Keeping Secrets

Unless you’re a sociopath, psychopath, or pathological liar, keeping secrets will have a negative impact on your holistic systems. Keeping secrets causes the decline of your autoimmune system and leads to a decline of quality in your mind, body, and soul. This act of withholding powerful information, which you would be better served by releasing, leaves you keeping secrets and promotes deterioration of health, the onset of disease(s), premature aging and death.

Those who are keeping secrets are more likely to withdraw from social interaction, have fewer friends, and are prone to paranoia, feeling as though potential interaction with others will put them at risk.

Keeping secrets in a romantic relationship causes separation and prevents a relationship from progressing or deepening.

Secret keepers are highly proficient at projecting their issues onto the people they encounter.

If you hide unexpressed anger regarding people from your past which might include parental angst, keeping these feelings deeply held within will likely cause you to see these attributes applied to the people (or person) closest to you.

Children who suffered abuse and keep these details highly regarded secrets as adults will suspect any prospective partner as potentially abusive, even when no real potential for abuse exists.

For those who actively push down their past of having been abandoned in their early years, they are likely to be clingier in relationships and fear being abandoned by their partner.

These emotionally charged memories and thoughts, even if they are deeply hidden, possibly even from the cognoscente mind of the secret keeper, will become the filter through which the keeper of secrets views life.

The keeper of secrets is likely to hide many secrets which is likely to include their own feelings. In relationships, one partner might sense emotional disconnect or psychological distraction, and query, “What’s wrong?” To which the secret keeper will respond, “Oh, nothing.”

The solution to this self-destructive withholding is to find ways to find ways to express yourself, starting with surface issues, then digging deeper as you become more adept at sharing your feelings.

If you’re in the habit of keeping secrets, you’re likely to do it all the time, not speaking up when you are disappointed, disillusioned, or feel as though your feelings have been disrespected or hurt.

Start speaking up for yourself. The next time you go out to eat, and your food arrives in a way you did not expect, do not push down your feelings and force yourself to silently eat your dish silently vowing not to come back to this establishment. Instead, note your concerns to the server, offering the dish to the wait staff who can take it back to the kitchen and make it right.

Start speaking up and asserting your concerns, while allowing others to make accommodations which would be more pleasing to you.

Nest time someone asks, “What’s wrong?” Don’t hide your feelings. Tell them what’s wrong but temper your expression with respectful compassion. Your tendency might be to start your expressing yourself with the object of what’s bothering you, which places blame and puts the recipient on the defensive.

I Feel Like

If you want whoever it is to hear how you feel, then start with, “I feel like…”

No one can deny how you feel. How you feel is how you feel. Even though you may be expressing your disapproval of something that is based on someone else’s actions, no one can deny that whatever is the object of what has made you feel bad, it’s not disrespectful to the cause.

This is a safe way to express yourself, while taking full responsibility for your own feelings.

Once you get used to the idea of being more open and honest in this way, you can consider talking about things that you have encountered in your past which you have kept secret.

Whatever has happened to you in your past is not good or bad, it just happened. It was a part of your past. You are an amazing person today, and had you not gone through all those experiences, you would not have become the person you are today.

And it is highly likely that once you get to a level about peace about your past, you can help others who share similar tendencies to keep secrets, once you realize the benefits of not keeping secrets.

What Are You Hiding?

I have had the privilege of having people confide in me, telling me their deepest, darkest secrets. I know what the “official story” is about a great many things, and I have heard the truth behind the headlines directly from the sources. I have also been massively deceived by a sociopath, the greatest keeper of secrets, only to find out the truth at great expense.

One particular psychopath with whom I’d become acquainted with who was referred to by prosecutors as inherently evil and claimed himself to be a pathological liar could wield lies like his identifying superpower. With a keen ability to defraud, counterfeit, and masquerade, he enjoyed false careers as everything from an airline pilot, attorney, mental health counselor, therapist, investment banker, real estate, precious metals, and Wall Street broker, just to name a few.

