The Truth Will Set You Free

“What is a lie but a mistake with a purpose.”

The Cisco Kid, The Gay Amigo (1949)

People with addictive personalities are notorious for lying. Manipulation is the name of the game because we are so desperate to get what we want from others: love, happiness, approval, etc. And manipulation often requires telling lies. To complicate matters, telling lies to manipulate someone often requires that we tell more lies to cover-up the original lies. Eventually, it all becomes a complicated nightmare.

Like the Cisco Kid says every lie is a mistake with a purpose. The purpose is to get what we want in any way that we can possibly get it, aside from being truthful. And right there lies the mistake. It is a mistake to think that truthfulness is a bad choice.

Truthfulness is the right choice. Like Jesus Christ said “the truth will set you free.” And, in fact, it will. For one thing if we are truthful we will weed out the toxic people. The toxic people we are often attracted to don’t want to hear the truth. They will balk at it and they will walk away from us.

Our addicted self is terrified of this possibility, but in the long run it is what’s best for us. Nothing good can come from a toxic attraction to a toxic person. Every relationship built on toxic attraction, manipulation and lies eventually comes to a very bad ending. Certainly most of us have learned that lesson.

So we need to be truthful and allow the toxic people we so often attract to turn around and head in a different direction. We don’t need them and they don’t need us. We can only do harm to each other.

Allowing them to flee also forces us to face ourselves and to realize that all of the manipulation and lies we could possibly muster will never truly benefit us. No other person can give us what we need and all of the manipulation or lies in the universe will ever change this fact. Only we can give us what we really need: LOVE and ACCEPTANCE.

So the next time we feel like manipulating or lying to someone to fill up our inner-emptiness, we need to remember that a lie is a mistake with a purpose—a purpose that is toxic to us. Instead we need to withdraw to a quiet place where we can connect with our Higher Power and practice loving ourselves better. Then we need to get to a meeting where we can reconnect fully with the TRUTH, which will always set us free from toxicity.