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Another anonymous emailer says: “I have a couple of friends that I go out to drink with sometimes. I noticed that when we are quite a few drinks in we will start telling each other how much we love each other. That never happens when we're sober. Why is that? Do they really mean it?”
Thanks Anon. My thinking on this is it has to do with vulnerability. Alcohol, for better or worse, reduces activity in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. That's our command center, the area we use to make our judgement calls. It also dampens the cortex's friend in the back of the head, the amygdala. That's our brain part responsible for keeping on the lookout for threats. The more we drink, the lower our inhibition. It sounds that, like most people, you and your friends have trained those parts of the brain to play it safe when it comes to outpourings of emotion. The rougher our childhoods (say if we endured abuse, trauma, or bullying), the more conservative that part of the brain will have adapted to be. You and your friends clearly love each other. That's fantastic. And I don't think it's disingenuous. I think we are scared to show these emotions when we are in our ‘right mind’ because there is a risk attached to them. If I say I love you and you don't say it back, I will be devastated. So people won't take the risk of saying such things when sober. Instead we will drop hints and be indirect about it. But I say be bold. If you have a feeling a friend loves you, and you them, tell them so. Best case scenario it's a thing that you can be open about. If not, at least you can weed them out of your life. Write me here!
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Our first lie comes when we are little kids. At an early age we have perfect credibility with our parents. Say we want an extra piece of candy after being told no. In the past we took the candy, owned up to it when pressed, and got in trouble. This getting in trouble really hurt, so we were given an incentive not to get in trouble again. The harsher the punishment, the greater the pain. The greater the pain, the larger the incentive.
For a time we just obey the rules to avoid the pain and keep our parents' love. But one time we try something new, we try saying no we didn’t take the candy, even though we know we did. And it works. Our credibility pays off, they believe us, and we get to have the candy and avoid trouble. We have learned something new. But of course it doesn’t last long. The first lie was such a booming success that we tried lying again and again. Our parents catch on quick, and the abused credibility tanks. This isn’t the end of it though. The first memory we have is of the success of the lie. And even if our credibility is low, we still do sometimes slip one past other people. We don’t usually stop lying, but we get better at it. The benefit of avoiding the short term pain of getting in trouble makes the risk worth pursuing. It is all about that short term thinking. In the medium and long term we damage relationships with lies. The pain still comes, but because it isn’t immediate, it doesn’t necessarily feel connected to the lying. The blame for the pain of the relationship damage can be fobbed off on other causes. It’s the other person’s fault. Or job stress. Or the kids. Or whatever. So there isn’t an incentive to avoid any particular lie. People pleasers can be especially prone to lying. If we grew up with the conflicting desires both to feel safe and to sometimes get our way, lying would naturally become more alluring. The solution here may be to do the counterintuitive thing and get comfortable with short term pain. Being upfront about your actions, taking the immediate pain of the other person’s reaction, and holding in your mind a more long term perspective. This would involve remembering that rebuilding credibility is a process, one that will involve short term pain. Work through the original causes of lying. Get in trouble and find that unlike when you were a kid you can absorb the pain of it without being crushed. I was recently interviewed by Authority Magazine on the topic of being a people pleaser. Below is an excerpt from that article. The full version can be read for free on their website.
