HealthyGamerGG - How Liars Use Your Emotions Against You

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

In today's episode, Dr K. discusses why people feel the need to lie and manipulate, and how you can prepare yourself emotionally to defend against it. Check out more mental health resources here! https://bit.ly/3xsk6fE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Actually, the most important piece of information is not the truth. The most important piece of information is what am I feeling? Because they're operating trying to control me. The more that you tap into, understand what you're feeling, and the more that you can step a little bit away from it and not let those feelings control you, the more in control you'll be able to be and the more you'll be able to detect their BS. So if you really think about it, the ability to protect yourself against deception is one of the most important skills that you can ever develop as a human being. Because the truth of

the matter is that not everyone will be honest to you, sometimes people will lie to you, sometimes people will take advantage of you. And this is something that I've seen so much in my patience, whether this is people in romantic relationships who their partner is being unfaithful and they're lying to them, they're sort of trying to cover things up. Or even in the corporate setting, I've seen this a lot when someone's like, oh yeah, I'll let the partners know that you made a really important contribution to this project. And then, of course, they take all the credit for themselves. And every single patient or client or even like psychiatry resident that I've taught this

to has said that this is one of the most useful things that I've ever taught them. And people are like, why don't we learn this stuff in schools? This is such a critical skill to be able to detect deception. But that's not what we teach our kids, right? What do we teach our kids? We teach our kids not how to detect a liar, but oh, you shouldn't lie because the boy who cried we'll fly it and see you is punished. Our strategy as a human race is to try to delude and condition kids into being honest

as opposed to trying to teach the skill of detecting deception. Absolutely wild. So let's start by understanding why human beings lie to begin with. See, we think that developing a BS meter or being able to detect lies isn't really possible because in order to combat lies, what you need is truth or facts. right? And we have the profession of law enforcement where they try to catch people in a lie, but they have a tool that you or I don't have, which is the ability to investigate. They can get warrants, they can get subpoenas, they do interviews, you know, they'll collect all kinds of information.

They can look at what's on your phone to try to catch you out in a lie. But most human beings, psychiatrists included, don't really have investigative powers. And so we make a big mistake in assuming that we need facts to catch a lie. But we actually don't. In order to understand how. We have to understand how liars think when people are BSing us, because it's not necessarily a lie. It can be omitting the truth. What's their goal? How are they operating? Hey, y'all, if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we discuss to your life to actually create change, check out Dr. Kay's Guide to Mental Health. The guide synthesize my years of training as a monk, along with years of clinical experience as a psychiatrist to cover common topics like

meditation, ADHD, and trauma. The guides include over 100 additional videos that can be navigated based on your needs or interests or in a more open choose-your-own-adventure format. The guides are now available in the YouTube store below, and if they're a little bit outside of your price point, you can check out a piece of them with our free resource packs, which are also linked below. So definitely check them out. So this is the first thing to understand. Lying is about control, right? So why do we lie? We lie because if I tell them, truth, there will be these consequences, there will be these behaviors, and when someone lies to you, what are they trying to control? They're trying to control you, right? So they're telling you one version

of the truth, emitting another version of the truth, so that you act this way instead of act that way. And so the first thing to understand is that we assume that the liar has the power because they have all the facts, and we don't have the facts. We don't need the facts. We have the power because the liar is trying to control us. It's all about controlling our behaviors, our thoughts, and our reactions. So you actually have the majority of what the liar wants, right? They're trying to control you, so you actually have the power. And when it comes down to it, basically, we can use that fundamental fact that liars are trying to control our behavior to modify our behavior. And then what we're going to be doing is observing what the liar does. So what we're going to do is like change the way that we

respond to someone who is trying to deceive us and watch what they do as a result. And as we sort of jabat them a little bit, as we pretend to believe them, we'll notice that they kind of calm down. And as we pretend not to believe them, we'll notice that their lies will increase, their desperation will increase. So now we get to the first really, really important and probably the hardest skill to developing your BS meter is you need to learn how to step outside of a conversation. So most of the time when I'm interacting with someone, let's say I'm worried that my partner is cheating on me.

I'm so emotionally engaged in the conversation. I'm emotionally disturbed. I'm not really able to take a step back and look at things objectively. They're pulling my strings like a puppet, right? They're activating my emotions. And so like it kind of becomes this default, like you're kind of like in it with them. I don't know if this kind of makes sense. But one of the things that we get trained of as psychiatrists is learning how to step outside of a conversation and watch.

yourself in a conversation, watch the liar or the person who may be BSing you in the conversation. The second thing that's really, really important is usually what liars will do is engage our emotions. So if you look at people who have antisocial personality disorder or sociopaths, what do they actually do? What is the source of their manipulation? When you've been manipulated in life, what do people actually use to manipulate you? Sometimes they use information, but what's much more common is feelings. So people who are deceptive will use something, use the capacity of cognitive empathy. They don't feel what you feel, but they can predict how to make you feel a certain way.

