the individual self. Just watch thought and you can see this. Any good therapist will understand this process and point the person back to himself/herself to face actuality head on. The onus is on both therapist and patient to dig out the truth. The process is messy and both contribute to lack of clarity.
Dr. Grohol should look into the research of Dr. Anita Kelly (University of Notre Dame). She has done a tremendous amount of research in the area of secret keeping (not just in the therapeutic relationship) and has some very interesting things to say about why clients keep secrets from their therapists. Research suggests that some secret keeping is indeed good, for reasons relating to self perception. Some catharsis is good, but it turns out that its important that we maintain some sort of positive image even in the eyes of our therapists. I have not done justice to her research in this brief comment, but its interesting reading, and I think could really be insightful to clinicians who think that its crucial that clients be 100% honest with their therapists.
Dr Grohol says that therapists are non-judgmental but that is not true. I tried therapy several years ago. The therapist was quite dismissive (“I can’t believe your situation was that bad”) and critical in ways I would rather not share here. I think it is important to protect one’s identity in any situation, until trust can be established.
Medical professionals too can be judgmental. One acquaintance was giving birth as a single parent when all the nurses (and medical residents) criticized her for having a baby without being married, in a small hospital.
We all lie to our shrinks, just like we lie to our dentists (“sure, I’ll floss twice a day”) and our mechanics (“it’s not so much a click as a drum roll”). But the point of repeat visits to our shrinks is to allow for the time necessary to figure out what’s a lie, what’s a misconception and what the truth (for that day) is…
Jane’s suggestion is a good one, so if one is more interested on this topic, I highly recommend Anita Kelly’s 2000 Psychological Bulletin article, A Self-Presentational View of Psychotherapy: Reply to Hill, Gelso,
and Mohr (2000) and to Arkin and Hermann (2000) (PDF):
http://psychcentral.com/blog/u/anitakelly2000.pdf
You’re right Susan B., I should’ve said most psychotherapists *try* to be non-judgmental and that is definitely a quality I would look for in my therapist. Any therapist who immediately starts passing judgment on what I tell them quickly gets moved to my “Professionals I’ll never use again” list.
And to Gabriel’s response… indeed, we all do tell little white lies to many, many people, nearly every day. But that wasn’t my point. I think those kinds of little lies are generally okay, as an attempt to keep a social or professional relationship moving along smoothly.
My concern is more about the huge, an elephant is in the room but nobody’s saying anything about it kind of lies. The lies where you’ve been in therapy for 2 years with the same therapist and they still haven’t been clued in on something real important, like an eating disorder, some self-destructive behavior, continued drinking for a recovering alcoholic, etc.
I agree that these things take time — I don’t expect most people to blurt out everything in the first session. But if you find yourself in therapy holding back a key piece of information, it may be time to mention the fact you’re having trouble with disclosing this piece of information… or find a therapeutic relationship where you can feel more comfortable sharing…
Seems that the ability to face and express the truth about what you, as a patient, are feeling is half the battle and a reasonable signpost for measuring progress. Often the therapist needs to help make that happen.
Communication is tricky! Being a person is complex! Why should a client trust their therapist completely? Are all therapists equal in their ability to make best use of information provided? Do they possess super powers of empathy and non-judgemental listening? Can all therapists build the rapport, be human enough, to encourage their clients to reveal their deepest thoughts? Is it simply a matter of extracting information from client, and then the therapist, like a modern mind mechanic, uses the magic words to make all well?
I’d suggest, as therapists are human too with their own sets of problems with life and communicating, the answers aren’t always a resounding yes. If information is withheld then that’s indicative of an – and sorry to use this inhumane adjective – ineffective relationship. Perhaps it’s the “client’s fault” because they have problems with trust in relationships, but a decent therapist has to embrace this and work through it.
I have always been congnizant about whether or not the information I pass on to my therapist is the truth or a lie, and I truly understood how lying would not get me to where I wanted to go – no matter how embarrassing the situation.
When I have “lied,” it was when I was in a state of denial – I either did not want to, or could not “see” the truth as it actually was.
