How To COME CLEAN Responsibly About Your Lying

COMING CLEAN RESPONSIBLY

Cleaning up the messes your lying addiction has caused is the key to recovery and being a “recovering” lying addict as opposed to an “active” lying addict.

It comes with the territory and has to be done at some point.

That means coming clean about your lies.

I know that’s a tough one for you. You feel it will ruin what little is left of your life. The thought of it horrifies you.

Don’t panic.

You don’t have to do anything until you are ready.

Consider though… how horrified do you feel every day waiting for your lies to be uncovered and the roof to fall in?

Because you know the lies will catch up with you sooner or later. They always do…

No-one is that smart as to keep getting away with a lifetime of lies for forever.

Part of getting better is coming clean. It is the only way you can ever move forward in your recovery. If you have secrets weighing you down, you are game for the lower vibration energy to chew you up and spit you out.

Coming clean is the only way to know inner peace.

Yes it may mean career suicide or the end of a marriage or relationship but how sick and tired of being sick and tired are you?

Have you had enough yet?

If not, come back when you have. Leave this Kit alone for now. It will be here for you when you are ready.

You need every lie you tell to get you to a place of rock bottom and true surrender.

Coming clean will probably be the hardest thing you will ever do so you need to be fully open to recovery to even contemplate coming clean at some point.

If you are not fully open to recovery it will not be safe for you to come clean.

The following is a list of thoughts, tips and tools suggested by recovering lying addicts to help with the whole area of coming clean. Take what resonates with your truth and leave what doesn’t.

• Laura O (Founder of Liars Anonymous) said that when she first started recovery, she just wanted to just get all the lies out in the open straight away but was told to take it slow and not make any major decisions for at least 6 months. It takes time, she says, to understand the disease of lying addiction. It takes time also to understand why you have done what you’ve done. It also takes time, Laura O says, to develop the strength needed to come clean. She continues… “If you were to disclose everything now, you could do a lot of damage for 2 reasons. First and foremost, you could hurt people even further without knowing exactly how to break the news to people.” It’s also good, she says to get some recovery under your belt first before disclosing because you will be in a vulnerable state at the very beginning of recovery and may still tell lies to protect yourself if you feel threatened or hurt or if you feel that your image of yourself may be at stake. Laura O suggests “Taking some time to understand the disease and be gentle with yourself.” Before coming clean.

• When you are at the stage in your recovery where you are ready to come clean (and you will know intuitively when that is if you have been living in the higher vibration energy) you will undoubtedly lose people. That is simply a consequence of lying addiction. Those who matter will still be there.

• The longer you leave coming clean once the time is right, the harder it will be and the worse the dis-ease within you will become. Leaving it too long could also jeopardise everything that means the most to you.

• You will be unable to accept yourself and live with yourself in a healthy way in the long term until you have fully come clean and forgiven yourself about your lying addiction past.

• Waiting for the lies to be exposed and being at the mercy of others is a much worse experience than coming clean off your own back.

BE RESPONSIBLE WHEN CONFESSING

I have included here a full forum post from this forum written by a woman, who in 1999 received the big "confession." What this woman has to say is vitally important. I cannot give her name, or a pseudonym, as she never wrote one. She simply signed herself "a little girl is now a woman, stronger and wiser!" Thank you for using your pain as an instrument of healing for others.

Here are her profound words in their entirety…

PLEASE NOTE: When this person spoke of “amendments” she was talking about “making AMENDS”. The sentences will then make more sense.

“First, I'm not suggesting keeping the other person in a state of ignorance, nor am I suggesting keeping lies secret or to not tell your loved one so that you can just "get out of it." But I am suggesting that the person breaking the addiction of lying does it in a responsible and mature manner, first with a counselor, instead of impulsively dumping a confession on a loved one to feel better.

Remember that the loved one who is about to receive this painful news is no more emotionally prepared for the truth than you were when you were acting out. They are not a counselor or a minister, nor should they be expected to be one. Nor are they your savior. When you confess everything to them, you will feel at first a sense of relief, but you will be looking at a person who you have just hurt beyond belief. And you will have done this without having made any preparations to ease the hurt for them, or any preparations for how to be there for them, once you've confessed.

I believe that the argument to tell the whole truth to the loved one is meant with the best of intentions - to get the liar to break the habit and break the secrecy, so that he/she can begin to live an honest life. Great idea, except for one thing - you still haven't seen the big picture, because you've really left the other person out of the equation. You haven't seen or considered what will happen to the other person once they receive the news - not so much whether or not they'll stick around, but more importantly, what their life will be like after they receive the news that the things they trusted, believed in, loved, and counted on are not reality. Further, you have completely left out all the painful feelings and consequences that person will now go through from now on.

A plan, done in counseling with a professional, would assist you in deciding what to confess or not. It would help you to discover how to choose what you should confess - in other words, the important things and not the simply destructive things, as well as if a confession will help the relationship at all. And most importantly, it will assist you to learn how rebuild your relationship on a foundation of honesty, either with or without the confession.

