Want to stop lying. May be too far gone. Why do I do it?

I'm a compulsive liar. I'm in my late twenties. I don't recall when exactly it started, or hit the fan.

It was a LOT worse when I was a teen. I lied about some pretty awful and far-fetched things back then: like having a boyfriend who died in a car wreck. Even one of my teachers heard this. Holding down a job I didn't have. Basically invented a whole other life for myself. I majorly catfished online before "catfishing" was even a term.

I think it namely manifested as a result of everything coming to a head from the messed up household I lived in, no real extended family or support network, constant bullying at school that I just completely snapped. I'm not sure why I did it. Sympathy? Wanting to seem better and more 'worthy'? Or just utterly snapping as a result of abuse and bullying which I DID go through?

While I've gotten a lot better with it, I still do it. I've lied to all my close friends and family to some degree. Things like...that I was in a romantic relationship with someone I was only just good friends with. Or had an interest in and never pursued. In actuality, my relationships have been primarily casual. Or even just one-night stands. Then...that I had more one-night stands than I really did. Posturing I guess. To make it seem like I was just as attractive as my girlfriends.

That I made more money than I really did at jobs I held to make up for how crappy they were. Where I was born and raised because I associate so much pain and stigma with the actual place. Then mostly inconsequential things but still.

It sometimes just happens. For lack of better word. Like I'll only be halfway consciously aware I'm doing it. And I want to stop. But I don't know how. I feel I'm too far gone. My mother had borderline personality disorder and upon some of the reading I've done on compulsive lying, my worst fear is confirmed: compulsive lying is a symptom of it. I'm just as screwed in the head as she was. I'd like to think I'm a better person than she was since she was an abusive monster. But am I just as horrible if not even moreso? She bunkered herself inside and didn't have friends. I'm...out in the open. I wonder if I should just start living a farce of a life on house arrest too.

I haven't really been confronted about it except for when I was a teen and caught in some huge flagrant lies. I feel wracked with guilt and have contemplated suicide...except I know things that could be revealed at my death will cause some confusion. If I confess to my friends, I know I will likely lose them as well as my community. While I've gotten a lot better in that I know a lot of people wish their lives could be better and they could have the job, house, or significant other of their dreams and there's just no point in lying about it...like I said sometimes it just HAPPENS.

I've had my own actual set of professional and academic accomplishments. Despite some of the lies I've told friends? I'm telling them the truth for the most part these days. I haven't had many problems attracting men but am afraid to get too close not just for hurting myself but afraid of compulsive lying and ruining it. Thus I keep it casual. I avoid intimacy. Both for the real me and fear I'll automatically lie. Or even if I don't-- that they'll come into contact with someone who knows I did.

I'm trying my hardest to be a good person and not to lie. But I break. I feel uncomfortable when people tell me I'm awesome or a good person. I told my father yesterday that I feel some of the bad things that happened to me recently were a result of compulsive lying catching up to me. I don't think he knows just HOW bad and often I've done it. He said "People have done far worse things than lying and it never catches up with them." The only comfort I have is that I'm mostly just hurting myself instead of others. But still.

I feel a little less alone having found this forum. This isn't widely talked about: regular people who aren't messed in the head don't have to worry about this. You know, they figure that once they have a liar on their hands they just walk away and don't deal with them anymore. Unless maybe they're family and even then.

Maybe more awareness needs to be raised of compulsive lying. Who knows. I'd like to go therapy but affording it and dealing with bureaucracy with my insurance is an issue. But I feel wracked with guilt no less.

Even though I haven't gotten any responses on this thread, I just wanted to post again because now that it's been roughly a week since I admitted I have a problem and I've read so many more posts here...I hope my experiences can also help people who are feeling despair and want to change. The posts I've read are definitely helping me and realizing I'm not alone. So...I have another long one to share because just getting it out to other people seeking help is helping me so far. Feel free to comment. Or just to read.

Coming forward in the beginning, I felt VERY alone in this: people get addicted to drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, food, porn; people also fall into depressions or have fits of anxiety or manic mood swings. There's stigmatisation for all these things sure, but whoever heard of being addicted to LYING?

Today is the first day in weeks I have felt somewhat human. Some really bad things fell into my lap this month and right around Thanksgiving-- I hit the s*** trifecta of being unable to find work, housing problems, the man I was seeing decided not to see me anymore (I'd been very honest with him but he wanted to keep things casual while I wanted to get serious.) I also just tend to get very depressed around the holidays/New Year for various reasons. Coming forth with my admission that I've been a compulsive liar for a long time was like vomiting up bile: it was harsh and bitter, but I felt better I got it out once I was over the shock.

I felt like all the bad things that recently fell upon me all at once were payback for bad things I'd done: namely that all the lies I told over the years caught up with me. That even if it was a lie that only hurt me and not others or didn't really bear consequence-- such as saying I was in a relationship I wasn't in, that I held a job I didn't hold, that a funny/exciting incident I witnessed or partook in didn't really happen-- that it was still wrong and I was a horrible person for doing this. Even if I just felt randomly compelled to do so. WHY did I do it?

