When you survive living with a serial liar it changes you. You go from someone who blindly trusts what others tell you, even when your gut says differently to being suspicious of everything you’re told.
I know when I was going through the turmoil of living with a serial liar, there were days I wasn’t sure what to believe. My ears were hearing one message and my gut was giving me other messages. I found myself second guessing my own choices and actions.
I wanted to believe what the liar was telling me, but there was always something that didn’t smell right. My brother-in-law often refers to this as the ‘sniff test’. When it doesn’t smell right, it likely isn’t right.
Decision by decision and choice by choice I began listening to my gut more than what I was being told.
You learn about trusting your instincts and gut rather than relying on what they say to you. Making that change takes effort. It requires you start thinking for yourself rather than allowing them to tell you what you think.
It takes time building confidence in your instincts. When you hear the right words, you may still be tempted to believe what they tell you.
Part of building confidence in listening to your instincts involves giving yourself affirmations even when others don’t. There are times you may be alone in what your gut is telling you.
Having to walk that road alone can be scary. Each step you take gives you a little more confidence in what you’re sensing and picking up on. Even when you can’t put it into words, your gut is telling you things.
The longer you’ve lived with the lies, manipulation and efforts at fooling you, the longer it will take in trusting your own instincts. The confidence comes a little at a time.
Part of what takes so long is the undoing of the trauma scars left behind by all the lies. They can leave you with doubts that cloud any decision you make or people you hang around.
This is another reason you’ll benefit from addressing the trauma issues in the video “Overcoming Affair Trauma“. After the affair is over, you still need recovery from the scars it left behind.
Those scars can trigger fears and self-doubts later on. Anytime you see things that remind you of the serial liar, the feelings and thoughts are triggered anew. Your not going crazy, your body remembers what it’s endured.
You can move past those fears and enjoy being with people once again.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
