I try my very best to be 100% honest now and I believe everyone should do the same because the neurological effects may be ruining you.

There was a time that I lied. I’d often lie about stupid things so I could feel accepted or for attention and definitely lied to my parents quite a bit growing up, I knew it was a bad habit but at the time I had some obvious issues with self acceptance.

I didn’t realize how crucial it was for me to stop this sort of behavior till I caught my lying ex boyfriend cheating on me.

I stewed about this boyfriend for quite some time, in fact I filled an entire composition notebook over the following few weeks. During this time I also researched psychological and behavioral issues such as psychopathy, sociopathy, pathological lying, and cheating in hopes to find some sort of answer to why this happened to me but the only productive conclusion I came to was that lying is not good, dare I say evil and here is why.

1. Self-Confidence Killer

By lying you are only trying to avoid the consequences of facing the behavior you did that doesn’t fall into your view of self. Lying creates a disconnect between who you are and who you want to be, in a sense it fills a void that you cannot fill yourself. This is true with the smallest lie to your spouse about if you remembered to feed the dogs to big lies about a false job promotion. Over time this pattern starts building up an inflated and false perception of yourself that is unattainable. Consciously, its like putting yourself on a pedestal and in this ego driven reality we live in it only makes it harder to accept yourself since you are presenting yourself as someone that you are not. You may be thinking how does lying about feeding the dogs lead to self rejection? Upon lying your mind thinks, I should have been the kind of person that feeds the dog even though in reality, you were not. Thats where the disconnect with self is made and insecurities are created by self-preserving actions of the newly inflated ego.

2. Stressful

Lying has been linked to stress. Stress alone has major side effects on us such as low energy, headaches, intestinal issues, lowered immune system, etc.

3. Emotionally Numbing

And according to this Nature article, lying has been scientifically proven to reduce amygdala sensitivity, this is the part of the brain that is involved with experiencing emotions. Remember how hard it was to lie the first time? For me it felt like someone had poured an ice cold bucket of guilt all over me and with each subsequent lie the guilt decreased. This is because my emotional response to the behavior has been getting a little Novocain dose each time.

4. Addictive

Not only does this all suck but the emotional numbing that lying causes leads to a negative feedback loop that inherently leads to more lying as the pedestal of self gets farther and farther away from your true self, increasing the occurrence of this self-preserving defense mechanism. Therefore, small fibs turn into big lies.

5. Psychological Issues

People get in over their heads in lies. At a certain point after so many lies have been told and accepted by others people start to lose themselves. Its known to cause depression in a lot of people. Even worse people can become selfish and delusional because they believe their own lies and narcissism and other personality disorders may take root or it may be a sign that you have this problems…

If you cannot accept yourself for who you truly are how do you expect others to do the same?

So next time you feel like lying about something stop and try to be the person you’re lying about being and just be honest with yourself and others.