The psychopath was the embodiment of the phrase, “If his lips are moving, he’s lying,” (according to one Chief Investigator) as he committed a wide variety of crimes while bilking unsuspecting widows, and vulnerable adults, among a long list of other types of victims, left wounded, alone, and penniless. Lying, he claimed, was his form of exercising his First Amendment right to free speech, which he was entitled to by constitutional law.

Being proficient at lying is not relegated to narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths, pathological liars, or evil people.

As much as we’d like to say, “I could never lie, like that,” the truth is all of us, including you and me, lie all day long, every day of our lives, albeit without any malicious intent.

What are you hiding?

You are deceptive, hide the truth, and lie every day; we all do. It’s a standard human basic survival skill.

You’ve learned from a very early age, generally two years old, that telling the truth does not serve your best interests. It usually starts with you being sent to your room or otherwise punished by a parent (or parental figure) for honestly fessing up to something that your parent(s) disapproved of. So, you learned to lie and have perfected the craft over time.

You learned to lie (just like we all did) to avoid punishment, disapproval, or pain, and to make life easier to manage, to make friends, to advance in careers or society, and to be attractive to others, especially romantic partners. Leaving you wondering why lovers lie?

Other reasons for lying include getting what you want, to be recognized, establish and maintain an image, to garner attention or sympathy, and to find out if someone else is lying or trustworthy.

No matter how much you know someone, how close you are to anyone, you can’t tell what’s going on inside someone else’s head, it’s just not possible. Just like no one can tell what’s going on inside your head, and you do the best you can to present yourself as the person you believe yourself to be, even if it means lying.

Those of us who might be on the autism spectrum are probably the worst liars (by that, I mean, not very believable when lying and lie the least), but the rest of us are fairly competent at lying.

The fact is, the whole world, the three-dimensional world that we all inhabit, is entirely an illusion of belief systems which are hardly based on truth, but on lies, we’re programmed to believe as truths, and we believe them so much, that we would defend them with our lives.

If we live, we live a lie to the best of our abilities, where we are surrounded by lies, but most of us do it with the best intentions.

How to Deal with a Liar

How to deal with a liar? The truth is, if you can handle it, behavioral scientists report that during a 10-minute conversation people will lie two to three times, and if we are people, these statistics are true for you and me, too.

That’s a hard pill to swallow because we don’t like to be lied to, and we don’t like to be thought of as a liar, so we try to cover it up with withholding otherwise negative information (which is the unspoken lie of a weak-kneed chicken-hearted person, or people-pleaser). I know, “But I was trying to be nice,” but it’s still a lie.

And if you’re sensitive or aware enough to know when someone is lying to you, guess what? You’re wrong 47 percent of the time, so the joke’s on you.

Think law enforcement, CIA and lie detector professionals fare any better? Well, they do. They’re only wrong 40 percent of the time. Even with all the technology and behavioral science we can muster, only a seven percent increase in actual detection of a lie.

Even so, when you catch someone in a lie, it seems like such a betrayal or breach of trust how could anyone not take it personally?

So, what do you do when you catch someone in a lie?

Well, there are a couple of ways to approach the fact that someone has lied to you (assuming you know the facts, and that there is no other option than you’ve actually witnessed a bold-faced lie first hand).

Your first option is not to do anything, understanding that people lie all the time, and this person felt the inclination or need to lie based on any number of life circumstances and situations, and who knows? If you’d lived the same life and been faced with the same options at that particular point in time of your life, you may have responded the same way. Who knows? It could happen.

On the other hand, you could just laugh it off and make a joke of it, like it’s really no big deal. In this scenario, you might laughingly hint to what they might have said as being inaccurate or an exaggeration, without having to put the person on the spot. This gives them the un-threatened time and space to review what they’ve said and maybe consider approaching a more accurate story after they’ve had a chance to work it out for themselves.

You could take the Columbo approach, another non-threatening tactic, pretending that you’ve had a memory lapse, or appear to be confused because you’ve been juggling a lot of information that has become overwhelming and confusing. With this approach, you can query the person at leisure, by playing dumb, while continuing to ask questions to clarify your confusion, you’re likely to end up with a more accurate picture after some continued communication exchange.

