Unresolved Blame Festers
If You’re Lying to Yourself, You’re Lying to Everyone
The Crux of Living Unwell
--
I did it. I lied to myself for years, and I can tell you from experience that it led to more hurt than I’ve ever experienced before. It might seem plain that lying to yourself isn’t healthy, but maintaining authenticity isn’t as easy as we would like it to be, and the road to self-delusion is much closer at hand than we might realize.
My personal experience derived from my childhood, and though my life choices are my responsibility, I also didn’t have the wisdom then that I do now. Had I been honest with myself, my life would be very different. Not necessarily better (we’ll get into that in another article), but I could have avoided the specific pains I inflicted upon myself and others.
So, what does lying to yourself look like?
Unfortunately, depending upon your perspective and how deep your lies are, discerning the truth of a situation can be difficult. Have you ever deluded yourself so much that you were astounded at how ignorant you were in hindsight? If you haven’t had this experience yet, you are either:
- Fortunate
- Very well adjusted
- Or still in the throes of denial
We readily perceive infinite limitations and define them with substance yet leave endless opportunities to the ethereal realm of fantasy.
For me, I had to simplify my life. Boil it down to the essential components. I drove deep into my needs, my wants, and my fears. And from there, I started rebuilding my life. Had I done it sooner, wow! I can only imagine, but this period in my life isn’t going to be about lamenting what I didn’t do. It’s about what I’m going to do next, and that’s the power I’ve given myself.
I’m on a new path and, from it, many great things are possible, but first, I had to hurt myself and others a lot before seeing the truth. Ignorance and neglect are the other sides of my wants, needs, and fears. Where I was ignoring my needs, wants, and fears, I was neglecting to be honest, and that’s the crux of living well.
You might not think you’re lying to yourself. However, the voice in our heads (if that is what it is for you) is quite malleable. We bend it to our whims, and it in turn, if we allow it, bends us to its will. You might not realize it, but you’re developing yourself every moment of your life. The bullied child creates coping mechanisms that, once internalized, run on autopilot. This behavior is one such way we allow false boundaries into our life. And it’s causing us more harm than we realize.
And, of course, if we’re lying to ourselves, we can’t be honest with others. And since we determine the quality of our relationships by trust, dishonesty erodes relationships.
Unresolved Blame Festers
It is easy to see how lying to others can affect our relationships, but it is much harder to see how lying to ourselves does. Think about it this way, when you engage in Harmful Self-Sacrifice, you lose respect for yourself, and you begin to harbor negative feelings for yourself and others. You will start throwing around blame. Depending upon your upbringing and the situation, you might throw more blame at your own feet than others, but either way, how does blame improve a relationship? Well, it can, if it’s addressed directly, with mutual respect, and resolved.
In my opinion, superficial connections (i.e., the labels and interactions we cling to when we’re not honest with ourselves) are an inferior way to live. We have to be vulnerable and risk a significant loss to move ahead into a more authentic way of living, and it is because of this fear many of us never do it. Instead, we cling and grasp for morsels when there is so much more beyond our vision.
We readily perceive infinite limitations but endless opportunities, not so much. To grow, we must choose the latter over the former, but many of us cannot do that until we cause ourselves great harm. If you’ve read this far and can identify that your life is suffering from Harmful Self-Sacrifice, denial, and ignorance, I suggest you take a few extra minutes to read my article:
