Calling Out the Lies
Recognize Cognitive Distortions
Lying is one of those activities that starts small and invades all areas of your life. It might start as a way to cover up something you did wrong. Maybe you lie to get ahead in school or at work. Before you know it, lying becomes a part of what you do.
Pathological liars lie about everything. They could lie to protect themselves, avoid pain, or because of past trauma. It’s hard to tell why they do it. What we know is that it becomes a way of coping. Eventually, they begin to believe their own lies until they no longer know the difference between lies and reality.
Maybe you don’t quite fit the pathological liar profile, but you have a few lies of your own. You might not see them that way because they are so convincing. The best lies have just enough truth to fool people into believing them as truth. Before you know it, they are distorting your life.
The most pressing and scary reality of these lies is their subtleness. They fool the person just enough to let down their guard and begin entertaining the lies as truth. They cause their owner to question their lives and what they thought they knew. It’s at this point where a shift happens that makes all the difference.
This shift is perhaps first seen in the Bible in Genesis when the serpent causes Eve to question her reality. Let’s take a quick look at this passage of scripture in Genesis 3:1.
”The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, ‘Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?’“
Genesis 3:1 NLT
Much like what the serpent did in the garden, satan still does with humans today. In case you haven’t heard, satan, the devil, is the father of lies (John 8:44). He will do whatever is necessary to draw us into a lie, away from God’s truth.
There is nothing more that the enemy desires than to harm God’s children. The way satan does this is by getting us to believe a lie. His desire is to convince you that you are unloved, unworthy, powerless, and distant from God. It all begins with getting you to believe a small lie that leads to a shift in your thinking.
As we believe a lie, we begin to build our lives on it, which becomes ingrained into our daily existence. The scary part is that this one lie can lead to other small lies. Before you know it, you’ve built your lives on a bunch of lies.
In the realm of psychology, these lies are often referred to as cognitive distortions. A cognitive distortion “…is an exaggerated pattern of thought that’s not based on facts.” They cause us to see the world through a broken lens. They contain just enough truth to keep you believing. But a truth mixed in with a bunch of lies still amounts to lies in the end.
If we imagine these distortions as a pair of glasses, it can be like wearing glasses with dirty lenses. We may start with just a little dust on the lenses. The terrifying part of this is that, little by little, we get used to the dirt on our lenses. Then, a little more collects until our glasses are covered in dirt (lies).
Have you ever worn sunglasses or prescription glasses? After wearing them for a while, you take them off to discover they are covered in dust. Seeing the dirt on them, you wonder how you ever got used to looking through such filth.
We all have our own set of distorted, filthy glasses on. Some of us have a few specks of dust, while others are covered. This happens a little at a time. People let us down, we get rejected, and we feel ashamed. Through these difficult experiences, we begin to believe our own cognitive distortions until we see the world through our own broken set of glasses.
So now that we have a pretty good understanding of cognitive distortions, let’s take a look at some of the most common cognitive distortions.
Black-and-white thinking/All-or-nothing thinking: The tendency to see things in extremes rather than having a balanced-perspective.
Overgeneralization: The tendency no rake one negative experience or interaction and unfairly apply it to other situations.
Minimization and magnification: The tendency to make little of the good things and make much of the bad things.
Mind reading: The tendency to assume that others are thinking or feeling something negative toward you.
Fortune-telling: The tendency to predict the future and imagine negative outcomes.
Catastrophizing: The tendency to think in worst-case scenarios.
Emotional reasoning: The tendency to believe everything your emotions tell you. (Remember, emotions are real, but they aren’t always telling the truth!)
Could-should-would: The tendency to fixate on the past with regret, rehearsing what you could have, should have, or would have done differently.
Labeling: The tendency to use broad names or stereotypes to identify yourself or others in a negative way.
Personalization: The tendency to take the actions and interactions of others very personally rather than see them objectively.
As you look over this list, maybe you spot one or two that you identify with. Perhaps you have your own you’d like to add to the list. Whatever the case, it is time to recognize the lies and call them out.
Verse for Reflection
“(The devil) is a liar and the father of lies.” John 8:44
Source
[1] Fileta, D. (2023). Reset. Harvest House Publishers.
