"If somebody lies, don't try and make an excuse about it," Orloff said. It may start with a small white lie, and a few months later the victim's life with be a mess of confusion because of the web of tall tales that has been woven. Unfortunately, people tend to doubt themselves, because the lies can escalate subtly. The only way to escape the clutches of a pathological liar is to be strong enough to say "no this is not my fault, this is not ringing true to me, so I can't really trust you," she said. Someone who is a pathological liar will not say I'm sorry for doing it. It's like a moral deficit, and there's no accountability. "The great power of relationships is when you can tell the truth to one another, and trust each other, and be authentic - and with pathological liars you can't trust them," Orloff said. Once the lies start, it can end with the victim being gaslighted, which is essentially when they are told over and over again that their version of reality is incorrect, and they begin to believe the warped truth of the abuser. Then when they see someone is lying, they try and figure it out, or blame themselves. This is extremely dangerous for highly sensitive people, because they attract narcissists.
It's not so much about the fact itself, she said, as it is about wanting to have power over somebody. Orloff said they actually believe they are telling the truth a lot of the time. In fact, they may not even realise they are lying half the time, because they're not conscious of it. "So many people get into relationships with pathological liars, or just can't understand why they're lying, because they're trying to fit these people into the ordinary standards of what it means to be empathetic."īut they don't fit. "When they lie it doesn't hurt them in the same way it would hurt us," Orloff said. A lack of empathy essentially means a lack of conscience, which is a hard concept to grasp for a lot of people. When you don't care about other people, lies don't seem to matter. "Because narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths have what's called empathy deficient disorder, meaning they don't feel empathy in the way we would." "I think it comes from a defect in the neurological wiring in terms of what causes us to have compassion and empathy," psychiatrist Judith Orloff, author of " The Empath's Survival Guide," told Business Insider.
#Pathological liar meaning manual
The psychological reasons for why some people are this way is a bit of a mystery, but in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, pathological lying is a disorder in its own right, as well as a symptom of personality disorders like psychopathy and narcissism. We all have to lie sometimes.īut some people are pathological liars, meaning they can't stop spreading misinformation about themselves and others.
But if Jim Carey's "Liar Liar" taught us anything, it's that this just isn't feasible. Sooner or later we learn that lying is "bad," and we shouldn't really do it. At this point in our brain's development, we learn that we have an incredibly versatile and powerful tool at our disposal - our language - and we can use it to actually play with reality and affect the outcome of what's happening. By the age of three or four, we all start to lie.
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