TDS Compulsions, Complete Loss of Trust, and Avoidance; When your life is a lie

[Lobsterbutch]

Hey guys, I cannot stop lying. I went back to school to get a degree in substance use disorder counciling after a close friend committed suicide. Nov-Dec 2017 is when I started to lie big. Claimed I'd finish ,my degree that semester. My dad has been very upset, I got another degree, but couldn't find work in the field. I decided to change careeers and went for councilling. He was glad I made a choice to improve, but was impatient, and I just couldnt dissapoint him could I? I told him lies to keep the house atmosphere content.

the 2 semesters I was in school I did well. This was good. And I had a 3.75gpa all the way through.

But then I really fucked it up. Bad. I live at home with my parents. Since I got out, I started using my "old standby" to manage my head and all the negative things about myself......high dose loperamide. It's been an every day thing for that entire 1.5 years and I take a lot. 400mg/day. I'm also aware of the dangers of using it, but every time I go to quit, I can't take all of the w/d. The feelings never end, and it only gets worse and worse and I always cave into using again.

They've caught me several times, and each time they hated me a little more. Of course, I lied about that stuff too, every time, and I got caught every time.

It started with one Lie. That I was finished with my degree after 2 semesters. Then I mentioned that I'd be able to get paid for my practicum. Then I said I'd be able to finish all of my practicum in a single summer. Then I said that I HAVE interviews and I GOT a job with a counseling clinic. Problem is all of those things never happened. I just wanted them to feel better, they worry so much, but once the lie started, even as much as I didn't want to keep it going, I couldn't stop feeding the story. At a certain point I felt like I was in too deep, and there was no going back. I felt like If they found out, I'd be finished, alone, and totally fucked.

It was like I couldn't control it. The lies just fell out of my head.

Well, they found out. AND I STILL CANT STOP LYING. I hate it, and I feel dirty, all over me, inside my skin, I feel like a fucking scumbag asshole, and I should, i totally am, I absolutely deserve it for fucking up my families life so badly. I'm the reason they are so unhappy these days, I feel like a tumor growing on their life. The part that gets worse for me, is no matter how much I want to, or feel like I want to, I couldn't take my own life. I mean, that would be a royal big time slap in their face. "Thanks for the life and free shit, Im Outta here!", and it would kill my mother even more than I already have.

I've got no trust, none, its gone for good. And now I've got a partially finished degree program i have no idea how to get started again, I'm broke, and I had to explain every single thing that I've done, In front of the whole family. I may have to call each and every person I told about my new career path to tell them I fucked up.

Oh, and I'm still physically defendant on loperamide. And that is a whole nightmare unto itself.

I just dont know what to do. Everything is burning. I'm realizing that this is my "bottom". I've found it, im here, and it feels like there isn't a good way out of it. My head is swimming and I dont know what to do. Each option seems more impossible than the last one.

I feel absolutley fucked. I did it to myself, and I have no idea what the next step is. I'm bouncing back and forth between "tell them everything and hide in a box", "kill yourself and say sorry", "just lay down and never move again", and "Just leave, get out of their life and figure it out".

its just getting worse, the shame is almost too heavy


Oh, where do I even begin with regaining their trust? Which pieces should I start to pick up first, and what are good ways to clean up my life? I don't really WANT to die, but I'm killing my family, and boy o boy do I really hate myself and the air I breathe. I always have, and I've been ashamed the whole time, but now its on a whole new level and shit really feels like the end of a chapter. A significant thing that changes my life permanently, and there aren't any ways back I'm seeing.

 

[herbavore]

If I were your parent and I read what you have written here I would see my own part in this. Yes, you have the ultimate responsibility for your own words and actions, but it also looks like your parents may be unwittingly exerting a lot of pressure on you to be living a life that looks successful on the surface when your deepest self is struggling just to survive. The lying just reflects how badly you feel about yourself. It can be a hard habit to break (especially compulsive lying that you don't even think about) but it is entirely possible to do so. It starts with completely forgiving yourself.

I know this may sound like I am advocating excusing the lying--I'm not. It doesn't need to be excused. It is not the problem, it is a symptom of the problem. I bet if you made a list of the lies and had a column off to the side where you could write what prompted the lie you would find that living up to others' expectations in order to feel worthy would be at least a part of every answer. At the origin of every lie is the fear that you yourself--just how you are--are not worthy. This is something we all deal with at some level and part of becoming an adult (regardless of your age in years) is to recognize how we damage ourselves by being a slave to this false paradigm.

