I have
gotten myself into a huge mess. About 10 years ago, I was seeing a
psychotherapist for depression. When we both realized it was coming to the
time for me to stop psychotherapy, I began to panic—I realized I was
in love with him and began making up incredible stories of abuse from my
past. I did some reading and found that psychotherapy for people with multiple
personalities can last years, so I began making up personalities. I eventually
stopped seeing this psychotherapist when I could no longer continue the
incredible energy it took to maintain these false characters. I recently
began seeing a psychotherapist again when one of my children started having
some serious problems. I had every intention of being honest and seriously
dealing with my real problems, but once again I have begun this crazy
story-telling and am not at all facing the real pain in my life. I would
appreciate some honest feedback—no matter how painful it might be. I
realize I’m a jerk and am manipulating these
psychotherapists.
Well, you do give me a good clue about the source of the
problem. Your eagerness to accept painful feedback from me suggests that
the lies you have told in psychotherapy are really (i.e.,
unconsciously) a desire
to be found out and punished. It may sound odd, but this means that you tell
the lies hoping that you will be caught in them. And woe to the psychotherapist
who fails to be smarter than you.
So why should
this all come about? I have no way to know for certain, but I can guess that
you may have had parents who were somehow emotionally rejecting and cruel,
perhaps even one of them abusive or alcoholic. Psychologically, this would
lead to two reactions on your part.
First, in your
inability to understand just why your parents were so mean, you came to believe
that something must really be wrong with you and that you really did deserve
such abuse. Thus you cultivated a secret shame—and guilt—yearning
to be punished for being defective. Second, you became so terrified
of your anger at
your parents for their mistreatment of you that you secretly desired to be
punished for your anger. Call it a sort of double masochistic
whammy.
The only way
this all conflict about love and punishment comes to light is when you get
into psychotherapy with someone you
“love” because he seems to
be able to give the love you didn’t get from your parents.
I suspect also
that if you look real close you can find several examples of times when that
first psychotherapist missed the point about your deep pain and failed to
notice some of the secrets you were keeping, thus provoking both disappointment
and anger within you. In essence, this would be a psychological recreation
of the disappointment and anger that you felt as a child because your parents
failed to perceive your deep emotional pain. And so the lies started, as
you “upped the ante,” as a sort of plea that your real pain would
be discovered.
What, then, can
you do about all this? The only recourse is to get into psychotherapy again.
But this time, now that you have let the secret out of the bag with me, you
will have to begin the treatment by admitting right up front that you tend
to lie in
psychotherapy for reasons unknown to you and that you want treatment to
remedy your need to tell lies. If your psychotherapist is competent,
and smarter than you, you might actually get some real help.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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