It was only after a period of time when things became clearer in my mind (with the help of therapy) as to how the actual events unfolded. Once clarity came, I was able to correct these “lies” or misconceptions, which I did to the best of my ability.
However, one time, I was led to believe something had happened by an over-enthusiastic therapist that really didn’t happen! It was only after approaching the people involved, I realized that I had been led down the wrong path. While my head wanted to believe (out of bitterness and pain), my heart could not. It devastated familial relationships and continues to do so to this day, even though I tried to make it rightl.
I should have demanded something be done about this therapist, but at the time I was devastated (again) and did not have the strength to do anything about it.
Sometimes (and rarely, I am hoping), it is not always the fault of the patient.
I am sure I am not the only individual who has ever experienced such a thing.
it is not surprising that those who choose to become therapists often have unresolved issues themselves, and unconscious agendas, which despite efforts, color their work with their patients. a good doctor or car mechanic’s work can be measured in quantitative terms. meanwhile a therapist might be patting him/herself on the back for doing a ‘good job’ with one’s patients, and a patient might ascribe to the ‘super influence’ or seniority of the therapist, while no real healing is actually occuring. it is highly subjective, and this frequent self-congratulatory attitude too often serves mainly as self-aggradizement for the therapist in order to meet their own unconscious underlying needs.
Patients dont lie. They say (explicitly) what they’re ready to. they say (explicitly)what they can at a given moment of the therapeutic relationship. But they say it (implicitly)all the time! Yes they do. It’s always there for the psychoterapist to recognize it- in dreams, a slip-of-the tong,in a blink, a movement of the body, a hesitation, a apparently unrelated story, and so on and on and on… This is the real and true job for which he is being paid for! But to accomplish it, the psychoterapist has to be familiar with the so called ‘psychology of the depth’, the psychodinamic psychotherapy, or in short, with the freudian or freudians-derived, schools of thought. He has necessarily to have done is own psychoterapy with someone that transcend the usual – in the USA -cogitive and/or behavioural aproach… But in ego-dependent, behaviourist and pragmatic America all this is of course the usual and old European rubbish talk… and so you’re left with nothing more than the blame-the-client and wash-your-hand games – not to mention the broader political and social consequences of it all.
Everybody lies. (period)
We live in a culture permeated by lies.
The US government has made had a policy of
lying since Gary Powers and the U2 incident.
Shrinks lie. Let us not forget the Seattle UW professor and shrink taping women in his bathroom.
Nature lies. Remember the chameleon?
This is reality.
AND, sometimes, a government, a person (shrinks included), and nature tells the truth to the best of their/its understanding.
Whether you are a consumer of mental health,
or just a plain old citizen walking in the woods or elsewhere, the old adage
“buyer beware” is a good one.
It could be updated to believer beware.
I am also a therapist, but not at all surprised that clients often “lie by omission.” Talking to a therapist about something requires that you face the problem, and this is often difficult. Denial is a huge part of how problems perpetuate themselves, and are probably what propels the person into therapy in the first place.
I would suggest that Dr. Grohol has not, in this article, done enough to assuage the underlying fears a client may have about their relationship with a therapist. A simple contrast would be to recall a friend of mine who, in the face of the proposition that she needed some sort of professional assistance, booked one session, told the therapist that she was just fine, and never returned. It can be a scary prospect for people in her position to confess what one considers sins; that my friend, so accustomed to dispensing absolutely vitriolic judgment, should fear the judgment of a psychotherapist makes perfect sense to me. She is, in the end, unwilling to trust the psychotherapeutic process. In my own experience, I have invested what some would call inordinate—and at least one psychologist of my acquaintance has suggested inappropriate—faith in the process. Part of me approached those sessions tacitly daring my therapist to judge me. To the other, though, I was (and am) painfully aware of the sins of omission I committed on that couch; I would suggest that overcoming those omissions, gaining the courage to face them, confess them as such, and work through them toward some sort of conflict resolution, is the essential purpose of a process that can seem endlessly repetitive.
