How Do I Feel When People Lie to Me?

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels

Last week, I was in Milan to run a few workshops and, at some point, we were talking about all the things that distance us or keep us apart from other people. Amongst other things, the attendees mentioned behaviours like: when I feel I can’t trust people, or they don’t trust me, when they don’t believe me, when people lie to me, when they disrespect me, when I feel taken advantage of, etc.

We dug deeper and an interesting theme about lying emerged.

How do you feel when someone lies to you?

It turns out many people feel… stupid… as if part of the blame for lying resided in the person who’s being lied to. Whether we tell ourselves this story consciously or not, we feel (at least partly) responsible for being lied to… like we actually have some control over the situation and could stop others from lying to us. And if we fail and they do eventually lie to us, we feel like we allowed it to happen. we allowed them too close to us and they betrayed our trust.

And then, when that happens, the voice in our head starts telling us that we should know better or that we never learn: What’s wrong with me that I allow people to lie to me? Am I the laughingstock of the town (or the office)? Why do people pick me for their lies?

One of my coaching clients recently said the same. She was frustrated and losing self-confidence because she felt that one of her ex-employees was lying to and trying to take advantage of her. I mean, on top of dealing with the threat of the damage of her ex-employee’s behaviour, she felt bad with herself because “people would lie to her.”

“What did I do that people lie to me?” “I’m a nice person, I don’t deserve being lied to” “Why did I trust someone who then treats me this way?”

Photo by Ana Tarazevi on Pexels

There’s a fundamental flaw when we beat ourselves up this way because someone has lied to us. And the impact of this flawed approach can be very profound: we lose trust in people in general, we keep others away, we don’t open up, we create a sense of isolation and loneliness for ourselves, we lose confidence in our judgement, we lose confidence in ourselves, we feel wrong.

The flaw is that people don’t lie to us. They just lie.

The circumstances they find themselves in, seen from their perspective, are such that the best way they can respond is by lying. Something went wrong at work, they’re afraid of losing their job, don’t know how to handle the situation better, and they lie about it. Their marriage is in crisis but they don’t want to break it up, and the best thing they manage to do in that moment is to lie about things they’ve done or said.

Think of your own examples of when someone lied to you and notice that you can tell a different story about that moment, a story when they didn’t lie to you, they just lied because that was the best way they could handle the situation.

Think of when you lied. Often times we tell “white lies”, lies that we deem harmless or trivial, for the purpose of not hurting someone’s feelings. And it’s not because they deserve being lied to. It’s just that the best way we know to handle that particular situation is by telling a white lie.

Now, whether the lie is minor or major, the fact that lying was the best someone could do in that circumstance doesn’t remove their responsibility. I’m always responsible for how I handle a situation and so are you. And so is everyone else.

And of course, if I realise that someone lies at times, if I realise that there are circumstances where the best they can do is lying, I’m totally entitled to distance myself from those people, not involve them in my work, not engage with them in my personal life, etc.

I can even ask myself how I can help create an environment that encourages and inspires people to be honest, and that’s certainly a great approach to creating healthy relationships. But the fundamental truth doesn’t change: when people lie, they’re not lying to me, they’re just lying. The best tool that they have in their emotional/intellectual toolbox to handle that situation is lying.

Removing “to us” from the equation changes the reality of the situation completely.

We don’t need to feel stupid or tell ourselves that we should know better, that we never learn, that we don’t deserve respect. We don’t need to lose confidence in ourselves. We don’t need to feel that there’s something wrong with us because someone has lied to us.

We can’t avoid the trouble of someone lying to us, but we can avoid the suffering we inflict on ourselves.

The next time someone lies to you, before you react, stop for a moment and think of what story you’re telling yourself about the situation that makes it so that they’re lying to you. Perhaps write it down if you have the opportunity. And then remove “to you” and write a new story where that person just lied. Not to you. They just lied. It’ll be a very different story. Your emotional state will be more based around the situation, not around you personally, and the way you’ll handle the situation will be very different.

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