Acknowledging Lying

Becoming Aware of an Innocent Survival Strategy

I remember as a child being so afraid of people being angry at me that I would often lie and say what I thought others wanted to hear. It became a habitual emotional-survival strategy of trying to guess what people wanted to hear and then crafting the perfect lie or half truth, carefully omitting anything that I imagined might cause the other person to have a negative reaction.

I worked very hard to master the art of manipulating people, innocently believing that I had to do it, that there was no other option, that the truth wasn’t safe to express, that I wasn’t safe, that I had to hide behind a lie. People-pleasing was absolutely necessary in my mind, even if it meant experiencing the crushing pain of denying my truth.

It would be many years before I was even aware that I was doing it, that’s how habitual it was. It’s taken a tremendous amount of self-work to face the underlying fear, anxiety, panic and grief in order to realize the full extent of my pattern of deception. It’s been such an eye-opening number of years realizing that I am allowed to be honest, that I don’t need to constantly struggle to be something I am not, that it’s okay for me to take my time and interact with others in my own unique way.

Yet after all these years of inner work, I still catch myself doing it. It’s very humbling to see how deeply rooted these survival strategies can be.

I am slowly learning that safety is only found in Presense, in my own Beingness. The more I realize this, the less inclined I am to rely on people-pleasing to feel “okay.” The Present Moment doesn’t need me to be “good,” “socially favorable” or meet some mental standard of perfection. Presence accepts the past strategy of lying, Presence welcomes the fear that leads to people-pleasing, Presence allows the realization that Wholeness is already here and is not dependent upon changing circumstances. Presence doesn’t need social approval. Presence is.

How incredibly beautiful it is to realize that that this body-mind is okay just as it is, nothing to hide, no one to impress, no need to struggle to come up with a “favorable” story, just Being Here Now.