Everyday Narcissism by Nancy Van Dyken

Author:Nancy Van Dyken
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781942094463
Publisher: Central Recovery Press, LLC
Published: 2017-08-24T04:00:00+00:00

6

Lying to Survive

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

At a very young age, most of us are taught to lie by our families, our schools, our religious institutions, and society at large. We are not merely taught the behavior; we are also taught that lying is the correct and proper way to get through life. This is primarily taught to us through the principles of EN, and through Myths 1 and 5.

Over time, as these myths and principles become embedded in us, we systematically learn to be liars. Even though we’re directly told lying is wrong, we’re also taught, through what we see and experience, that we need to lie in order to belong.

As we’ve already seen, most of us learn to pretend to be different from who we actually are. We do this in order to fit in, feel safe, and survive. This is itself a form of ongoing lying.

We are also trained to lie in other ways. In fact, in our culture, lying is both encouraged and considered normal: Tell Grandma how glad you are to see her. And remember, look surprised and happy when she gives you one of her fruitcakes. Indeed, in some contexts, lying is often valued more than the truth: I told her I really liked her new dress because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Doesn’t she look awful in it, though?

Our first lessons in learning to lie about who we are usually occur in our family. This is true even if our parents are good people who have the best of intentions.

Although most children hear their parents talk about the importance of being honest, they frequently hear them lie. They hear their parents express one opinion to their friends or relatives and the opposite opinion to each other. They hear their parents lie to strangers about their ages, about being busy when they are not, and about their feelings. Their parents may pretend to outsiders that everyone in the family is happy, even though there may be physical abuse or addiction or a child who is failing in school.

As kids, most of us also heard our parents lie to each other. And it’s not uncommon for one parent to ask a child to lie to the other parent: Don’t tell your father we went to the movies; he’ll just get angry.

We also learn to lie through omission. Although we don’t tell a direct lie with words, we leave out important information. For example, your teenage daughter admits to you that there was some drinking at the party she attended. However, she doesn’t tell you about the drugs she was offered or that the parents weren’t home.

By the time most of us turn eight or nine, we’ve caught our parents lying to us multiple times. And being lied to always wounds us.

To children, every broken promise may be experienced as a lie, even when one is broken for the best of reasons. When a mother says to her daughter, “I know I promised we’d go to the beach today, honey.

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