Lies have Serious Consequences

[Gaining Strength]

Diane Rehm's second hour today is an interview with Stewart who has written about lying.  Diane made the statement that lying can destroy lives.  This is riveting to me as I had two parents who lie without any cost to themselves.

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-04-26/james-stewart-tangled-webs

[teartracks]

And you know GS, with them it isn't that they lie from time to time.  They live a lie.  I'm not defending lying about anything, but reading your post made me understand that the two 'styles' and the agenda are different.  People of the Lie comes to mind.  Offspring that depart from what is normal for them is automatically a castoff, scapegoat, crazy, and the list goes on...    Offspring that depart from what they consider normal are castoffs, judged crazy,   unsound,  of no use, scapegoated and the list goes on...


PS  Didn't read the link yet, but plan to.

[sKePTiKal]

tt is absolutely right - her description fits me to a t, in my FOO. (thank god, it's no longer the only description of me!!)

with PD people - no matter what the PD is - they don't even KNOW they're lying, though. That's the behind - the - curtain hard part about understanding them. Ordinary folk lie too... but part of them KNOWS it's a lie and may even feel badly about it, can admit it, and apologize.

With a PD person, the lie is reality to them. If you challenge that, show them the actual proof that they're wrong - they will have a complete disintegration of self-control and either rage, collapse, or otherwise show the pathetic (to them) part of their personality that they feel compelled to hide from everyone, including themselves... it's what's behind the delusions. When a PD lies, it's more than the opposite of truth - there is a whole delusion about reality supporting that lie, that is centrally essential to propping up the paperdoll cutout ego that they show to everyone else.

[Gaining Strength]

Offspring that depart from what is normal for them is automatically a castoff, scapegoat, crazy, and the list goes on...

That's an interesting thought TT.  
This statement is such a sad reality isn't it?
I can read it as a kind of an outside observer and think how sad but then I can look at it differently, as a victim of that and then it is crazy making and so painful.

[Gaining Strength]

With a PD person, the lie is reality to them. If you challenge that, show them the actual proof that they're wrong - they will have a complete disintegration of self-control and either rage, collapse, or otherwise show the pathetic (to them) part of their personality that they feel compelled to hide from everyone, including themselves... it's what's behind the delusions. When a PD lies, it's more than the opposite of truth - there is a whole delusion about reality supporting that lie, that is centrally essential to propping up the paperdoll cutout ego that they show to everyone else.

There is another aspect to this as well for me.  I grew up with two of these but pathological liars often fool many people and while my father's mental illnesses made it clear to most around him his last decade or so that something was terribly wrong people still believed his many lies.  When I tell someone that my mother or my father lie about things great and small, my experience is that people try to offer explanations, excuses for why I am wrong or the lying is ok.  It is the refusal of people around to acknowledge the lies that is more painful and more crazymaking than the lies themselves.

[sKePTiKal]

Yeah, I agree. I know.

In my new topic, I give just the latest example I've experienced.

I think, that people don't want to admit that emotional abuse exists... and so they try to rationalize it all away through minimizing, reinterpreting, dismissing. It's like not being believed. It hurts. They'll even turn it back on us, and blame us somehow even through the "overly sensitive" label.

Other people don't have any experience with the pervasive, to-the-core delusional side of these kinds of abusive people... they believe that most people will always protect their own self-interest and are rational. Ooops. We know that's not the reality of abusive people... and that they'll go out of their way to abuse, rather than rationally protect themselves.