Liars Anonymous Community Group

A support group to provide those with a compulsive addiction to lie a place to share hope, strength and courage with others like them; solve our common problem and help others with a compulsion to lie. We aren't alone!

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I need help on forgiving myself

change02
change02

I have established I am a compulsive liar. I have lied all my life and want to stop because I now feel immense guilt. I desperately want to change because I no longer want to live a life of lies. I want to live MY life free of lies. Ironically, what made me want to change was when I befriended a girl who I deeply care for who I could tell was also compulsive liar. Interesting enough, we have a very similar background. I had already been starting to feel guilt with my lies before I met her but after seeing how other people talked about her possible lies I saw that other people probably say that about me. And it did happen to me in high school a couple of girls confronted me online about it and I felt horrible and went off social media. But I still didn’t learn then. I am now in third year of college and I want to change before I begin my career. I saw online that one of the ways to get over this is to tell the people you’ve lied to that you’ve lied to them. But that would entail so many people because my life have been a lie ever since I can remember. I have lied about insane things and made up some outrageous elaborate lies. I want to list them so that I can have SOME closure because I don’t know who to tell. But I also want to write them because I wholeheartedly want to change but my guilt does not let me. So perhaps this will give me some closure and maybe help some of you will not feel so alone on this journey.


I have lied about: siblings I don’t have, illnesses I don’t have, pregnancy when I never was, going to schools I never did, being in relationships and at some point I lied about being married. What brings me the most guilt about this lie is that I actually brought other people into my lies who probably don’t even know me. I lied about what my mom did for a living, where I lived, I lied about attending a college I never did. I lied about getting tattoos and piercings, I lied about how good I was doing in college with coworkers, I have lied to friends about working certain places when I never did, I would go on social media and literally spout as many lies as I could because I wanted to be interesting. And one of the worst: I lied about my father being dead when he is still alive. 


Now, I literally want to go unnoticed because I’m afraid people won’t give me another chance. I used to be very outgoing but it all changed once I established I am a compulsive liar and I’m afraid to even be noticed anymore. After a couple of months of self evaluation and asking myself why and where all of this stems from I realize that my fathers rejection hurt me deeply emotionally and mentally. He is also a compulsive liar and I’ve learned there are quite a few in my family too. He left my mom and I in a very unpleasant financial situation. While she always provided me with roof over my head and food I seemed to be very upset with my life. So I viewed these outrageous lies as an escape from a life I hated. I would make up lies about the life I wish I had. Hence the weird lies I made up. I really want to change. If anyone here has any tips on how to put closure on a life of lies to live one without lies please pass them along. I am feeling very lonely and lost on this journey to change. I am currently reading a daily devotional, trying to find a hobby and spend more time engaging in activities so that I begin to live a life I want to live and not simply whip lies out of thin air. I truly believe I can change and I know I will change.

tvee
tvee
Hi, you're not alone by a long shot. for a while i thought that i must be just plain evil or mentally ill but i'm starting (and i stress, just starting) to forgive myself and see that this condition for lack of a better term comes from deep insecurity, protection mechanisms and learned behavior from an early age. i have a hard time pinning it on my parents and would rather just blame myself but it's not realistic. they were good parents but they had issues from their own lives that formed them and subsequently they formed me, in my case with no malice but when i look at it realistically, they were kind of fucked up in certain ways. we're all here confessing our transgressions because we want help, we want to stop and we're not sociopaths. for me, getting to this point has been finally facing something i knew was brewing my whole life and fooled myself into thinking it was a quirky nuance that i had control over. it's come at quite a price and i now have to start a new life which is a daunting thought. i was talking to a friend last night and likened it to a closet packed with lies and shitty behavior that finally couldn't hold anymore and it all came crashing out on top of me. i feel like if things hadn't fallen apart in the last month, i would have gone on like this forever lying, side-stepping, salvaging. it's been really painful facing this internal "monster" as i call it that has dictated how i've lived my life. so i'm not looking at it as just changing behavior anymore. it sounds trite but it really feels like a crossroads for me. sure i can go back to the lying behavior with a new set of friends, lover, work-mates but i want sthng different. i want to feel authentic not just appear authentic. i wish i could say i've come clean with everybody after this crash but i haven't. i'm not sure i could take the fallout right now given my emotional state if i were totally honest with everyone that matters and thats a struggle unto itself but its my goal to get there. i've been a mess the last few weeks and wondered if i deserve to be here and would it matter if i weren't. that thought still creeps in from time to time but not as often.

sorry, but it's easy to go on and on about my own situation and i want to tell you something helpful. people will give you another chance and i believe when you're living authentically people will see that and be drawn to it. you need to find someone in your life to tell. hopefully someone who loves you and won't judge or punish you. i think you'll immediately feel a little lighter. you need to catch yourself, the lies come so easily like breathing and you wont be able to stop all of them from coming out of your mouth but stopping some of them will be a start. you hang in there and just keep ploughing ahead, it will get better, not immediately and it may take years ( i know that sucks) but i now believe it will be worth it so i'm gonna keep trying. try to forgive yourself at least a little. there are more of us out there than i ever thought and you'll see from the posts here that there are good people with some crazy lying shit going on but they're genuinely decent and don't want to hurt others. hang in there, it can get better!