The Dishonesty Conundrum: Why do Adult Children of Alcoholics lie?
Photo by Toa Heftiba
Adult children of alcoholics often lie when it would be easier to tell the truth. How does this happen? Parents model behavior to their own children; if you consider that alcoholism often includes deception, secrecy and twisted truths, then you can see the straight line from kids observing their parents behavior and then mimicking that behavior themselves. Moreover, in alcoholic homes, it may have been unsafe for children to tell the truth. The following describes how the pattern can be passed along inter-generationally:
Fear of Consequences: For kids growing up in alcoholic homes, telling the truth may come with harsh repercussions, verbal lashings, rage episodes or abandonment. These children learn that telling the truth comes with great harm, abuse and anguish. If children are pointing out bad behavior and then being told that it doesn’t matter, that what they are seeing isn’t real, they also suffer the consequence of losing their own sense of perception around reality and the truth. After all, alcoholism is built on a platform of denying that the behavior exists or it wouldn’t be able to continue!
Survival Mechanism: Those that grew up in alcoholic homes often felt the chaos and instability in their own homes and were deeply impacted by it. Most that grew up this way then develop parts of themselves that want to maintain some semblance of control when they have grown up feeling so out of control. In order to survive their shaky childhood, they may have developed a lying part to be able to maintain a narrative that felt more manageable to them, protecting their true identities in the process.
Shame and Guilt: Often times alcoholism in the family is protected by a shroud of secrecy. Parents themselves may feel ashamed or guilty around their behavior and pass on this sense of protecting the house from exposure to judgment and criticism. Kids themselves then learn to lie for their parents and to keep secrets early on so as not to feel ashamed themselves as well as to protect their parents from public view.
Modeling Behavior: As stated earlier, if lying was the norm in the home then this is seen as normal behavior. Whereas telling the truth may actually be seen as abnormal in an alcoholic home. If parents are either verbally or non-verbally giving their children the green light to lie by showing them that they themselves can’t live a life of integrity, they are showing them that lying is normal and telling the truth is too vulnerable, unsafe and exposing.
Low Self-Esteem: Adult children of alcoholics often grew up feeling unworthy and undervalued. Hence, they often create new stories around all of their accomplishments and achievements, sometimes overstating their resume. Adult children often value that external validation for their accomplishments, even they are false or embellished. This is often due to not receiving a lot of positive praise or loving attention from parental figures for all that they’ve done, and even more importantly, who they are as people outside of what they do, how they perform or what they produce.
Difficulty with Trust: Adult children of alcoholics may lie just because they struggle with intimacy; getting close to others may have formerly felt pretty dangerous and uncomfortable. Hence, they may struggle with the truth because they aren’t sure another person could handle them vulnerably sharing truth and honesty. The more intimate the relationship, the more this can become a pattern as close relationships may end up feeling the most threatening.
The good news is that these patterns aronud dishonesty are workable. In trauma therapy, an adult child can start to heal themselves. They can uncover their own personal hurts in a safe way, heal them and then move out of isolation with honesty, less shame and more integrity. They can start practicing honesty in the therapy room; they can even lie for awhile and then become aware of this pattern as well! Ultimately, therapy can be a safe way to practice intimacy with another human and with care and nurturing, start to practice awkwardly being one’s self and coming out of one’s comfort zone to having a healthy and fulfilling connection.
Please don’t take these blogs as a substitute for personal therapy; no articles can replace the actual work of therapy and potential combinations with 12-step program work.
