So faking a sprained ankle for 8 miles on a team building exercise isn't normal then?

[LookingUpAtTheStars]

I'm reading "adult children of alcoholics" and it's made me rather emotional. How can one book describe me so completely?

When I got to the part about how we don't know what normal is and that we may be more used to lying when other people wouldn't feel the need to I thought there was finally part of it that didn't match my experiences. I'm not a liar.

Then I read the story of the man who faked hypothermia while climbing a mountain and was reminded of the time on my Duke of Edinburgh award that I decided I wanted to go home as I was being bullied by members of my team, but I was scared of getting into trouble with school and at home. So I "fell" and sprained my ankle and fake-hobbled the next 8 miles of the walk until I was told they didn't think I should continue. It never crossed my mind that this may not have been a normal decision to make, I was just doing what I had to do to get myself out of the situation and keep myself safe.

If there are any other adult children of alcoholics I would recommend reading this book. It's eye opening and I hope will help me to heal a little bit, even though I didn't know I was really broken in many of these ways.

I'd say lying in that situation is completely normal at a teenager age actually. You just wanted to go home but admitting to the bullying was harder than lying and saying you'd hurt yourself. I think a lot of people would have done the same thing including people with a perfectly normal background. I had a normal childhood but would occasionally fake injuries or illnesses as I didn't get much attention from my friends otherwise. Sounds really sad now and I wouldn't do it as an adult but I think it was pretty normal at the time.

I think it has more to do with your "truth" than being honest as a dynamic. Confrontations...are a minefield to an ACoA. There was never nurturing or guidance from the alcoholic parent to teach us how to handle many circumstances. For example, I could never return anything to a store. It was a confrontation to me; I avoided it. (I have since learned that customer service is there for the customers and actually want to help out (mostly) as that is their job.)

Standing up to a bully would very closely parallel standing up to an alcoholic parent. And we can readily predict the outcome of that...and have learned to not waste our breath/time engage as a self-defense mechanism. Your truth guided you to act as you did.

Looking , imho, this may be a piece of discovery for your healing process but you do not need to feel guilty or shamed for the choice you made. It is actually a from me for dealing with it in the moment.

I can also recommend the book or at least a glance at the Laundry List.

I'm not the child of an alcoholic and I'm normally truthful, but I learned similar lessons as a child. My own safety (and that of those in my care) is much, much more important than ideals about honesty. If open confrontation isn't safe then you're meant to find another way to escape/get what you want.

I lie all the time to get out of things I can't handle. I'm about to lie to get out of something this weekend but it's better than telling the truth which is I'm stressed out of my mind and scared I'm headed for a nervous breakdown. Sometimes people don't need to know the truth, it's non of their business.

I don't know if it could be a similar situation (maybe not), but I'm the adult child of a mentally ill parent. As soon as I feel cornered, or obligated to have to do something that worries or panics me, I will still lie and make an excuse to avoid being put into a position that scares me or makes me anxious.
I wasn't like that as a young child, it started when my DM became ill and I couldn't help her. I've had to exercise a bit of self-preservasion since then I think. Sometimes it's not rational, but it's how it is.

I think there is a difference between teens telling white lies to get out of things and those described in the book. I'm a chronic liar as a result of an alcoholic Mother and emotionally abusive step-parent.

It's not just faking an ailment to get out of going for a run. It's creating elaborate webs of lies about things so you don't get into trouble if you have done something wrong - even when realistically you have done nothing wrong at all.

My mum is the child of an alcoholic and did the lying-to-get-out-of-stuff all. the. time.

This meant that although neither she nor my dad were alcoholic, me and my sister thought it was normal to lie to get out of things or, crucially, to avoid giving disappointment.

We were taught it was somehow more polite to lie than to tell the truth, e.g. "I don't want to see you any more because this relationship isn't working for me."

It's taken a long time for me to get to the point where I can tell the truth about things like this without it making me incredibly anxious. Even to the point of turning down people who knock on the door and ask you to change energy supplier/make a charity donation/vote UKIP.

My mum once roped me in when she decided she didn't want to see a bloke she'd met OLD any more, and asked me to tell him she'd left the country to stay with a friend in Spain for a year. He called one night and asked for her (she was living with me at the time) and without thinking I said "Yeah just a sec, who's calling?" and then he said his name and I was like, "Oh, she's not here" and he said "Well where is she?" and I said "I can't remember what she told you, but there"

It sounds funny in retrospect but he really didn't deserve it, he hadn't done anything wrong.

It was the normalisation of this sort of behaviour that was the most damaging thing. This idea that you can't let people know your true feelings about anything. It's incredibly restricting. Once you get past that, your whole life will change, OP.