Reading Dr. Grohol’s article, I found the last two paragraphs unsatisfactory. Indeed, if you do nothing else in therapy … but why? I think of my friend, who would nod and say, “of course”, but in the end would still view the process as a mere formality she would go through to convince others of her sanity while calculating how best to escape a judgment that should, in any proper setting, never come. The final paragraph, all of three sentences, while accurate to my understanding of the process (from the client’s perspective), is simply insufficient, in my experience, to convince certain people I know who could benefit from such a process that the only judgment they have to fear is their own. Which, of course, comes back to the heart of the matter.
Why would a client lie? Because they need help. It’s a no-brainer at that point. The greater challenge is helping the client overcome the barriers presented by an overwhelming fear of judgment.
I wouldn’t, but that’s why I have to quit therapy on principle on July 1 of this year when Virginia strips therapists of their right to choose whether and when to reveal information about their clients to non-health professionals, lawyers with no mental health training who are called “special justices.”
I really agree that to many times people are not honest with their therapist and sit at home or work or where ever and wonder why they are not getting better. Well it just like taking your car to the mechanic and just telling him to fix it, well he will probably be able to find the problem and fix it but it will probably be along drawn out process that costs you twice the money.
From my experience I feel that maybe it is because of not wanting to be judged, for a long time I was not honest for that reason what are they really going to be thinking or telling there friends and what if there is no help for me? In reality if you don’t have trust with your therapist you might as well put the check book away and be happy to be depressed because you will never be happy until you are honest and that is the truth. I know for me after looking and looking and not knowing what I was doing wrong after talking with insightpros.com I realized that it was me and I needed to just be honest!
Well here in the UK, where it is threatened (and is likely to happen) that unfiltered medical records of all sorts will be uploaded to databases which will in theory be secure, but in practice will be used for all sorts of nefarious purposes — there may be a very good reason to lie about some things.
And this is slipping through with barely a murmur.
I’ve been to therapy several times and didn’t find it helpful at all. In each case the therapist didn’t actually do anything. A few times it was moderately useful to have a person to listen when I wanted to vent about something, but they didn’t really understand me or my situation, and sat there nodding and looking sympathetic. For this I am paying money? I can get the same level of support from complete strangers on the Internet.
I get much better care by taking care of myself and doing research. I know myself better than any therapist. I have even had therapists try to discourage me from finding out what was wrong.
By accident I discovered that the language problem I have is called ‘aphasia,’ but my therapist tried to tell me that having a label for it was no use, and (politely) berated me for ‘wanting a medical excuse’ for my ‘personal problems.’
I argued that having an accurate diagnosis meant I could understand my condition better and research coping mechanisms to help myself. Even though I never got a formal diagnosis of aphasia, reading a description of it made me feel that I was not alone with my problem, and better yet, advice on how to cope with aphasia taught me useful skills that let me get over my frustration and improve my language ability.
Maybe we’re seeing therapists because our problems aren’t ‘all in our heads,’ and we need a therapist to realize that body and mind are more connected than they realize. A person may have aches and pains not because they’re depressed, but may be depressed because they have aches and pains.
People with chronic pain from a physical condition are more likely to suffer depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems than people who don’t have chronic pain. If you had your daily life constantly curtailed and interrupted by pain, odds are, you’d be depressed too. Therapists just don’t get that. Given that 19% of Americans of working age have a disability, it’s totally unacceptable for therapists to not be trained to support people coping with disabilities.
Even though a therapist may be non-judgmental, isn’t it true that the confidentiality between a therapist and patient doesn’t enjoy the same legal protections as, say, that between a lawyer and client? Aren’t there some states that have laws requiring a therapist to reveal information disclosed to them by a patient if the state decides it has an interest in knowing that information? I don’t know the situation in all the different states, but I believe the state of Virginia either has or is about to pass a law of this type. I think a law like that might keep some people from being completely honest with their therapist.
It’s a matter of trust. I never felt that I could tell my therapist the truth because he couldn’t handle it. I had the unique experience of talking to my therapist in the presence of another therapist, about 6 months after he terminated the therapy. The thinly veiled contempt I’d felt during therapy was openly revealed in that session, so it backfired for him since I filed a formal complaint for ethical issues of mistreatment.