Like I said, I felt very alone. Liars are viewed as morally corrupted people to avoid. Speaking from an American perspective, it's also just yet another two-faced thing in culture in that lying is viewed as wrong yet we're ENCOURAGED to lie in the current system we have: politicians, business leaders, and faith leaders lie every day. People sometimes just have to lie to get a job be it blatantly or by omission...especially in this economy. And a recurring theme I noticed across many peoples' posts was that they became conditioned to lie to avoid punishment from their parents.

I'm guilty of this. Maybe it's where it started. I can somewhat recall telling whoppers as a child, sometimes getting called out on them. I think it really manifested though from a combination of avoiding punishment and the nonstop bullying I endured from both students AND teachers. Because for some reason the latter held me to a different standard from the other kids. I spent my entire schooling years always being pointed out for how OMFG DIFFERENT I was and I guess it was my way of fighting back and being all, "Gee, here's how OMFG DIFFERENT I am." Yes, a defense mechanism.

I think the worst of it started around 13/14. I told some really out there lies to make myself seem more accomplished and driven, and sociable than I really was. I lied to my parents so they wouldn't think I was as much as a miserable and alienated mess that I truly was.

Then my mother died and it threw a wrench in everything. She was an abuser and I never got to confront her about it because I LIVED A FRIGGING LIE. It only made me tell more and more lies about what a great person she was because I was not only gaslit to think I was this horrible kid, but well, try being a teenager and everyone around you is getting in your face telling you how to feel about your dead mother who they assume was a great functional parent. She...really wasn't. I couldn't come out and admit she was an abuser until I was around 21, 22? That I was tired of living a lie as if I missed her when I really didn't. I can't miss someone who constantly put me down, hit me, screamed like someone got murdered over every little thing. But I didn't get to have my own space and come to terms with her death and never having been able to call her on her abuse. So it made me retreat further into a shell of lies that I had this AWESOME life full of cool older friends, boys who wanted to get in my pants, bands, and a cool job. Then that I had a lot of drama complete with sexual assault and drug use that didn't happen. I got harshly called out on it when the jig was up. The person who did it, I had a serious crush on. He said some things that still haunt me to this day. Perhaps he shouldn't have made some of the attacks he did (ie about my appearance) but in the end I was glad he called me out on it. I do recall him saying "You're really f****d up." and I felt it was an apt summary.

Hey, I had a lot of s*** hurled upon me as a child and teen-- for real. I'd go through spells of being overwhelmed with guilt, trying to be truthful, then the cycle would repeat itself. It got better after I graduated high school and moved in that I wasn't telling these huge grandiose lies to avoid conflict, seem cooler and more worldly, and make things seem less distressing or depressing than they were. I WAS pretty damn happy when I graduated and came to my true home: I had gotten away from the people who hurt me since childhood. My abuser, who I wouldn't recognize as my true abuser until years later, was dead. It was my time to shine.

Getting away helped. I lied a lot less but still did it. Like that I'd posture to sound more sexually mature, and felt like a freak for not having had long-term relationships to some degree. So I invented a few. To this day I keep compulsively lying about my birthplace because I associate too much pain with it. I still catch myself lying about having had long-term relationships I didn't have or stretching situations with men from what they were-- just friendships or just something casual. I'm trying to stop this. If other people aren't comfortable that I've avoided long-term relationships, I don't need to justify it. Men have hurt me, yes. But it doesn't need to be long-term for it to hurt to the point you're totally burnt. If I'm not ready to admit it yet...I'll just leave it "Men have hurt me." and listen to the other person discussing their experience.

The truth is...I don't need to lie. There. I said it. I've had legit awesome experiences and gotten to do things many people don't get to. Some days are boring, but there's no shame in it-- don't a lot of people wish their lives could be more interesting? That's why TV, movies, and video games make so much money. It's why people go out and do interesting things like see bands, go to museums, take classes, explore nature, or even just observe something going for a walk or for a cup of coffee. And if you can't afford any of those things...no shame in it either. I think most people have had their asses handed to them by the economy. Rather than compulsively try to one-up someone who has a cool story from now on I'm just going to say, "Nothing thrilling to report." then crack a joke about things being dull.

I was told by both the boy who called me out-- and by my bullies-- that I'd die a virgin. Nope: I went on to have sex with a variety of attractive men. I was a late bloomer and didn't start til I was 20, though I did have some non-PIV experiences before that. In the beginning I did settle a lot on account of my low self-esteem. But after four years of involuntary abstinence that department did a total 180 and it ruled. The man I was seeing for the past few months...made me feel like the sexiest woman alive. And that's no lie. I think everyone postures about their sexuality to some degree: but there's no point in lying about how many sexual partners I've had, even if I'm in a really judgy doctor's office. I can't be as hideous as the dicks I went to high school with made me out to be given the nonstop come-ons I've had since I moved. No need to posture to other girls that I was just as desirable as them.

I'm still on the road to recovery. I'm not feeling as guilt-stricken as I was at the time of my first post but it's still there. I told one of my close friends of 10+ years that I have a problem with compulsive lying and only admitted one of my consistent lies (the birthplace one.) I don't know when and if I'll be ready to come out with more yet. I recognize I will lose some people.

But I just wrote several paragraphs of nothing but the truth. I think you can too.