Lying

Lying to others is dangerous, lying to yourself is worse. There are a lot of things that are unsure but you should always be able to believe yourself.

Consciously lying to other people isn’t good…obviously, but the worst that can happen is that you get caught in a lie, apologize and explain, and the person either forgives you or not; best case scenario, you own up to it and the other person completely understands. The repercussions are somewhat predictable. 

Deceiving yourself is a very dangerous game to play and I’ve seen it come up a lot in people’s lives lately. Most commonly I hear people trying to convince themselves (and me by exertion) that they are ok, not depressed or in need of help and this can still be an issue after days, weeks or even years of feeling terrible and/or self-harming. Truth is, it doesn’t matter if they convince every person around them that they’re ok, it’ that nothing will get better for them until they do accept the issues and get the help they need. 

So many people are their own worst enemy and to be frank, life can be hard enough without you beating yourself down. This is absolutely not to say that I’m guiltless here or that it’s easy. I am well aware that sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s the truth versus what you want to hear; just ask my friends. I also refused to believe I had anything wrong with me (mental illness wise) until I was 15 (4 years into depression) and my friends threatened to tell my parents about my self-harm if I didn’t seek help. 

It’s easier to live in the world that you want to be real instead of the real one sometimes but as far as my life experience tells me, that bubble will always pop and it’s harder to cope with the longer you’ve been living outside reality. It sucks knowing that maybe life will get a little harder, it certainly would have been easier to keep on self-harming and living in denial than having to seek help, but long-term coming back to actuality made my life better. 

Lying to yourself tends to be more of an impulse rather than a conscious decision and so it is harder to combat but also crucially important to challenge; also if you’re lying to yourself, chances are that you’re by extension lying to others. Lying to others just for the sake of it is much more of a conscious decision that you are making for whatever reason. Neither is good or (generally) helpful but one takes a certain level of awareness to catch.

We all lie to ourselves about something; don’t wait until it becomes an issue that your family/friends have to address for you, step up and own up to it.