The most important thing for you right now is to try to have a talk with your parents where you address your pain in all its manifestations. Maybe it would feel more comfortable to write it out and ask them to read it and to think about it before responding. Again, I hope that your parents will be able to see their own part--as unconscious as it may be--in feeding this fear-based strategy you've been sucked in by. But, we are all humans and they have their own "worthiness" struggles as parents so maybe not. Reestablishing trust is a process--it never comes from words (though it can start with them), always from consistent actions over time. Let your parents know the level of shame you are feeling but then ask their help in letting it go. Let them know how desperate you felt that you thought it better to lie than to let them see failures. Failures should be ok. But most of us will do a lot to cover them up, paint them in a different light, blame external forces etc. What if we all just agreed they are a necessary part of learning?! Kids often interpret their parents need for them to be happy with a need to succeed outwardly. I feel this is something that is very hard for parents to perceive and they (we) can do so much damage from that one little misperception. This is what I mean when I say your parents have a part in this as well.

As far as what to do right now I think you are in crisis and moving out and away may not be in your best interests. Let them know how you are struggling and ask for help. If your family has the means, get into counseling and make concrete goals. Ideally, you could have a few sessions of family counseling where everyone gets a chance to express their experience in a safe setting. Whatever you do, don't let this deepen shame. You have already expressed how remorseful you are about the lying. You have a strong moral compass. You do not need to further doubt yourself or your ability to work towards what is right. Again, the first step--and you will be surprised at how hard it is to take--is forgiveness of yourself. You had the courage and the determination to change that prompted you to start this thread. You've got everything you need inside to continue to set things right for yourself and to improve the relationships with your family. Addiction breeds lying. But like every other powerful tool addiction uses, it can be walked away from with dedicated and patient self-care. Most of us grew up learning how to self-loathe, even those of us with great parents and easy lives on the surface--it's built into this culture and we become the culture. But you get to a certain age and learn you have to go back and unlearn that BS and re-parent yourself.

 

[Lobsterbutch]

Thank you Herbavore, I really needed to hear this. My family dynamic has been very off since I moved home from school while looking for work after graduation, and like a snowball going downhill getting bigger and bigger its just getting worse and worse.

My family just wants me to be a person. I mean, im not young, im old. 25. thats a problem, especially since I havent seen any employment that is worthwile so far, but I know thats because I havent looked hard enough. I feel like I have something severely wrong with me. Sometimes I lie'd about things that dont even matter, small things, and I have no good reason to lie about them. It happens almost automatically.

I wish I could go find my november 2017 self and tell him to stop. So much would have been different

 

[herbavore]

I wish I could go find my november 2017 self and tell him to stop. So much would have been different

Oh, man, don't we all wish that? But you are twenty five and no matter that it feels old to you, it's not old at all. I'm 64. If I could tell you all the mistakes I've made, all the things I had to walk myself back out of, it would make your head spin. But I don't actually regret any of it now. It made me.

I've been thinking about the lying. I think you need to go to the source and just concentrate on that. The source is self-acceptance on a very deep level--one that is not susceptible to what your family wants to see, what society says you should be doing or should have accomplished by now, and especially what you have installed in your brain that comes from those first two I named. I think the lying will have its blood supply cut off if you work on that. Be a good friend to yourself and be encouraging rather than discouraging. You can create a life that feels right and good to you.

 

[Xorkoth]

My family just wants me to be a person. I mean, im not young, im old. 25.

You are not old, man, at 25 I was a big kid who had no idea how to be an "adult", I didn't have much figured out, and I felt like a failure. Now, at 34, I'm still a big kid but I'm a big kid who is happy with where I'm at in life, and I feel like a success. I don't have my family's idea of success, but I love what I do and I wake up most mornings feeling excited for the day. What it took was distancing myself from my parents'/society's idea of what I am supposed to be, and finding in myself what I love to do, and then doing that.

The loperamide addiction is a symptom of the underlying problem and I'm sorry you have to go through that. I was addicted to opiates for 10 years, all through my twenties. It, too, was a symptom of my underlying issues. Once I was able to work through those issues (in my case it was feeling like a failure, and also being in a long-term emotionally abusive relationship with my ex-wife that I finally ended), I found getting off opiates so much easier. it's been over 4 years now since I got totally off opiates and I haven't looked back. But my point is that I had to deal with what I was using opiates to mask before I was ever able to get off them for more than a little while.

I didn't start feeling like a full person until I was 30, but it wasn't about the age so much as it was about realizing that only I get to define what it means for me to be a successful person.