- What does “People Pleaser” mean to you? A people pleaser is a person who feels compelled to give more than they receive in any kind of relationship. Their default thinking will be some form of ‘what can I do to make people around me happy?’ On the surface, it seems like being a person who wants to please others is a good thing. Can you help articulate a few of the challenges that come with being a people pleaser? It does seem like a good thing on the surface. Certainly it is better than being the complete opposite. The trouble is the people pleaser invites others to take advantage of them. People pleasers will find there is inequality in their relationships. They are apt to grow bitter and feel that although they give so much to others, they get little in return. They may ask ‘when is it gonna be my turn?’ ... How does people-pleasing behavior impact personal relationships? If you establish in your relationships that you will give and give and not ask anything in return, the people in your life will accept that arrangement without much thought. People may assume you just take pleasure from giving. That you don’t want much of anything in return. Even well-meaning people can fall into this receiving without giving back trap. Receiving is easy, and if a person isn’t being asked for anything, it takes mental effort for them to notice that they should be giving. The above is the more common scenario. But there are more dangerous ones. People pleasers attract people users the way a glove attracts a hand. It is common for the victim in abusive relationships to be a people pleaser. An abuser may be the type of person who consciously only wants to take and take. So they sniff out a person who was raised to give. The abuser unknowingly plays the role of that childhood parent or caretaker. And the victim will play their old familiar role, possibly not knowing a different role is an option. This is exasperated by gender norms. Women are already conditioned to be givers in mainstream culture. If they grew up in a household that was both unstable and patriarchal, they likely would’ve received the message that it’s a woman’s job to quietly give and have no expectation of anything in return. ... Often while we say we want to change aspects of our lives that bother us, we don’t actually want to. That we actually prefer to keep the drama alive. This may be hard to accept. The drama appears to be everything you hate, so how could it also be your preference? The answer may be that the drama is familiar. In discussing anxiety I often use the metaphor of ‘the tiger in the room.’ Anxiety is the fear that because we have endured traumas and stressful events in the past, we will again in the future. So we have to be anxiously on guard for it, we have to be looking around for where the tiger -the threat- is hiding. Relief from anxiety can then come when you see the tiger, when a bad thing is happening to you. Because at least then you are in a familiar experience. The alternative is being comfortable with openness. That anything could happen, that there are no barriers, that anything can be in the room. This could mean a tiger is present, but it could also mean that love is present. It could mean a million different things good, bad, and neutral may be in the room. Anything may occur. If you choose to people please, then you will get the same familiar result. However if you choose openness, if you choose to take a new action, then you will get a new result. Is a new result what you want? Then take it. Full interview here. To book a counseling session, click here Emotional Distance and 'Other-Lifing' - In Yourself and in Relationships
What is other-lifing? I would describe other-lifing as a way in which a person is seeking an escape from their current reality. Perhaps there is a feeling of dissatisfaction with what is going on. Other-lifing is a way to get out of that day to day existence without making the often hard moves to change things. It's a form of alternate reality. An anxiety-pacifying way of seeing your life as just palatable enough to not face the pain of the unknown future. What are some examples of other-lifing? Examples can include excessive daydreaming, pornography usage, online, parasocial relationships, texting relationships with other people, and video games - especially virtual reality or role-playing games. Recently there has even been a growing trend in seeking relationships with AI chatbots. What are the dangers of other-lifing? It probably increases the risk of depression. Think of it as being like eating empty calorie food. The activities fill you up, but don't necessarily nourish you. They don't help with your growth, but instead replace healthier options. It's not that any of the examples above our inherently bad, but it's more of a question of what activities aren’t happening instead? The depression can come from knowing at a certain level that the other-lifing activities are only distracting from deeper problems. The longer the deeper problems go on, the more overwhelming they feel. This can further discourage change and only encourage the momentarily satisfying other-lifing. Are there any benefits of other-lifing? Potentially, other-lifing can be useful in situations in which you truly cannot change things. Examples would include being incarcerated, bedridden long term, or physically disabled. I would suggest a person intentionally wrestle with the question of how do these activities not distract from my current reality, but actually enhance it? What can I do to stop other-lifing? As I always say, the first and toughest step is recognition. I would recommend exploring with a therapist the actions and effects of this behavior. Big changes are daunting to make so perhaps there can be a middle step between recognition and action. (Book a therapy session here!) When you are feeling