Is it bad if I lie to my therapist?
Studies show that 93% of clients lie to their therapists
Lying in therapy is certainly not a new thing. As a psychotherapeutic counsellor, I am always interested in WHY someone is lying. Why do they feel they can’t be honest? On the one hand, it feels like a waste of money, right? You pay all this money to come to see someone, to work on yourself in a safe, therapeutic space and then you don’t tell the truth. It doesn’t make sense. Why bother? It’s counter-intuitive.
Well, for some people it might be a necessary protection. Maybe they aren’t ready yet to open up, they need to feel more trust and rapport with the therapist before they reveal themselves. They’ve been hurt before when they’ve been honest, they need time. That is perfectly understandable.
For others, it might be an adaptation they have built up to protect themselves, when telling the truth has previously been received badly, or has been perceived to be a threat to their survival. Maybe they equate honesty with conflict and destruction.
Other reasons people might lie is that they ‘don’t think their therapist can handle it’ and so they look to protect them. I would argue that most decent therapists, by nature and training can hopefully ‘handle’ pretty much anything you could throw at them and are, by definition, pretty practiced at being non-judgemental and have usually ‘seen it all before.’
Having said that, if you really feel like you can’t be honest with your therapist, then maybe you can explore that very idea WITH your therapist, give them a chance, be curious, see what happens… Be brave, tell them, they might handle it better than you imagined they would.
It could however be that the relationship with your therapist IS the problem. Maybe you don’t click, you have given it time but it just still isn’t working for you. I’d suggest that if you give it 6-8 sessions and you have been brave enough to tell the therapist you don’t feel you can tell them certain things maybe and you still feel nothing has shifted then you might want to think about trying a new therapist, one you can be more real with.