If by “therapist” you mean “psychiatrist” then a reason to lie to them is because you want them to prescribe a med about which they are leery.
This particularly applies to CNSs. The DEA has scared M.D.s senseless about prescribing meds on the Controlled Substance List. No med attracts their attention more powerfully than amphetamines. For selfish, career reasons, psychiatrists are frightened of prescribing it or its fellows. If a patient were to find that it is working for the purposes prescribed, (e.g. ADHD), but has some untoward stimulant effects, one might lie to one’s therapist about the latter effect so as not to give him a plausible reason for d.c.’ing it.
This is just one area in which law has destroyed therapeutic relationships. Whereas therapists ought to be treated as expert advisers, their gatekeeper power frequently requires their patients to attempt to finess sthem.
” I still can’t wrap my head around people who tell me they lie to their therapists. I just don’t get it.”
I am sure you didn’t mean for this to sound as judgemental as it may.
Though it is alarming that you find it difficult to ‘wrap’ your head around what might motivate a person to lie to a therapist. Have you failed to think this dynamic through thouroughly before you wrote such a simplistic and, ultimately, invalidating article.
If fixing cars was a suitably nuanced analogy Jiffy-Lubes would have a couch.
If a person shakes their head and is perplexed, do you call that person judgmental just because they don’t understand something?
Yes, I used another analogy as well, going to my family doctor and talking about an embarrassing health issue. It’s hard to do, yet we find a way to do it because it’s our life in the doc’s hands. I’m not certain why a therapy relationship should be any different, in the sense that they are there to help us, not to judge us.
As the responses to this entry illustrate, it is indeed a more complex issue than I had originally thought.
One word: transference. Many people who come to therapy relate to their therapists as if they were their parents or other important people — not because they want to, but because they feel compelled to protect themselves from what FEELS like a dangerous situation, a perception that is influenced from their past. It’s not so clear as plain lying, much more complicated than that.
“If a person shakes their head and is perplexed, do you call that person judgmental just because they don’t understand something?”
Actually you used the phrase ‘wrap’ your head around it and,also, that you ‘just don’t get it’. Both of these are a type of popular vernacular and they can, very much so, have a perjorative and subtle judgemental subtext to them.
Especially the use of the word ‘just’ in ‘just dont get it’. Compare ‘ I just don’t get why someone would waste money going to a mechanic for a simple fuel filter change’ to ‘ I don’t get . . .’ The use of the word just displaces the misunderstanding onto the subject. Choosing to say you don’t understand would be a more neutral way of speaking.
But be honest- do you really NOT understand why a person might lie to a therapist? I think that you chose that phrase as a lede. so to speak, to introduce your point that deception is counterproductive to a therapeutic process( that in and of itself is highly debatable but) and to get the most from a therapist one should not lie.
In an ideal world of well trained and highly skilled therapist, that are very attentuated to what the words they use can imply, and a society whose laws protect confidentiality and etc, etc , etc.- as the various comments above so well illlustrate, yes the ideal is absolute candor, but therapy is a tool for working with less than ideal actualities.
Your article has gotten many good and helpful comments and I think you might want to revisit this issue during your own supervision sessions.
If one lies to one’s therapist about a core issue or underlying reason they are in therapy, and one never “comes clean” about that lie, what therapeutic benefit has that person gained from therapy?
I understand people’s many rationalizations and justifications for their lies, but I’m still not clear on the benefits of the lies themselves. I could go through a dozen case studies here to further illustrate my point, but I’m not sure of what benefit that would be since some people don’t seem to understand the differentiation being made here.
Condescending attitudes notwithstanding…
Well ‘coming clean’ is not a necessary pre-requisite to therapeutic progress. A client can become helpfully aware of their resistance without actually breaking through that resistance. The dynamic begins and ends outside of the timeline of the actual clininical setting. A person may see a therapist for a period and during that time lie frequently, they may be quite aware of that and that choice, and subsequent awareness, in an of itself, can have benefits. Implied case studies notwithstanding, absolute candor is NOT the end all or be all of a helpful session.
I presumed that you used supervison as has become very commonplace. Meeting regularly with a person whose academic and clinical experiences help to guide us in our own work.