Then, of course, there is the more direct option, which is to challenge their lie face-to-face, eye-to-eye. While this is the most direct approach, this is by far the most difficult and there is little or no margin for error. You must have your facts in order, in such a way so as not to be challenged yourself, or you could be labelled as a liar. In this direct fashion of facing off with the liar, it might be best done in private, or with others who may have been affected by the lie. Either way, be direct, keep control of your emotions, deal with the facts, and let the chips fall where they may.

Report the lie, if you feel the need to, to the proper authorities, manager(s), employers, agency, or victim, but if you do, keep it unemotional and stick only to the facts. Don’t use conjecture, accuse or try to speculate why this person feels as though they had to lie about anything. And if you are motivated by fear, anger or revenge, do not report it – at least not now – wait until you can make a report with complete control of your faculties. Often, after you’ve given yourself time to cool down, you might think that it wasn’t as much of a crisis as it felt like at the time, and you’ve avoided someone’s thinking that you’re over-reactive.

Above all, make note that you’re dealing with someone who has the propensity to lie. Try to cover your back by documenting all communication with this person. Try to communicate by verifiable methods such as email or texting. If this person is a highly advanced liar, they will not commit their words to writing. No problem, pay very close attention to what they say, noting the day(s), time(s), place(s) and player(s), then summarize their statement to him or her in a text or email just to confirm that you understood them correctly.

Please Lie to Me

Lies. We hear them all day long, every day of our lives and they make us feel good.

Even if the lies are horrific tales, they make us feel better about ourselves… because, after all, it could be worse. We could have been the unfortunate subjects of the tragic lie.

Our parents lie to us about Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Disney – the hallmark of all fanciful lies – spins a yarn so incredible, we can help but believe any web they weave, and the liest don’t stop there… We’re just getting started.

Go to school, read a book, watch the news, do a Google search. We’re surrounded by so many lies you couldn’t possibly discern what is truth, even if it was staring you in the face.

Are we all living one big lie?

Ever look in the mirror and ask yourself, “Who is that?” or “Who am I?” and not have any clue as to what the real answer to questions, like that, might be?

please-lie-to-me-it-makes-me-happy

But when you tell me good things about myself – even if they’re not true – doesn’t it make me feel better? And the bigger and more fantastic the lie is about me, the far better it feels. In fact, many of the happiest moments of my life were when I was surrounded and bathed in the most dishonest lies ever told.

Tell me lies: It makes me feel fabulous!

Let’s face it, being lied to makes you happy too.

Why am I happy when I am lied to? Because it feels so good to believe that the best things in life are not only possible, but it makes you feel like you are one of the lucky ones. So lucky, it’s as if you’ve just plucked the winning lottery ticket out of thin air. How much better does it get?

When people lie to me, it makes me happy. Tell me that I am amazing, that I look like a million dollars, that I am handsome or pretty, talented, unique, funny and/or brilliant and I will love it!

Please lie to me, it makes me happy. Don’t we all want a little bit of happiness? Sure, it may not last forever (or very long, for that matter) but in that moment we feel like we’re on top of the world.

Want to make me incredibly blissful? It’s easy; just tell me, “I will do anything to make you happy.” Aargh! You got me! Bull’s-eye! Right to the heart! I am yours!

Lie to me. Tell me that you love me, and make me the happiest person on this planet.

Please lie to me.
When you lie to me it makes me feel like I can do anything.
Please lie to me.
I will believe we can live in a world where we are free.
Please lie to me.
I will believe in true love between two for eternity.
Please lie to me.
I will believe we have a divine destiny.
Please lie to me.
So I can be happy.
Please lie to me.

Be a good liar

This doesn’t mean that you should be massively deceitful, though a high skill level in lying can be hugely effective if wielded masterfully.

What it means is

If you are going to lie, please do so with the best of intentions.

Narcissistic lies are simply destructive. While they may accomplish the desired results in the interim, the long lasting effects can be negative and can lead to the inability to ever be trusted by others.

On the other hand, if you have to lie – at the very least – make sure to make someone happy. There is a better chance of having a more meaningful social impact by telling what are commonly referred to as “white lies,” without malice of intent.

Take a moment to think, before answering,

How does my butt look in these jeans?