Why am I a habitual lier? Why do I feel the need to do this?

Hello,

I hope you are doing well here. I will help you answer your question about being a habitual liar here.

To help you out, I want to let you know that habitual lying is a behavior, it's not you, but something you do frequently enough where it's a pattern. There can be many reasons for this and I'll describe some of them and I would ask yourself what tends to stick out for you and may make sense.

The first reason why many people habitually lie is having low self-esteem. It can significantly impact our self-worth each time we habitually lie that goes outside of an occasional white lie in a situation. The reason is we are not being truthful to other people and ourselves which can create more anxiety and shame for yourself. The anxiety can be linked to having to remember all the web of lies in your life- that sounds like it can be quite exhausting. Also, you can feel shame like there's something wrong with you if you continue to engage in this behavior.

Another reason why we might lie is we tend to be people pleasers and want to fit in. I think you highlighted the idea of being a chameleon within relationships. We might want to fit into a group or get along with a person, so we become a chameleon so we are less likely to get rejected by the new person or group and more likely to go under the radar of being rejected by a group. I'll usually call it apparent competence or the idea where I look like I have it together on the outside and really struggle on the inside with managing my lies, etc. 

Another reason- there can be many more and I'll provide three for today is because it's a habit that was learned. It can happen innocently where you know someone important in your life who habitually lies or gaslits others and picked up the habit. Also, maybe you lied once and got what you wanted, so you continued with it because it was so rewarding.

I hope you got a little insight on a possibility of why we might lie and implications to impacting self worth. 

I hope that helps,

Mitchell Daas, MA, LPCC