Latest / Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour / They Called You Daily, Yet Never Asked About You

Transcript

They Called You Daily, Yet Never Asked About You · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And this is an impromptu podcast that emerges from a difficult few weeks where I seem to have constantly come into contact with people who are suffering and injured as a consequence of emotional deception.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And this is when trust becomes a weapon.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is deeply painful, often invisible, and profoundly damaging.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just about lying, it's not about misunderstanding, and it's not ordinary relationship difficulty.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Emotional deception is deliberate, sometimes unconscious, but it's the manipulation of another person's emotional reality in a way that creates attachment, dependency and trust, and then undermines it.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: When the victim is experiencing this, it's not merely hurt because they are psychologically altered.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with some clarity.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Emotional deception occurs when one person presents a false emotional self in order to influence, secure, control, or retain another person's attachment.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: They may appear unbelievably loving, safe, honest, committed, and emotionally available, but behind this presentation lies an inconsistency, concealment, manipulation or exploitation.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the deception is not only in what is said, it's in what is withheld, what is not concealed.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's a kind of dishonesty.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: What is implied or hinted at, or even explicitly stated, what is promised but never delivered.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: What is emotionally performed rather than felt.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Over time the victim doesn't realize that they are being deceived because their emotional investment grows before the awareness does.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this is how the injury begins.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: The psychological injury is something which includes a wounding that doesn't wound in the same way as rejection, because rejection hurts, but it's clear.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Deception creates a confusion of reality.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the victim begins to ask, was it real?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Did they ever mean it?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Was I loved or was I used?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And how didn't I see it?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now this creates a particular kind of psychological damage and what we might call attachment betrayal trauma.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because the person who became the source of supposed emotional safety actually became the source of emotional harm.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And these are two truths that the mind really struggles to reconcile.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Emotional deception injures in several ways because it restort it distorts reality and the victim begins to doubt their own perception, memories, and judgment.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: The emotional dependency is the deceptive bond that creates deep attachment before the instability appears.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And what's really interesting is such people who are responsible for this will just disappear without explanation.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if they return, the explanation never takes responsibility.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a kind of intermittent reinforcement where there are moments of warmth mixed with withdrawal, and this intensifies the emotional fixation.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Some people will say things like, Well, I call you every day, but in truth, they speak at you every day.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: They never ask about you.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's an identity impact, and the victim begins to question their worth, lovability, and value.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then there is time investment grief.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: When the clarity arrives, the victim often sees how much of their life was emotionally invested in something that just wasn't real because the other person was false.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this realization can be devastating.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because emotional deception isn't only about what happened, it's about what was believed.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: What was believed is something that wasn't accidental, it was reinforced.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: You were encouraged to believe it.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the realization that deception underneath is underneath that is humiliating and it's shaming.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: But there comes a moment, sometimes sudden, sometimes gradual, when the illusion fractures.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because the victim begins to see there are patterns instead of promises, behaviors instead of words, reality instead of hope.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And with distance, something painful becomes visible.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And how much emotional energy was given without truth in return.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And distance, though, does something powerful because it allows the mind to see the shape of what was happening.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And often the victim realizes I was loving someone who was not only emotionally unreal, they were deceptive.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: They were false.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the beginning of psychological separation, but it is not yet healing.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: The aftermath is the internal wound.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Even when the deception ends, the internal damage can remain.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And victims often experience loss of trust, which they carry forward, emotional numbness, shame.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: How did I not see that I went to the end of the world and back for this person with not even a thank you?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Anger, considerable anger for the behavior that they have had to deal with, which lacked moral integrity.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Grief for the imagined relationship, even though it was always an illusion.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Fear of future attachment.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: How can I trust my judgment?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they miss the person who never existed.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because the emotional bond was real, even if the foundation wasn't, and the other person was so emotionally complicated that they couldn't recognize and respond to it.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: So let's understand the deceiver.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because not all emotional deception is identical.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Some deceive consciously, manipulating for control, supply or advantage.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Others deceive unconsciously, and they present a false self because they themselves are emotionally fragmented, avoidant, and that's a very important word, or incapable of genuine intimacy.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: They will present as if they are the case.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: They will love bomb you at the beginning.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: They will throw themselves at you.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: However, over time what you'll see is that that is false.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: But regardless of motive, the psychological impact on the victim can be profound because the injury lies in the broken trust, not only the intention.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what's important here is that there is a path to recovery.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: So although emotional deception is not about forgetting, it is about reclaiming reality.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: It involves accepting what truly happened, separating illusion from truth, and rebuilding trust in one's own perception and framework.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And understanding that the emotional pattern that allowed attachment to form was false.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we reclaim self-worth and we allow grief to complete its course.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And slowly something important happens.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: The victim no longer asks, Why did they deceive me?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: They ask, What do I now understand about myself, relationships, and truth?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And this marks the beginning of not just psychological strength, but a real preparedness to see the other person as they truly were.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Emotional deception wounds because it enters through trust.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: You give your heart and someone damages it very badly.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: But healing begins when clarity and honesty replaces confusion.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's when reality becomes stable again.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's when the self is no longer organized around the illusion that the other person presents to you as the truth.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And when this happens, something quietly powerful emerges.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not bitterness and it's not hardness, but it's an emotional truth.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the emotional truth is the foundation of psychological freedom.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us, myself included, have experienced emotional deception.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I don't think any of us can get through life without that happening.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And as much as we feel contempt and anger and sometimes disgust towards the people who treated us this way, we have to understand that it wasn't our fault.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: We did or tried to do the right things with an open heart.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: But we did this with someone who was just not capable of receiving and reciprocating.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So for all of those who have experienced or are experiencing this, it's hard, but you will recover.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this helps.