Never lie to a discerning Complex PTSD survivor.

April 28, 2013 by Healing From Complex Trauma & PTSD/CPTSD 10 Comments

 

One of my biggest core belief’s I hold on to tightly is not lying. I’ve had so many lies told to me, and they have caused so much harm.

I grew up with some of the best liars going – narcissistic people, who lie, deceive, manipulate and do much wrong and are ‘never’ to blame, all whilst looking so lovely to the people they need to look lovely around. People with no empathy and absolutely no self awareness of their own narcissistic behaviours. Having grown up with this – I had to learn how to survive, survive abuse, scapegoating, manipulation, lies – so many of them.

Some of the worst lies I’ve been told have been by the people I loved the most. Lies that are so devastating from being a child onwards, that they have caused core damage that I truly know will need to be a work of God to heal.

Being lied to by people I love, who I have tried to trust, hurts me, burns me to the core. Once lied to about something big, it casts considerable doubt anything that person ever did and said, both before and after the lie.

What’s worse is when the person only tells you about the lie – when they are forced to and they have gone into damage control, making excuses and insulting my intelligence.

It’s like being burned 4 times – firstly by the original wrong behaviour, second by them not dealing with it appropriately and being selfish at that time and keeping the truth from you, thirdly by them maintaining the lie causing confusion, doubt, insecurity, tension, and lastly by their denial and failure to own it, fully.

It’s worse, when before the lie is revealed – they have hypocritically blamed you for hurt and accused you of needing boundaries on your behaviour – when this is all a huge reflection of what they failed in themselves – causing hurt, knowingly stepping across boundaries, and then failing to deal with it appropriately. Their failures – projected onto you – the one originally hurt. Have you ever noticed how people do that – project their own issues/failures onto someone else. I have – I’ve seen it many, many times.

It’s gets even worse, when these are people who talk so much about ‘doing the right thing’ by people, ‘owning your mistakes’, ‘truth’, ‘being a man when you do wrong’, ‘treating women with love and respect’, ‘sin’. Makes their behaviour so hypocritical and even more devastating.
My hyper-vigilance skills are highly developed – I know when behaviours change, when attitudes change, when tension develops, when subtle ‘put downs’ are being made due to insecurities they have, when people are trying to convey a message to you without having the guts to actually say it. Even if I don’t know why – i know it is happening.

I know when things are not right, even when I don’t know I’m being lied to. When I know people well enough and I’ve studied (subconsciously) them enough, I just know when things are not right. I pick up on not just the overt cues, but all the subtle and covert cues.

Lies should never be told, but they have a nasty habit of coming out and biting people on the arse later on.

It’s interesting to find out people’s ‘true character’ when these things happen – how they deal with what they have done wrong. Do they lie? Do they do into denial? Do they attack you back? Do they make excuses? Do they panic and start building more lies to limit the damage to themselves. Or, do they actually do the right thing and confess their lies to all affected?

Everyone does things wrong, everyone makes mistakes, everyone can fall – but it’s how we deal with it all that matters. And it’s a mark of true character how this is dealt with – either character strength, or character failure/weakness and a reflection of someone’s true heart.

Don’t ever think you can lie to a complex trauma survivor with finely skilled hyper-vigilance. And if you do – be careful, or when it comes out, you will be expected to deal with it fully, appropriately and with genuine remorse – nothing less than that will suffice.

Better still – just don’t lie, full stop.

~ Lilly Hope Lucario

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