Today we're going to talk about self-deception. Self-deception is the problem of not knowing that
you have a problem. So if you don't know that you have a problem, is it possible to change it?
Yes, you can. And in this video I'll show you how. We're going to start with a story, and then
we're going to talk about what self-deception is, how to notice that you're doing it, and
how to get out of self-deception so that you can start to see yourself and your problems clearly.
When it comes to mental health problems like depression or anxiety, some people think that
the only thing they can do is just cope with it or that the only options available are therapy
or medication. While these are good treatment options, they're not the only options available to
you. Your amazing brain has this inherent ability called neuroplasticity. It can actually change its
structure, which means we can change the way we think and we can live healthier and happier lives.
In the course "Change Your Brain," I'll teach you 10 essential mental health skills
that research has shown to be effective at treating depression and anxiety.
You'll learn how you can take simple actions to fight for your mental wellness. In this course,
you'll learn all about the mind-body connection and simple ways to improve your mood in a few
minutes every day. You'll gain an understanding of how your body instinctively reacts to stress,
but how it also can instinctively resolve stress. You'll learn how to think more
positively. The 10 essential skills in this course can provide options you didn't think
you had. And this is all for less than the cost of one therapy session. If you'd like to learn
more about how you can change your brain, go check out the link in the description.
Let's start with a classic example from the book Leadership and Self-Deception.
At night a husband and wife are sleeping. The baby in the other room starts to cry, and the
husband wakes up. the husband's first thought is "I should get up and take care of the baby before
he wakes my wife. After all, she works so hard in the day and needs all the sleep she can get."
But then the husband's next thought is "I work hard too. I work all day, and I need to get up
early for my meeting. Why should I get up? My responsibility in this family is to go to work
and earn money so we can live. I need all the sleep I can get so I can function at my job.
And I have a big project to complete tomorrow." So he doesn't get up. And then the baby keeps crying,
and the husband starts to think "Why doesn't she get up and take care of the baby? Doesn't
she realize I need to get sleep? Okay, I know she's awake now. She's just being lazy." So now
he starts to feel upset and angry at her. "This is so unfair," he thinks. "I work hard all day,
and she can't even just take care of the kids so i can sleep." So before long the husband
is really upset toward his wife. If you asked him why he was feeling that way, he would probably say
"Because my wife wasn't doing her job." And he started out this whole experience
feeling completely differently. He started out feeling a desire to help her, but he ended up
feeling bitter, angry, and actually believing that his sleeping wife was mistreating him.
Self-deception is how you subtly convince yourself that when you're doing something
wrong it's actually right. We do this through blame, minimization, denial, and a whole bunch
of other self-justifying tricks of the mind that leave us feeling vindicated but also leave us
feeling stuck, unhappy, trapped, angry, and hopeless. This is a super tricky problem to
address because if you are self-deceived, your subconscious is going to do everything
it can to stay there. You can't see the real problem, and you don't even want to see it.
So if you're trying to solve your problems but nothing is working, then a good question to ask
is "Am I self-deceived?" It's really easy to see this mindset in others - like the alcoholic who
denies that he has a problem, right? So if someone suggests that he needs help, like his wife,
he flies into a rage when his wife suggests that he needs help. He might scream at her, you know,
"I'm a lawyer. My drinking is just to deal with the stress of the job,
which I'm very good at. I am not some bum on the street. You're the one with the problem,"
right? Or it's easy to see self-deception in the thief, right? He steals whatever he can: bikes,
phones, cars, whatever. And he justifies it by saying that it's the victim's fault because they
left their doors unlocked or they're just stuck up rich people who deserve to have stuff stolen from
poor victims like himself. It's easy to see self-deception in others, but it's oh so hard
to see in ourselves. So how do we get here? We all have flaws. We all mess up. But we also want to
like ourselves and feel good. So the easiest path is just to lie to ourselves about how good we are.