And then they will evoke your emotions in that direction to try to control your behavior. So actually, the most important piece of information is not the truth, because they're operating trying to control me. The most important piece of information is what am I? feeling. The more that you tap into, understand what you're feeling, and the more that you can step a little bit away from it and not let those feelings control you, the more in control you'll be able to be, and the more you'll be able to detect their BS. So remember that liars are controlling, right? They're trying to control your behavior. And the main mechanism that they use for control is your emotions. So interestingly enough, all we need to do is be able to detect our emotions and

observe the conversation. So step number one. one, okay? So this is a skill, is step outside of the conversation, right? So what we want to do is we want to observe what they're doing and observe how we feel, okay? Then what's going to happen is we will notice that liars will do one of two things. They will either escalate or deescalate. So this is kind of how this works. So let's say, here's the liar and here's me, right? And there's two tracks. there is either the track of, I believe you. Oh, baby, I would never do anything to hurt you. I love you.

Right? So they're saying these things. And what they're trying to get us to do is move towards the checkmark, move towards the trust. And if we move towards distrust, they will change their tactics. Okay. So let's say, I say, oh, I don't believe you. Let me see your text messages. And then they'll say, oh, but like, and we'll get to this in more detail,

but they'll say, oh, no, no, no, like text messages don't prove anything. Some of the texts look bad, right? But baby, I would never hurt you. Look, I got you this gift, and I did this for you, and I did this for you. So if you express some degree of doubt, right, press X to express doubt, then what will happen is the liar will use some other kind of technique to bring you over here, right? So then, like, this is the two options. So then they'll say, oh, no, but like the text messages may look bad.

I swear it's just texts. I swear, I swear, I swear, nothing actually happened. You can look at the pictures on my phone. I'll turn on, not I will show you in the past, but I'll turn on location so you can see where I am all the time. Like maybe they leave their phone behind and then go have an affair where their phone is in one location. Like they leave it at work. Maybe they have two phones. Like, who knows, right?

So what will happen is as you express doubt, they will escalate. And then once they escalate, they'll sort of figure out your chinks in the armor. and we'll show you all that in a second. And then eventually they want to get to trust. They want to get to acceptance. So what can we do in this situation? So this is what's really lovely. What we're going to do is actually manipulate them.

So what we're going to do is, oh, baby, I would never cheat on you. Oh, yeah. So then what we're going to say is this. We're going to say, I know you would never do anything to hurt me. And they're going to be like, who, success. Oh, my God. I can't believe that just telling him I love them. actually worked and that was efficient.

They're relieved on the inside. So what we're going to do, we're going to be paying attention to them and paying attention to ourselves. We're going to be like, yeah, I know you would do nothing to hurt me. We've been together. We've been in this relationship

for three or four years and you've done so many nice things for you. I know you would never do anything to hurt me. And they're like, whew. So watch them. What they'll do is they'll de-escalate. They'll calm down. And then what we're going to do,

we're going to throw him a curveball. But I still don't know if I can trust you after this. And then what's going to happen is they will escalate, right? Then, like, suddenly they were calming down. And now they're escalating. Now they're like, oh, no, no, no, no, like, what, what, what? And so then what you'll see is they'll do something else. They'll get desperate.

And they'll be like, no, no, no, no, no. Believe me, believe me, believe me. I thought I was winning. I thought I was controlling your behavior. Now you're not being controlled in the way that I want, and they will escalate. So here's what this looks like. So here is you. okay you're in the middle here here is your armor and what the liar is trying to do is find a chink

in the armor so the first thing that they try is baby i love you and then you say i know you do hun and they're like oh thank god i am penetrating into and i'm this is working i've made it past the initial armor and then you say but i don't trust you and they're like oh no so then what they're going to do is they're going to try something else now what they're going to do and this is very important. So liars evolve their techniques. So one of the key things that you can look for is an alteration of emotional energy from a liar. So if love doesn't work, I'm going to try anger. I can't believe you would say that. After all of this time, you know, I've been with you for four years. And then what are we going to do? We're going to let them in. Oh, I'm so sorry. You're right. I have been unfair to you. You're letting them in a little bit. And then they will calm down. Oh, so remember, you're not paying attention to yourself, and this is what happens, right?