the itch to take an other-lifing action, resist the urge, pause, and instead stick with your mind and body in that moment. Without doing anything else, explore just what feelings arise in that moment. These could be emotions like irritation, anger, sadness, even boredom. Or the feelings could be physical, like a tightening in the chest or headache. If you can just stick with the feelings in that moment, try to observe where it is they take you. What thoughts do they cause? Do they bring a sense of fear to you? Do they seem threatening? This is important information. It can be of use in deciding what action to take next. What effect does other-lifing have on relationships? It should be no surprise to learn that other-lifing is damaging in relationships. If a person is disconnecting from their own life, then it will certainly come off as them disconnecting from you. If they are off in their own head (or in their own phone) an information vacuum can form. This is a space where we do not know what is going on, and we become anxious about it. So the anxious brain will inevitably fill that vacuum with worst case scenario thoughts. Anxiety is when we use ~80% of our mental energy to worry about ~1% possible outcomes. The most common probable conclusion is believing your partner is cheating on you. What can I do about other-lifing in my relationship? When your partner is other-lifing, a bit of a conspiracy of inaction can form. They don't want to address their dissatisfaction head on, so they withdraw. And you don't want to face the potential pain of what lies in that information vacuum, so you don't address it either. For similar reasons you can develop your own depression. Oops! So if they aren't going to do the hard thing and address the dissatisfaction then Plan A may be for you to. Be straightforward. Ask them what is going on in their mind, and push through any reflexive avoidance responses they give. Stress the importance of talking about it, and be a gnat. Push for couples counseling, a space for a non-bias third person to assist you. More info on couples counseling here. If that doesn’t work, shift to Plan B: do the opposite. This requires knowledge of the distancer-pursuer dynamic in relationships. The distancer is the person who values the energy of independence more in the relationship, and the pursuer the one who values the energy of connection more. Both people usually value those energies, but usually someone will value one more, so that energy becomes ‘theirs’ and the other energy ‘yours’. A partner who is distancing themselves is probably used to you pursuing connection with them. The more they withdraw, the more strongly you will pursue them as a consequence. It is the very reliability of you pursuing them - the knowledge that you will do the work of connection in the relationship - that encourages them to not give energy to connection. In an ideal relationship these energies are split somewhere near 50/50. But as time goes by, this split can start to approach near 0/100 proportions. So perhaps if they are other-lifing you need to just leave them to it. Go do your own thing, take care of your needs in other ways. This does not necessarily mean other-lifing yourself, but rather seeking out your own independence. Your own healthy hobbies. Your partner will begin to notice that you are not pursuing connection anymore. In this absence it will actually make sense to the more independent-minded person to want to pursue connection. They will feel the need themselves to rebalance things I was recently asked some questions about pathological liars. And here they are!
1. Is pathological lying a mental health disorder or is it a symptom of other disorders? Please explain. Not a mental health disorder, but more likely a symptom of some other things. A strong possibility is that the person had some traumatic events happen in their past. Usually in childhood. And as a consequence they developed the habit of lying as a way to protect themselves. Perhaps they grew up in a household where admitting guilt to even minor infractions was met with violent punishments. In that case lying would be the only logical thing for a kid to do to protect themselves. And as we find again and again in therapy, the adaptations of the kid stay the habits of the adult. 2. When it comes to pathological liars, are there any warning signs or red flags to look out for in the dating/getting-to-know-you process? Well if you can figure out a subtle way to do it, you can borrow a police detective strategy. When they tell you a story, ask for more details to fill in the picture. The more complex a story becomes, the harder it is to give details. Unless of course the story is true, then a person has actual details to draw on. 3. Can smaller lies ("white lies") also harm a relationship or erode trust? Yes, for sure. If they occur regularly it will inevitably create questions in the other person's mind such as "if they're lying about this stuff, then what else isn't true?" 4. If you think your partner may be lying to you about something, how should you approach the situation? And what happens if they double down on their lies? If you think they may be lying it could be best to help them explore why they are doing it. First you can show them that you care about them, and that they can be safe with you. Help them feel that though their lying hurts you, you want to work with them to help them get better. That may mean couples or individual therapy. The important thing is that the compulsion and its source are addressed. If they double down on their lies you may need to double down on your efforts above. "Battle" them back by showing extra love and safety. But if they triple and quadruple down then it may mean the relationship needs to end. |
AuthorPhilip Monte Verde LMSW 
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