Voicelessness and Lying pt. 1

Could some compulsive liars be covering up for the feeling that they have no voice? Is compulsive lying a mask?

Consider the situation as described in the article "Little Voices":

In "Voicelessness: Narcissism," I presented one way adults react having experienced this scenario in childhood: they constantly try to re-inflate their leaky "self." However, different temperaments spawn different adjustments: some children, by their very nature, are incapable of aggressively seeking attention. If no one is entering their world, they unconsciously employ a different strategy. They diminish their voice, make as few demands as possible, and bend themselves like a pretzel to fit their parents' world.

As a child, my home environment was chaotic, messy, and often violent and neglectful. I learned to keep the truth to myself at a very early age because no one wanted to hear my truths. Perhaps they couldn't handle it, not with all of the problems they had to deal with. Perhaps I was too often invisible and weird. In my fantasies I always had a voice but I don't think the "real world" ever measured up to the fantasies I could control. So you learn to adapt and lying is a powerful adaptation tool. From telling people what you think they want to hear to telling them what you think they need to hear (parenting the parents), voiceless children may learn that lying is a key to stable relationships.

I still have a deep fear of chaos, rejection and pain, and I need to control the situation. This can spawn big lies, for example, I might invent a serious illness and even seek help for it in order to create a sympathetic situation for myself. I often feel pressure to be someone people can like, someone people can care about, and when you feel like a "victim" you associate caring with sympathy and compassion. But usually I tell lots of "little" lies, like telling someone I ate something healthy for dinner when I did not in order to avoid judgment, or telling someone that I'm not using something that I really am using because I sense that they want to use it.

Children with diminished voices can be very sensitive to the emotions and needs of others, and will often subjugate their own needs and true feelings. By necessity, this requires some degree of lying and fakery. If you become adept at it, you might start to lie by default and become oversensitive to pressure and the judgments of others. All of the lying only deepens your sense of invisibility and shame, because now people can never hear your true voice and it is worse because it is your fault.

I think that one of the keys to conquering the problem of compulsive lying is finding the courage to share your real voice. Your real hopes, desires, impressions and experiences. You might not value them very much because you weren't taught to value them. But it is never too late to find your voice.

Narcissism is the other side of the voicelessness coin and narcissism is one thing I've been accused of, when I disclosed my compulsive lying to others. I will look at that in the next part.