But we're better at deceiving ourselves than we are at deceiving others. People can sense
how we really feel towards them. In that first story, the husband felt to help his wife, but then
he didn't do it. He probably felt a very brief sense of guilt, and he had to start justifying
himself to try to make that guilt go away. So he created a way of seeing his wife to make himself
right and her wrong. Before long he was awash in these feelings of self-righteous indignation,
victimhood, and irritation towards his wife. If he had just honored that sense,
he wouldn't have felt guilt and he wouldn't have needed to build up that wall of anger around it.
When we're self-deceived, we waste a ton of energy in self-justification,
distorting the truth about ourselves and others to feel good while completely missing our opportunity
to live life to the fullest, to live our values and dreams. Self-deception leads to pain,
to broken relationships, addictions, anger, and numbness. When we're stuck in self-deception,
we choose to defend ourselves instead of change, even when we're miserable. When we
don't accept responsibility for our choices, we hurt ourselves and everyone around us.
So how do we get here? And how do we get out? When we act contrary to our deepest sense of what is
right, we feel guilt. When we seek to avoid that feeling, we start to distort the way we see the
world, to justify our actions. Self-deception is about avoiding the sensitivity or vulnerability of
being human. So this is self-deception. We twist reality to justify ourselves.
It takes strength to admit our flaws and face our weaknesses, and it's easier to lie to ourselves.
Now sometimes we do this for so long that this just becomes a habitual part
of ourselves. It becomes really difficult to see or remember the original truth of our feelings.
When you're self-deceived, those false feelings of anger, resentment, or frustration
will spread to those around you, exacerbating the problem. So, for example, with the husband
in the previous story, if the morning after he had started acting cranky toward his wife, she would
have been more likely to act cranky towards him. And it would have invited her to start to see him
as a jerk to justify her behaviors. So when we're self-deceived, many of the things we try to fix
problems won't work. If you were to ask the husband the next morning what he was feeling,
he would have said anger, irritation, a sense of injustice. And if you would have asked him "Well,
why are you feeling this way?" He probably would answer "Because my wife won't help out. Because my
wife is lazy or disrespectful." In this situation, his truth was that she was the bad guy and
he was the victim. He thinks that the reason he's upset is because his wife won't help out,
but we know the truth: he didn't feel angry, mistreated, or upset until after he didn't do
what he felt he should. He felt peaceful when he first had the thought "I should get up and
take care of the baby." And when he didn't do it, he had to create an alternate reality in his mind
where his wife was the bad guy. His anger, his sense of victimhood, all of this was actually
self-deception. And so if you'd asked him in the moment of self-deception what the solution to the
problem was, he would have said "Well, my wife needs to change. My wife needs to help more."
Or he might think "We need to have a conversation so I can tell her how she's hurting me."
Or "I guess I just need to cope with this. I guess I'm just going to suffer because of my
wife's laziness." Now none of that would have made things better until his eyes were opened
to his own responsibility in the problem. As a therapist, I see this all the time. As
a couple comes in and they're both exerting so much energy to try to change the other person,
they are convinced that if only the other person would change then their problems would be solved.
Self-deception never improves relationships or solves problems. When we're lying to ourselves
about the nature of a problem, all of our attempts to fix it will fail. Communicating, coping,
expressing your emotions, trying to change others, leaving - all these normally helpful strategies
fail or make things worse. Changing how we act won't solve problems if we're self-deceived.
When we're self-deceived, we see others falsely. We lose sight of them as human beings with needs
and hearts, and we start seeing them as obstacles to our own happiness. When we see people this way,
it doesn't matter what kind of behaviors we're using when we interact with them;
they're going to sense how we feel towards them, and that invites resistance from them. Have
you ever had an experience like this where you thought that another person was mistreating you
and that you were right and they were being jerks? And then later you realized that you were either
contributing to the problem or you were actually the one at fault? If you're watching this course
on YouTube, go ahead and write about that in the comments below. Okay, so where does that leave us,
right? I'm telling you that sometimes you have a problem of not knowing that you have a problem.