Another thing... I know what it's like to live a lie. I hid my psychedelic and opiate use from my ex for 10 years, while we lived together. She also was very emotionally controlling and was unable to deal with me disagreeing with her opinions on pretty much anything, so I was always lying to her in little and big ways to avoid her being angry at me. By the end I was lying to her constantly, and much worse, I was lying to myself about the ways I felt and believed. For a long time I thought I just felt bad about myself because I was guilty about lying... and I was guilty about lying. But eventually I realized that the worst lies I was telling were the ones I told myself. I changed my own internal dialogue about who I was in order to try to fit into my ex's view of who I was/should be. I ended up hating myself and feeling like a loser, like how you describe. But I never was that loser, I was just a wounded soul in pain, trying to reconcile a tremendous amount of cognitive dissonance from trying to please someone who I was unable to please while being the real me. And even though my ex was terrible to me, and my parents imparted some expectations that I didn't meet, all of them were just dealing with their own internal shit and taking it out on me, even though that wasn't their intention.

Once I sorted out my internal self-image and became comfortable with who I am, independent of anyone else's expectations, I didn't have to lie anymore, and it felt like a huge weight lifted. The lying was a coping mechanism to please others, and secretly, to please myself, because I was trying to live a lie... that lie was that I had to be who others wanted me to be. I only need to be who I want to be. And the funny thing is, now that I have become that person, my parents have absolutely no problems with it, because all they wanted was for me to be happy, they just thought they knew what I needed to make that happen, but they didn't.

 

[Lobsterbutch]

Thanks a lot guys, These all really helped me put this whole part of my life in perspective and see how/why I'm feeling the way I feel and doing the things I do.

I've been avoiding coming back to this thread after the day I initially posted it, I made it in a heat of the moment crisis situation where I was throwing the years biggest pity party for myself, and after I had some time to calm down I suddenly found myself embarrassed by my self loathing and nihilistic reaction to my own problem. Looking back and reading my post, the part where I say "I can't even take my own life" as if it were a realistic option, makes me cringe.

I've found I get dramatic when I feel this way, and the main thing I've found that helped me is to force myself to wait 24 hours before posting, or before texting someone about it, or other things. My past is riddled with cringe-worthy melt-downs that make me thing "I really should've waited a bit before I decided to say that".

But what you said, Herbavore and Xorkoth, really resonated with me in a big way. I'm more or less constantly framing my life in terms of how my parents and loved ones see me and their expectations for me, or the expectations I THINK they have for me. I think I've always known that striving to meet these imaginary goals is pointless, but I've been chronically thinking in the short term; trying to keep the family smiling today at the cost of their respect for me tomorrow. There is no way I could've actually realized some of the things I told them I did without actually having done it, so its doomed from the start. I guess I'm chronically seeking immediate solutions and gratification, just like any good addict does.

Its a long road to making these changes, because at this point these habits are so etched into my subconscious its going to take a lot of effort and diligence to make real progress, but I'm going to have to do it if I want to be the person I've always seen for myself. This experience is getting chalked up to a massive learning experience, and the lesson is noted.........the first step of many towards getting all of my shit sorted out and making myself into the person I always wanted to be, instead of making reflex/mindless decisions based on a very small and unrealistic comfort zone.

Its just like an addiction; Reward mechanisms are involved. By lying I'm avoiding an immediate confrontation, disappointment, or avoiding disappointing them by telling them what I think they want to hear. Avoiding all this unpleasant shit is a reward unto itself, I'm rewarding myself by avoiding pain, and that is a behavioral addiction, just like any other. I've trained myself to avoid pain and discomfort in almost every way I can think of. Funny and Ironic that the reaction I've trained myself to automatically do to avoid any pain and stress is ultimately what makes my problems magnitudes more painful than if I had just sucked it up and dealt with it honestly and head-on.

I'm really grateful that Bluelight and this whole community is here, and that people like you guys, like Herbavore, are here to talk to and help. Its easily one of the most valuable resources I've found for myself anywhere and I'll never stop singing the praises about the bluelight community.

 

[Xorkoth]

Well this is a great reply to resurrect this thread with. Sounds like you've got some good insight into the situation and yourself. Now it's time to do something about it! It's indeed funny and ironic how our unhealthy coping mechanisms, be they drugs or lying or anything else, will always end up making everything much, much worse.

 

[herbavore]

I'm grateful to this site, too, Lobster. I really believe that we need each other to be open and willing to listen--it inevitably leads to others acknowledging an overlap of experience and we feel less alone in our individual struggles.There are so few venues for this in life. Bluelight has given me so much and I love being a part of giving back. I also feel that I am still working on myself--on my own honesty, my own escapes and overweighted desires. The gift of age is that I don't berate myself for not living up to an ideal anymore--either my own or society's. I still strive for it (my own ideal), I still believe it is where my compass should be aimed, but I see the process of trying to get there as similar to creating art. I have a vision of what I want to see. My technical skills fall short every single time but with each attempt, I'm closer and so the process becomes its own reward. I could either get discouraged and stop trying at all or I can see the process as being the true art and not focus on the (perhaps unattainable) end product.