Latest / Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour / Seeing Through Emotional Deception

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Seeing Through Emotional Deception · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Back.
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee from the Children's Consultancy Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is episode three in the series on the psychology of deception.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Before I start, I just want to say that later today, the compendium of parental guides will be available from my website.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is a 20-topic series that is available for you to download.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's free.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I cover a lot of subjects which I suppose really in parallel to the podcasts.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: These are all to do with parenting and some of the difficult difficulties children experience.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: But also, there's a sort of developmental component which I hope readers will find helpful.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're very welcome to simply visit the site, thechildren's consultancy.com, and you will find if you scroll down that there is an image of a book of the same title, the compendium uh book.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the link, just click on the link below, and what you'll be able to do is to download uh all of the files that they're please read them at your leisure.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Very happy for you to share them with others if you wish.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Today, however, I want to return to this difficult subject of emotional deception because this has been divided into different sections because it is quite complex, and I want to talk about the psychological effects of these kinds of experiences and the damage that uh can be created.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: But the reason I'm really wanting to focus on that is to lead us towards recovery, making sense of these often devastating experiences, and to help listeners to make a distinction between themselves and the person who has behaved in that way.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it occurs to me that there is there is some virtue in realizing I'm not the only one.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say that, I don't mean it in the sense that I'm not the only one because this happens to lots of people.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I'm not the only one because the person who has done this has done it before, and they've done it with other people, and that rather reframes things because it it widens the lens enough to be able to see or to begin to see, actually, this wasn't about me.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I had a part to play in it, but my part was underpinned by integrity, whereas for the other person who was responsible for this, clearly that wasn't the case.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was not something that they possessed.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: They will, of course, have a different view, and of course one would expect that.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll take you back to the first the first episode in this series when I talked to some extent about the the mechanisms in the behaviour of the person who repeatedly deceives others.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: They will say that that was never their intention.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Nonetheless, they will quietly know that the intention or not, they have they have damaged others and that they have a pattern.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think what they very often fail to do is to ask themselves, why do I keep doing this?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I keep having the same outcomes?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: But really, that's a question for them to pay attention to.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes deception evolves slowly.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, when you start out and um the picture of the person that is being presented to you changes.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is gradual.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Very often what you might find is that you become idealized, that the person who you are who you are with will idealise you in ways that feel nothing less than absolutely wonderful.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: They may say things like, I can't live without you, they will love bomb you, they will they will they will present a picture that they see of you which is idealized, and they will make profound statements, and it's it's seldom the case that this lasts.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: It feels very real, but actually, although it feels real, it doesn't mean that it is, but at the time, of course, you you will you'll believe it.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: But over time, what may happen is you that you begin to see that certain facts about certain things that have gone wrong become minimized.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: You'll also notice that when things do go wrong, there doesn't seem to be a way of repairing those things because the deceiver will withdraw, whether the withdrawal is physical or or verbal, that they won't engage.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: They may appear to have moments of openness, but those will be quite rare.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: They will be very good at talking about those people who let them down, who disappoint them, who criticize them, who don't understand them or expect too much of them.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So what we have there is this kind of representing of the, you know, look look at what happens to me.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, what that touches in us is a desire to compensate and to say, no, no, that's you know, that's not who you are.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: I see someone else, and you mean it.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Of course you do.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, what you're doing is feeding an illusion because actually what the person is telling you is true, and they do get criticized and they do get rejected, and there's a reason for that.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: You may also hear, when it's your own sort of situation with that person, a reframing in terms of that's not what happened, or you're being too sensitive, or you're imagining things, or you're just like such and such a person because that's what they did.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And at first, these comments might feel irritating, but over time, something more dangerous can occur because you begin to doubt your own perception.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: When your reality is repeatedly questioned, people often start to internalize uncertainty, and you may even find yourself saying, Maybe I'm overreacting.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you will go to great lengths to try and correct the misunderstanding, but it's pointless because the person has taken that position, so you're left holding this sense of fragmented responsibility, and you might even start adapting yourself and your thinking to the way the other person thinks, even when they're not with you.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: You might find then that this internal questioning starts to erode your confidence, and it's almost as if what you're doing is reframing and redefining yourself as something you want or you think the other person wants you to be, and that's precarious because then you can't make mistakes.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, and once you begin to doubt your own perception, you become psychologically vulnerable.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why this is so destabilizing is because our sense of stability depends upon trusting our own minds.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can't trust what you see, hear, or feel, then your inner world becomes unstable.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: So this is why prolonged deception can feel so disorientating.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not simply about the behavior, it's about the reality itself becoming unclear.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now the emotional cost of this is phenomenal because over time people living in this dynamic may experience anxiety, hypervigilance, excessive reassurance seeking, emotional exhaustion, and you may find that you are preoccupied with finding the truth, checking, questioning, revisiting conversations.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: But beneath this is something similar and need to feel grounded again.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a question.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is it intentional?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not all reality distortion is deliberate manipulation.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people genuinely minimize in order to avoid conflict.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they rewrite events to protect themselves from shame.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: But whether it's intentional or not, the psychological impact is the same.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that impact matters.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it matters because the effect upon the recipient is considerable.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: But clarity begins when you notice repetition.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Someone was talking to me about their experience of something which was devastating, but then said that there was a point where the emergence of recognition occurred, and they found themselves emotionally distancing, avoiding answering the phone when the person rang, anticipating that the phone call when they did take it would probably be more of the same.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that this wasn't something they had carefully thought about, it was something they found themselves doing almost as if there was a kind of internal mechanism that was saying this is not good for you, this person is not good for you.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Take a step back.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: It took them a long time, but something was obviously emerging in his mind, and it was to do with recognizing that hang on, there's a pattern here.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And when I think about this, this is a pattern that I've heard about that occurs with others.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: So asking the question, is this occasional or is it consistent?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is there accountability or is there defensiveness?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Does truth feel safe?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Can I speak the truth or do I avoid it?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And indeed, does the other person?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And these questions help determine whether or not repair is possible.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because repair requires reality to stabilize.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Without shared reality, trust just can't go.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: So in the next episode, we explore what it truly takes to rebuild trust and what happens when that rebuilding isn't possible.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I have encountered any situations where this level of damage, if if this level of damage has occurred, then trust can be rebuilt.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because one of the difficulties that I think happens neurologically is that when there's been repeated exposure to experiences which leave a person feeling devastated, then the neural circuitry in the brain has been almost redefined.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a central nervous system reaction to be very sensitive to the person who is saying they will change.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that then takes that then triggers the same kind of behavioral and relational loops.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'll talk about this more in episode four, but it's just a a thought that occurs to me.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: The most important thing to take away from this episode is it's probably not you.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably the case that this person has not only done it before, but they will do it again.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they may not be, they will be aware of outcomes, they will be aware of the fact that, and they may even voice the fact that I'll probably mess it up again because that's what happens.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: So they'll be aware of the fact that there's something about them, but whether or not they have the capacity or the willingness and the preparedness to actually look at that in themselves, it's likely that they will just do it again.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really helpful to know because that stops being about you and your integrity or any shame that you feel or any humiliation that you've suffered.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I really do understand that these are real lived experiences.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's that's my phone ringing.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: So um on that note, I will uh stop and I will uh follow with episode four shortly.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.