In my case, I am not a compulsive liar, but I was married to one. I was never given a choice in whether or not I wanted to receive the confession. Once again, decisions were made without my input. I didn't get any say in whether or not I wanted to hear or what I was ready to hear. I was never asked. There are some things that I was told that I could have been spared and they still hurt to this day. Consider that there are things that people do when they are addicted to lying. They are shameful things that hurt themselves and can humiliate and deeply damage their loved ones, too. There was no reason on God's green earth that I needed to be told details that would deeply damage my own self esteem. I was only being told because, in the moment that my ex decided to confess, he had a burning desire to relieve his own guilt.

I loved him, was very loyal, and I wanted to support his recovery in any way that I could. But it was so cruel to have had this dumped on me all at once. I became totally depressed, utterly confused and I blamed myself. I became weak with trying to cope, and ran out of any emotional strength to take care of my own health. That is because any addiction, including an addiction to lying, affects every member of the family. Everything I'd understood to be my own reality for my own life, had crumbled, and was replaced with living in an emotional cyclone. Keep in mind that you are perhaps receiving news of lies that have gone on for several years or months of your life. You feel totally devastated. You feel betrayed and helpless. It is absolutely emotionally terrifying, because everything you trusted isn't true.

I'm not saying I wanted to be in a place of ignorance. No way. I'm just saying that I wish that the confession could have included only things that would have helped both of us, and would have not been done in a way that needlessly damaged my own sense of trust and self esteem.

Sure, a total confession creates a feeling of utter relief to the person who has been addicted to lying. But that person is still coming from a selfish place in telling the other person, because they haven't considered what the truth, told irresponsibly, can do to the poor guy/girl who was lied to. After all, the liar has been used to controlling the relationship and the other person for some time, with a skeleton structure of lies, but this skeleton was still reality for the person lied to. That person may believe that their boyfriend/husband/girlfriend/wife has been completely faithful. They believe that the person loves them, and would never do anything to hurt them. They believe that they are able to trust that person, and to trust their environment. They don't understand what has happened, nor, at this point, should they.

Depending upon the severity of the lies and the amount of time the lying has been going on, the result of having a confession just dumped on you can mean that the person lied to can go into post traumatic stress symptoms, in order to just cope with the shock. It’s a horrible place to be in.

When I was told, there were times that I wanted to die, and I wished that I would. I had loved him so much, and I was so hurt. He had been my very best friend, and I didn't know why he would do these things to his buddy, his best friend of 13 years. I couldn’t see the forest from the trees. I was his wife and he'd treated me like his priest or his counselor. A wife isn't a counselor or a nurse or a miracle worker. A wife is just a wife, and she is only human. She's going to react.

After these confessions were made, I spent so many sleepless mornings, awakened by the thoughts of what he'd been doing behind my back. I went deep depression. Every time my spouse had a slip in his rehab programs, my anxiety over the new reality of our lives was so shaky, because I couldn't erase the humiliating and horrible details that came with the "full" confession. I would go into great pain expecting the very worst to happen, and this instability took a great toll on my own health.

Ask yourself - what plan have you got in mind after you confess, to be able to be there for your loved one - to help them with this pain? My guess is that you don't have any idea. That's because you probably need time to figure out how you even arrived at this point, and you don't have the tools yet to be able to be there for your spouse. That will come in time. So, don't put either one of you into a place that you both cannot handle. Work with a counselor right now, not with your lied-to loved one.

Part of the 12 step program that is used in so many addiction programs tells people, "make amendments, whenever possible, EXCEPT WHEN to do so will hurt another person." Remember that in getting well, you are striving for a lifestyle based on honesty and based on considering the other people in your life, and in fact, based on considering all of humankind - for we are all part of each other.

And making an amendment is not really about making a confession. Making an amendment is about living your life in a different way, free of lying, and in a proactive way towards your loved ones.

So please, if you love the person you want to tell, realize that it isn't necessary to unburden every detail about the lying that you did. Think about what is important for them to know, and why and how you will tell them. And if you don't want the relationship and are planning to leave, then please don't tell them at all. It is only being needlessly cruel. And, if you don't plan to really work at the relationship, consider this too. My marriage of 13 years ended, and I often wish that I had never ever ever known the truth about some of the things he did since we're not able to be together, now. All it did was hurt me more.

I hope that in telling you this that you will have learned something helpful, and I do applaud all of you who are working hard at turning the addiction around.

Yours,
"a little girl is now a woman, stronger and wiser!"”

Copyright © 2012 Billi Caine

This work is registered with the UK Copyright Service and is protected under UK and International Law. All Rights Reserved.

Thank you Billi, sincerely thank you for posting this 4 years ago...
It has convinced me I need to get real and quit this lying addiction which had teamed up with another addiction which has crippled me for decades and threatens my 30 year marriage.
Thankfully I have a therapist and accountability friends who I trust will support me through this minefield.
Again, thanks and best wishes
Tony