Great. Now what do you do with that, right? One of the only antidotes to self-deception is
asking yourself the question "Am I seeing this situation falsely right now? Or am I in some
way responsible for this? Is it possible that I'm causing this problem? Or at least contributing to
it more than I'm willing to admit?" Now if we use our self-deception to rationalize our mistakes,
the deception leaves us helpless to solve our problem. So if we feel helpless,
that's an indicator that you're self-deceived. Seeing our responsibility gives us the freedom
to act and the power to create real change in our life. So the first step to stop is to look
for signs of self-deception. Here's some signs to look out for: the first one is justification,
right? "Oh, I had to do that because..." Or "If she didn't do that, then I wouldn't need to do
this." Generally we don't need a reason to do the right thing; we only need a reason when we've done
something wrong. The husband does work hard, but he didn't need to remind himself of that until he
was trying to excuse himself for not getting up and taking care of the baby. Okay, another sign:
trying to change others or believing that if they would change, it would solve your problems.
Next one is blame, seeing the other person as the problem. Now sometimes other people do have
problems. They're responsible for their actions. That's not self-deception. Self-deception is using
other people's problems as justification for yourself. Another sign is horriblizing - making
the other person or the situation or whatever out to be worse than they are,
and making you to be better. Now remember, this can be opposites too. We can make ourselves out
to be horrible as a way to justify ourselves, as well feeling hopeless. If you're feeling hopeless,
powerless, or constantly angry, that's a pretty good sign you're self-deceived.
Victimhood - focusing on how you've been mistreated as an excuse for your behaviors. Now,
that's not to say you haven't been mistreated. That's totally possible. Just don't use that
victimhood as a way to excuse going against your deepest sense of what is right.
Another sign of self-justification is compiling evidence on the other
person - keeping these internal lists of all the wrongs that they've done and - and then
pulling those up in your memory when you need a reason for why you're doing what you're doing.
Another sign is if you see the same pattern of problems repeat themselves in your life. So,
for example, "Why does every boss I have suck at communicating?" Right? This might be a good time
to look at your own communication patterns. When you see clearly, you can then begin to look for
little ways that you can change your actions to line up with your deepest sense of what is right
and the kind of character that you value. So check yourself for signs of self-deception.
Self-justification indicates that you aren't living your values, that at some point
you've acted in a way that goes against your deepest sense of what is right.
So when you catch yourself doing this, pause and ask yourself "What does my reaction say about me?"
When you notice the signs of self-deception, take some time to try and get clarity. Calm down.
Slow yourself down. Spend time in a safe place or with a safe person. Maybe do some introspection
and, you know, write down what kind of person you'd like to be in that situation. And then
take responsibility for what is in your locus of control. Don't use others' actions as excuses for
not living your own values. This is one of the most common ways we get stuck in self-deception.
Don't get wrapped up in spotting self-deception in others, and don't get stuck beating yourself
up. Just ask yourself "What are my values? What do I believe in? What's my deepest sense of what
is right?" Then be humble, be willing to change. Focus on trying to do just a little bit better,
on taking one action that lines up with your values. You can learn to recognize the signs
of self-deception in yourself, and you can learn to see yourself and others more clearly.
Now obviously this is a big and a complicated topic, and it's a really important one. This
approach to understanding how to change how you feel and resolve problems is really adapted from
the Arbinger Institute's work, and their approach has been life-changing for me. Their best-selling
books, like Leadership and Self-Deception and The Anatomy of Peace have been really
influential for me. And Bonds That Make Us Free by C Terry Warner takes it all to a deeper level.
I've also been to their seminars dozens of times, and they can be really amazing too.
I can honestly say I've discovered more freedom and power through their organization of ideas
than just about anything else I've studied. So if you want to dive deeper into this stuff, I'd
recommend starting with their book The Anatomy of Peace. Thank you for watching, and take care. This
video is one skill from my 30-skill course How to Process Your Emotions, where I teach 30 of the
most essential skills for resolving depression, anxiety, and improving mental health. Emotion
processing is an essential skill for working through intense emotions, but most people have
never been taught how to do it. I'm putting every single main video lesson on YouTube for the world
to access for free. You watching these videos, sharing them, contributing to my Patreon and my
sponsors make this possible. If you would like to access the entire course in one place ad free
with its workbook, exercises, downloads, extra videos, live Q&A's, additional short readings,
and links to extended resources, the link to buy the course is in the description below.