Lies and Lying

I've been reading an interesting book called Lie Spotting by Pamela Meyer.  The book endeavors to make the reading into a live lie detector.  It's not a long book, but it does it gives some good information about lies and why people lie.  This is stuff most people would not want to discuss in public.  The book is for the public at large.  Pamela Meyer has certainly done her homework.  I get the impression she is a normal human, that is not a highly sensitive person (HSP).  She points out ways normal people use lies, and she assumes all people do the same.  What dawned on me is that HSPs or empaths are not normal people.  We tend to abhor lies.  I'm exploring what empaths attitude is when it comes to white lies, feelings about lying, lies of omission.

Meyer points out in her book that lying is natural when it comes to self defense.  She takes a broad definition of lying to include deception.  She points out that people use white lies on a daily basis.  White lies will include a 'I'm fine' response to a 'How are you today' question.  They also include smiling in public when we feel otherwise.  As an empath, I remember that I had to force myself to say 'I'm fine' instead of going into detail about how I feel and the consequences of it.  I was told to smile at people so to make them feel comfortable.  These white lies do help in the day to day business to keep appearances and appropriate distance from co-workers.  So to a certain extent I do lie, though under protest.  Meyer points out that everyone lies and are lied to on a daily basis.

Empaths feel bad when telling lies.  It's not the best thing in the world to deceive someone, anyone.  I always felt bad telling lies.  That's why I cannot carry a lie too far.  My brain does not want to remember the lies, so it will not allow me to make elaborate ones like some people do or have.  It's very uncomfortable for me even to use an alias in person.  I tried using an alias before but it did not work very well because I would not respond when being addressed by the alias.

Empaths will use lies of omission.  That is, it's easier to say nothing at all than to have to actively lie about something.  I do tend to hold my breath a bit when doing this.  I notice my body tenses up as I let the individual I'm communicating with believe a lie.  It is less uncomfortable than lying outright.

By doing this little exercise of going through attitudes of white lies, feelings about lying, and lies of omission, it seems that empaths do suffer when having to lie.  In a perfect world I would not lie to anyone.  I would but on a face on how I feel all the time, I would get into lengthy conversations when asked questions in the spirit of small talk, and I would tell everyone everything I think they need to know.  Of course, I would make faux pas on a daily basis.  People would be shocked.  Actually they have.  Once I told the truth in a wedding party about one of the members who was not known to be reliable.  They had asked me to be a backup for the best man.  Well, at least that made the unreliable person reliable for the wedding.  It all came out fine.

Liars

I came across someones blog post a while back stating that empaths always know when someone is lying.  I hate absolutes.  If someone uses words like always and never and other absolute words, be assured that there are exceptions to what they are saying.  One thing I know about people and empaths is that there are not two alike.  There are those who are similar but there are many variations of characteristics.  I would like to make a case about my opinion on empaths and liars.

Can I tell if someone is lying, well sometimes.  It really depends on who.  Can I tell if a hardened liar is lying, well I have not had any success at it yet.  Perhaps it's because I grew up with one.  Or perhaps it's because they are so good at lying that their emotions don't fluctuate when they do, but rather their emotions do fluctuate when the truth comes out.  Emotions are hard.  It really depends on the person and what choices they have made and how they have trained themselves.  Can an empath be trained to detect hardened liars?  Well, I have not heard of any limitation an empath can train to do in detecting emotions.  So I have to say yes.

I hold to a certain truth, that people have two brains.  They have an analytical brain which is the one we are used to, and they have an intuitional brain which is a mystery to most people.  Using the intutional brain, the empath feels other peoples emotions and/or pains.  Based on that information he/she can deduce what is going on.  It takes knowledge of emotions to figure out what the emotion means.  Much of this knowledge is based on self knowledge via experience.  Another source of this knowledge can come by observing the individual's behavior or situation.  It takes analytical knowledge to be able to interpret emotions to give an analytical conclusion.  The interaction of the analytical and the intuitional brains is where the rubber meets the road for empaths and their ability.  The ability to detect if a person is lying depends on knowledge and training.

The empath has to also figure out the levels of emotion.  People have their own emotional signature.  You can tell one from another based on their emotional signature.  It's kind of like seeing their face.  You can also tell what their current emotional state they are in.  These can be done on the fly in a matter of seconds.  To get deeper information requires more time, and may require a deeper state of meditation.  Given all the time in the world, an empath could write a lot on a person's past, present, and future.  The empath also needs to be in a good meditative state to be able to get to a depth of knowledge.  The ability to detect if a person is lying depends on time and meditative state.

So to say that an empath can always tell if someone is lying is a farse.  An empath can learn to detect if people are lying, but it takes time, meditative state, knowledge, training, and on the liars ability to lie.  Nothing is cut and dry.  Everything is fuzzy, as in fuzzy logic.  We try to approximate truth with our analytical minds, but truth is more elusive than we like to think.