With today’s level of technology and our reliance on computers, some people may find it easier to “open up” through electronic communication rather than talking in person. The person seeking help may feel more secure and comfortable behind a keyboard and a LCD screen than meeting face-to-face with a therapist. That is not to say e-mailing should replace therapy in person, good grief, inability to communicate in person may be one of the problems the individual have to overcome. Instead, I suggest – as a complete stranger to the subject – that e-mailing and instant messaging could be used as a tool by the therapist, in addition to other methods, to allow the patient to communicate important information about their lives.
Here’s an idea: what about fear? I haven’t read all of the comments, but did read a great number of them. Nobody mentioned fear. Yes, fear of being judged by therapists, sure. Others mentioned maintaining positive self-image.
Nobody mentioned …simply, fear. Perhaps for some therapy clients, admitting ‘how bad it is’, is very frightening, on a visceral level. They may know it themselves on some level, but admitting it to their therapist might make it too ‘real.’ As in, my life feels out of control and by not admitting these deep fears I maintain some semblance of control. Unhealthy? Healthy self-preservation? Hard to say.
This seems one possible rudimentary reason for lack of complete disclosure.
Does ‘everything’ need to be discussed, truly? Our society advocates much sharing, little privacy. Something hampering progress in therapy, likely it should be shared.
Culturally, people vary greatly. What is sensible sharing to one person might be a great invasion of privacy to another.
Certain memories or situations might be difficult to share with a therapist who doesn’t have the experience or background to understand it, or who thinks too conventionally to be able to relate to one of another culture or very different family background and life experience (such as childhood or wartime trauma perhaps).
Some thoughts..
Dr. Grohol is a really committed and nice person. But this article is amazingly clueless.
Anna Salter, in her book “Transforming Trauma”, explains a LOT of reasons why the survivor of sadistic trauma might omit information or lie systematically. It’s how we survived, for heaven’s sake! How can you possibly not understand this???
The fact you, like so many really nice but clueless therapists, don’t get it is the reason few survivors of sadistic abuse last in therapy.
For the sake of his patients, Dr. Grohol desperately needs to read Salter’s book “Transforming Trauma”. She makes the reasons for with holding information or lying explicit. While some people may do this out of embarrassment or shame, many of us have other reasons directly related to our experiences. Not understanding this history and its effects on a personality means Dr. Grohol will continue to marginalize a certain percentage of his caseload who could benefit from his help.
I think people don’t so much lie in therapy as they do not share everything at first, until they feel comfortable with the therapist and trust him/her deeply. For some people, especially those who have experienced trauma, abuse, and abandonment repeatedly, this process can take years. It takes a dedicated and understanding therapist to stick with these clients and build the trust that is necessary to share “everything.” It would be an extremely poor match if these clients were paired with therapists having the “you’re lying to me” attitude. I would hope that most contemporary therapist training programs would teach what client withholding and reluctance to share sensitive material are all about.
The way Grohol describes it, it is as if the clients are deliberately telling lies to sabotage their therapy. I don’t think that’s it at all, and I wonder if a therapist with that view about a client might actually have some counter-transference going on? The clients are doing the best they can, and with patience, trust, and guidance from the therapist, hopefully they will get to the point in their therapy where they can share most anything with their therapist.
I wonder sometimes if things Grohol refers to as ‘lies’ might well not be described as such by the client. The client might actually believe them (at least in part) when they are saying them. Dissociation might come into this a little… I think that ‘untruths’ can reveal truths similarly to how ‘fantasies’ and ‘desires’ can reveal truths. In fact… Perhaps ‘untruthful’ content is spoken in an attempt to reveal deep truths on an emotional or metaphoric level.
Metaphors are (strictly speaking) lies
Yet untruths truely reveal desires / fantasies / fears
I think it is about always, always, always, attempting to interpret such that both the client and therapist retain their dignity.
Is the problem that you think you can’t help someone who lies?
Or that lying will impede progress?
I don’t see why it will inevitably do that…
The author is clueless in another respect, some therapist do make judgments and once you sense their judgment you know there are certain subjects you can’t discuss honestly with them. Period.
