Lots of clients and therapists feel strongly that clients should not lie to their therapists and, if they do, it makes the therapy totally ineffective.
I disagree and here is why.
Of course, I would prefer my clients to be honest with me. Honesty is connected; dishonesty interrupts the connection. I don’t like when people disconnect from me. And if I find out later that I have been lied to, I feel sad and I lose trust for the person who lied to me.
But every client interrupts their connection with their therapist in some way. Lying is one of those ways. And so my job is to point out what the client is doing, help them accept that they are doing it, explore their reasons for this way of interacting, increase understanding of their impact on other people, and suggest experiments that will allow them to gain more flexibility in how they interact.
If a client is lying to me, there is a reason. It is a self-protective coping strategy developed at some point when they needed it. Often, it is a strategy developed to deal with shame.
If I tell a client not to lie to me when that is something they do to cope with shame, any subsequent lying they do will cause even more shame. They will worry that I will reject them because they have been dishonest. They will feel like they have to lie even more in order to make sure they are not found out. And then, at some point, they are likely to leave therapy because the shame has become too much to bear (and start all over with another therapist).
When I know that a client tends to be dishonest (often because they tell me), I suggest that they experiment with honesty and dishonesty with me to see how it feels for them. In other words, I suggest that they intentionally do what has become habitual. And I open up the possibility for them that they can talk to me about it, that I will not reject them because of their dishonesty.
My therapeutic approach is mostly focused on process, not content. In other words, I am mostly interested in what clients are doing and how they are interacting with other people, including me. While we also talk about problems in their life that worry them, my primary focus is on helping clients to understand how they deal with those problems so they will have more choice about it.
When clients lie to me, then the content of what we are discussing may become less useful. Since they are not showing me fully who they are, they cannot feel accepted fully by me as they are. To the extent that I am offering advice or suggestions or alternative ways of thinking about their problems, clients will not get what they want from therapy because I am unaware of what is really going on for them.
But despite popular views to the contrary, my main job is not to offer wisdom to clients. It’s really not. They could read a book if they wanted wisdom. My main job is simply to help them see what they are doing. If lying is what they are doing, I want to help them to see that and to decide whether that is working for them. It doesn’t destroy the therapy; it is the therapy.
If clients are aware that they are lying, they can pay attention and see what the impact is on the therapy and on me. If they can acknowledge it to me and we can talk about it (because they know that I will not shame them), they may learn other ways of interacting. They can learn how to rebuild trust if they have been dishonest. And that will benefit them in all relationships and with all the problems that are concerning them.
And in the end, clients will learn that I care about them unconditionally. If you are honest with me, I care about you. If you lie to me, I still care about you. And that unconditional care is often what clients are seeking in the first place.