When your partner gets angry at you, we lose side of the conversation. We kind of get caught up in it. We get defensive. We're not able to observe what's going on, and we can't intentionally control our actions. So we're going to actually let the anger work, okay? And then you'll see, oh, the anger will start to calm down. You'll see a de-escalation. And then what are you going to say?

You're going to say, yeah, you're right. I should trust you. I don't know why. I just can't. Right? You're right. You do deserve trust. I'm so sorry for upsetting you.

I just still don't know if this relationship can work. I don't know if I can move past it. And then what will the liar do? They will try something else. They'll try guilt. I don't know what to do. I've tried everything now and it hurts me so much and I'm so disappointed that for years, I've done whatever you wanted and I've done this.

and I've done this and I've done this and it hurts so much. They're the ones that fucking cheated and now they're the ones that are crying make you feel guilty and now they found a chink in the armor. So once again, what do we want to do? We want to stay present. We want to say, oh, I'm so sorry for hurting you. I know it's so disappointing. I'm so sorry.

And then they'll calm down. And then what are we going to do? Oh, they almost made it. They almost made it to the center. They almost got what they wanted and we're going to just yank it away. So this is the way that you develop your BS meter. You recognize that it's about control. You recognize that they are trying to shape your actions.

They are trying to elicit a certain kind of response. And what they'll do is they'll evolve their style, right? They'll even give you things that seem like they're trustworthy. They're like, oh, yeah, you can monitor the location on my phone. In the back of their mind, what are they thinking? They're thinking that, oh, I'll just get a second phone. Or I'll leave my phone at work. I'll leave my phone.

I'll tell my friend to hang out to, keep my phone for a couple hours while I go out and have an affair. This is why truth doesn't really work very well unless you have lots of investigative powers. Instead, what we want to do is we want to play the game that they're playing, but we don't want to let them know that we're playing it. Right? What we want to do is recognize that they're trying to control our emotions. They're trying to control our behaviors. So what we're going to actually offer them is exactly what they want. And as you offer them what you want, you will watch what they do. As you start to believe them, as you start to give them what they want, as their emotions start having the effect, do they kind of calm down, right?

And then if they do, then what we want to do is we want to throw that barrier just when they thought they were in. We want to toss something out. So these are things that I would call diagnostic test balloons. Okay. So these are test balloons that we're putting out. I'm going to give you a little bit of belief here. I'm going to give you a little bit of like, oh, I'm falling for your crap over here. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a little bit of a signal.

No, I'm not actually buying it. and watch what they do. That will tell you so much. So this is stuff that we, like, encounter all the time, right? So I'll give you all a great example of how I learned this. So when I was training in Boston, right,

into about 2015, one time I had a patient who lost their prescription of Adderall. And I went to one of my supervisors, and I was like, you know, the patient really, like, you know, they've got ADHD, they're forgetful, right? And it's my job to be compassionate

and care about them. They came into my office and they gave me such a sob story and things like that. My supervisor was, having it. They were like, okay, do you know what the street value of Adderall is? I was like, no, I have no idea. So you gave them what? It's a 60, it's a 30 milligram, I mean, it's a 30 tablets once a day prescription for like 40 milligrams of Adderall or something like that. Each pill is worth $40. So one

bottle of lost medication is $1,200. Keep in mind, this is Boston, right? So this is like Harvard and MIT, where like kids at Harvard and MIT will pay $40 for one pill of Adderall so they can pull and all-nighter. Sometimes people will come in, oh, once a day isn't enough. I need twice a day. That's 60 tablets per month, $2,400. This is back in 2015. This is the street value of Adderall in Boston about 10 years ago. So we in psychiatry, people like come to us and we have a lot of power to give them things that include money, that include a break from work, that include, you know, like extra time to take tests. Sometimes it's even people who are homeless, people who are trying to get out of crimes and want to plead insanity and are pretending to be insane. So super high-stakes stuff.

And some of these people are really, really, really good at line. So we have to get super wise on how to deal with them. So the first thing we want to do is step out of the conversation. Just observe what am I feeling? Is this person trying to manipulate my feelings by increasing them or decreasing them? Then what we want to do is let it work a little bit and then give them some kind of resistance and watch how they evolve. So the better you get at this, the better you'll be at detecting BS. This isn't quite the same as lying, right? Because they may not be lying. They may be obstructing the truth. They may be doing something shady. But it's really about your emotions. That's the most important thing. There's a second thing that we can do that's a little bit

different, which is that you can give them what they want without the emotional BS. So keep in mind that what they're trying to do is they're trying to use your emotions to create a particular outcome. So if we uncouple the outcome from the emotions, we'll see whether all of the emotions truly stop or not. So for people who are honest and are genuinely feeling very, very guilty, oftentimes giving them what they want doesn't affect their emotional state because their emotions are not being used to manipulate you. Their emotions have a life of their own.