I’ve seen six therapist over the years for varying lengths of time. My current therapist for instance does not approve of drinking. Her disapproval is obvious and palpable.
I guess I think this is a genuine attempt to understand. I’ve been really interested to hear peoples responses to this thread, actually. Really interesting.
I guess it takes quite a lot of theoretical knowledge / sophistication to sort the ‘significant’ things that one ‘should’t omit’ from the ‘insignificant’ things that don’t really matter. I mean… A therapist knows that if you drink alchohol then you probably will feel a bit low afterwards. Not all clients know that, however, and since they don’t know that it is significant they might well omit the fact that they drink prior to their lows.
Aside from that… There are a lot of people who struggle with issues around being believed, yeah. And then there are people who have the experience of having to interpret objective events as being rather extreme (or ‘objectively’ traumatic) in order for them to feel that their distress is legitimate / valid.
Then there are the people with identify confusion who worry a lot about how they are representing / misrepresenting themself. There are some clients who constantly feel like they are misrepresenting / lying because they simply don’t know what they feel / think because they have never been given the opportunity to figure that out.
Sometimes therapy can be about practicing different ways of being… Misrepresentations / lies, maybe… But something that needs to happen on the way to figuring out who one really is (like how children need to play).
While I agree that it is counterproductive for a patient to lie to a therapist, I believe Dr. Grohol’s ideas, or at least this essay, are very shortsighted about the problem. Would the good doctor as easily admit to his mechanic that he drives 80 miles per hour down the city streets, and slams his breaks to a squealing stop at every red light, but he can’t understand why his brakes are failing and he’s getting no gas mileage? Or would he just go in with a dumb look and shrug his shoulders like the rest of us?
When a patient seeks therapy (as I have a number of times) he or she is taking the first of many, many small steps toward recovery. He or she is NOT going to walk in and say, “Hey, I don’t know you at all but let me tell you all of the horrible things I do wrong in my life, and where they all come from, even though I’m not even sure if I want to change.” Only after months, or maybe years of tackling smaller problems (“I can’t stand how angry I get when my kids forget to pick up their dirty towels”) and getting comfortable with a therapist will the patient begin to work on the really heavy stuff that underlies the more trivial issues.
And as for therapists not being judgemental, that is such a ridiculously simplistic, even naive view of the profession, I almost wonder if Dr. Grohol lives in Mayberry. My local phone book has 10 pages for psychotherapists. This is big business. There are not even two columns devoted to shoe cobblers. I’m not trying to belittle the profession, but it seems an awful lot of people go into the therapy business, and its doubtful they are all so gallant and compassionate as Dr. Grohol seems to think the should be. Not everyone is cut out to be a therapist. But who’s gonna stop them?
I sometimes justify my lack of complete candor with my therapist as an excuse not to talk about it at that time. I assume the truth will eventually come out as our relationship progresses. I do worry about being judged even though my therapist has never given me a reason to worry. I believe he is just as human as I and I judge frequently. Lastly, sometimes i give morsels of the truth and see if he can guess the rest. I am not always certain of the truth and his guesses give me a lot to think about.
I think we lie to a psychatrist/theraptist it is hard to bring up a hard expereince in life. As well some issues in life they are hard to explain. As one is cutting on their arm
Of course it’s much easier to talk to your mechanic. There are physical repercussions if you don’t–your car might break down on the highway and cause an accident. Same with your physician–if you don’t tell her where it hurts, she can’t alleviate your pain and you’ll continue to suffer.
Lying to your therapist just doesn’t have the same immediate ramifications. And it can always be reversed by fessing up in a future session.
Which brings up another point: You see both mechanic and physician infrequenty. If you want help, you have to act in the moment. The relationship with a therapist is much, much different. It can take months to develop a rapport with someone to whom you are baring your innermost thoughts and emotions. It’s more personal and so more risky.
Frankly, what I can’t understand or wrap my head around is that Dr. Grohol doesn’t understant that dynamic. I wonder … Is there any chance that part of the blame lies with the practitioner for failing to develop a relationship in which the client/patient feels he or she feels safe enough to be totally open and honest?