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!
Does anyone know if there are phone or online meetings for those trying to overcome compulsive lying? I believe Alcoholics Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous have these.
The best thing you can do is to get into a 12 step program near where you live. There is nothing quite as healing as admitting your issues in front of a live group that will not judge you but instead support your journey. Many people that are on this site also have other addictions like drugs, alcohol, sex, porn, etc and they are able to go to AA, NA, SA to find a sponsor and work through the steps. Some who's only addiction is lying have also gone to AA and still get a lot out of it by just replacing the word lying for alcohol when reciting or reading. Others have found Al-Anon (a co-dependency support group) quite helpful.
Personally I have found Celebrate Recovery to be a welcoming group. They say the group is for anyone with hurts, habits or hangups. The group I attend has people recovering from additions to alcohol, drugs, porn, and lying (me). The meetings are modeled after the 12 step program and is highly God based. Tapping into the strength that God provides is the only way to beat this monster called lying IMHO.
As to the whole sponsor question - I have not tried a sponsor yet because it did not make sense to me for lying. I get it for some of the other additions that usually have a lead time before the act - like being depressed and thinking about taking a drink - it makes sense to call your sponsor and get support and encouragement not to take that drink. However with lying it rarely includes forethought (at least for me). Usually it just stumbles (or flies) out of my mouth in the middle of a conversation and I would not have had a chance to call my sponsor before the lie. That is just me however. I know some people struggle with premeditated lying in which case calling a sponsor would help. But there is more to a sponsor than just someone to call before you screw up your recovery. Working the steps is a critical part of recovery. I tried to do it by myself and rushed into steps before I was ready and before I fully understood the step. It is definitely better to work the steps with someone that has been through it already in their life. So I am still looking for someone to be my sponsor. As I type this it is just dawning on me someone who I think I can ask that has been through the steps and had a problem with lying.
What I have been doing so far is to have "accountability partners". These are guys that I regularly check in with and report how I'm doing. That, along with my weekly meeting at Celebrate Recovery, and this website have kept me on the right track to recovery.
i also hosted a weekly online chat session for several months last winter that was fairly well attended (3-4) people but as summer came people's schedules got full and after being the only one in the meeting for several weeks I suspended it. I've talked with Laura - the site's founder - and we discussed maybe starting the weekly online meeting again in Sept. Stay tuned for news on that.