Whereas when someone is trying to BS you, the purpose of their emotional display is to control some kind of behavior. So sometimes what we do, what I do as a psychiatrist, because I don't know the truth, right? So what I'll do is I'll be like, okay, fine, I'll refill your prescription this one time, right? I'll say like, okay, fine, I'll refill this prescription. If you lose it again, I'm not going to do it again. I'm just letting you know. Now, tell me honestly what happened with the prescription, right?

So like, here's the script. I'm going to give it to you, but be straight with me. I'm here. I'm on your side. Like, tell me what's going on. So sometimes one of the subtle things that we can do is, you know, in the case of something like infidelity, we can tell people, okay, fine, I'm going to give you a second chance no matter what, not a big deal.

But just tell me, like, honestly, like, if you want to, if you want to, you. to have this relationship work, like I'm committed to trying to saving it, whether you cheated or didn't cheat. I need to know, though, because like if you want to make this relationship work, we need to, like, work on it, right? We need to, like, resolve this issue of trust. So tell me what's going on. So the other interesting technique that you can sometimes do is decouple the reward from the emotion. You can actually surrender control, and that can have a very interesting effect. It'll help you learn about them, help you learn what the situation is, and reduce the manipulative behavior. So who is this video for? This video is for people who sometimes get deceived.

Sometimes people who get taken advantage of, whether it's in the corporate setting, the relationship setting, the friendship setting, oh, I just forgot to invite you, right? Oh, I didn't even like, it was just, it was an innocent mistake and it happens again and again and again and again. So the question is, how do you deal with these people, right? Sometimes when you confront someone, they're trying to, once again, what are they trying to control? They're trying to control your anger, right? You may wonder, like, how do I approach this situation? Because they're saying, oh, it's an innocent mistake. I'm not to blame. And then the goal is, oh, if I didn't do anything wrong, you're not allowed to get angry. So get angry. Like, this is so unacceptable. Like,

you always forget about me and you start to rage a little bit and then you kind of see what they do. And then you calm it down a little bit and then you see what they do. Right. So the main thing that, the main instrument that you actually have to use is your own emotions. This is going to be your diagnostic instrument as well as your interventional instrument and pay attention to the other person. As I say something, how does this person respond? And the more that they evolve, the more that they try to control your behavior, the more BS will be going on. I'm not necessarily saying that they're lying, right? But sometimes people are so caught up and they'll say anything, do anything to control you. So just be aware of that dynamic. So how do you

tell the difference between someone who's honest and emotional and someone who's being manipulative and emotional. So remember that when someone is honest, their focus is not entirely on you. Their focus is also somewhat internal. So if I'm like, you know, if I didn't actually cheat on you and then you're accusing me of cheating or this has been somewhat concerned, I'm not trying to manipulate your behavior. There's a certain amount of emotion that I experience with this, which is genuine, and it's kind of like an emotion generator. So that emotion will be more persistent over time. Whereas the person who is manipulative, the person who's lying, their focus isn't going to be on their own emotion. They're not going to be dealing with their own emotions because this issue has come up.

What they will actually be focused on is you. So you'll see a lot more fluctuation in their internal emotional state. So that's the key difference between someone who's more likely to be BSing and someone who's less likely to be BSing. So if you all want to develop your BS meter, first of all, learn how to step outside of a conversation and just observe it. That will tell you 50%. Second thing that you want to do is remember that their goal is to control you and they'll use your emotions. So what you want to do is dangle a little bit, let them have a little bit of a win and then pull it away. Dangle a little bit more and pull it away.

And then you may say, but Dr. K, isn't that deceptive? You're damn right. It's deceptive. If we want to play this game, like they're playing this game, right? So like just because the enemy is using nuclear weapons doesn't mean that we don't want to use nuclear weapons. Like, that's not going to work. So we're not saying that you should use this power for evil, right? So I had a supervisor who taught me some of the stuff was like, make sure you use this power for good. So the last thing that I encourage you all to do is use this power for good,

right? Use this power to protect yourself. Use this power to make sure that someone doesn't take credit for your stuff at work. Oh, yeah, I'll tell the partners all about it. Oh, don't worry. You don't need to. I'm meeting with this partner. I'll just let them know, you know, what I thought about the project. and then watch what happens. This is very important. Observe the panic on their face. Observe the, oh, okay, fine. Or observe the, okay, you can tell them what you want to tell them.

I'll tell them what I'm going to tell them, right? Like, observe their emotional reaction to you giving them what they want and taking away what they want. And as you hone your powers of observation, your ability to detect the BS will go up.