When Clients Lie

Listening Beyond Facts

In mediation, couples work, and coaching, clinicians and mediators are frequently placed in the role of arbiter. Clients present competing narratives and ask a direct question: Which one of us is right? They may seek validation, vindication, or a definitive ruling. The pressure to determine factual accuracy can feel immediate and intense. Yet responding to that request by choosing a side often undermines the task.

When clients lie, exaggerate, distort, or selectively present events, the question is rarely whether the account is factually accurate. The more useful question is: What is this narrative communicating? Every story a client tells, whether literally true, partially true, or demonstrably false, conveys meaning. The path to deep communication is to discern and engage that meaning.

Narrative as Psychological Communication

Human beings communicate through story. Even when the details are inaccurate, the narrative carries emotional truth. In religious texts such as Book of Genesis, the value of the Adam and Eve story does not depend on historical verification. Its power lies in the symbolic meaning it conveys about shame, responsibility, vulnerability, and relational and spiritual rupture. Similarly, in human communication, factual precision is often secondary to psychological significance.

Clients are always communicating their lived reality. They may do so through metaphor, defensiveness, inflation, denial, or contradiction. The clinician or mediator who becomes preoccupied with correcting the record risks missing the underlying message embedded in the narrative.

Lying as a Defense Mechanism

Lying may operate alongside denial, projection, minimization, or rationalization in order to conceal a painful and vulnerable truth. Attempting to dismantle the lie directly can provoke shame and intensify resistance. Confrontation without sufficient relational safety frequently leads to entrenchment.

Consider the example of a chronically unemployed spouse who repeatedly describes new certifications, upcoming credentials, or ambitious professional trajectories that do not align with observable reality. The mediator may know that the client has not been working for an extended period. The temptation may be to challenge the discrepancy and “bring the client back to reality.”

However, focusing solely on factual correction risks overlooking the emotional message: My value depends on achievement. I must present myself as productive in order to be worthy. The inflation of credentials functions as protection against shame. The narrative is less about employment and more about self-worth.

In such a case, the goal is not to eliminate the lie. It is to explore the internal demand that makes the lie necessary. Questions shift from “Is this true?” to “What does it mean for you to be valuable?” and “What happens inside you when you imagine not achieving these milestones?” This orientation opens space for self-forgiveness, self-compassion, and the gradual development of intrinsic worth independent of external performance. Within relational work, it can also make it possible for the client to hear, perhaps for the first time without defensiveness, that their partner experiences them as valuable irrespective of employment status or professional accomplishment.

Narcissism and Narrative Control

This dynamic becomes particularly salient in couples therapy when narcissistic traits are present. Individuals with pronounced narcissistic defenses may deny responsibility, rewrite events, or externalize blame. The stories can be elaborate and persuasive, not to mention the client may be forceful in their demand for unconditional validation. For the mediator, this may create frustration or a pull toward corrective confrontation or capitulation.

Yet the narrative, as always, communicates an emotional reality. For some individuals, accepting responsibility is experienced as annihilating. Accountability threatens to confirm a deeply held belief: If I am flawed, I am unlovable. The refusal to acknowledge fault is not simply arrogance but a strategy to avoid intolerable shame.

Engaging this dynamic requires exploration that might focus on questions such as: “What would it mean about you if you were responsible in this situation?” or “What feels most threatening about considering your partner’s perspective?” Beneath grandiosity or denial often lies a fragile self-structure organized around fear of rejection.

Directly labeling a partner as disordered or declaring, “You have a personality problem and must change or stand down,” rarely promotes relational growth. Even when a diagnosable personality disorder is present, change is facilitated through increased insight, reduced shame, and enhanced emotional safety—not through adjudication.

The Demand for a Verdict

Couples frequently attempt to recruit the therapist, coach, or mediator as judge. Statements such as “Can you tell her she’s wrong?” signal a request for validation and certainty. The implicit framework is adversarial: one partner must win; the other must lose.

Mediation does not operate as a courtroom. Courts themselves often prioritize pragmatic compromise over moral clarity. In relational work, the goal is not to declare a victor. The aim is to increase mutual understanding, expand insight, and enhance each partner’s agency in shaping the relationship.

When a partner insists on being declared correct, it often reflects deeper vulnerability. The fear of being wrong may be tied to identity stability or emotional survival. In some cases, a partner may be on the receiving end of genuinely destabilizing behaviors such as gaslighting, stonewalling, chronic deception, betrayal, or even violence. The desire for external confirmation can arise from confusion and self-doubt.

It is important to distinguish between two realities. First, there are situations involving abuse or coercion that require clear ethical and safety-oriented intervention. Second, in many relationships, both partners participate in interactional patterns that sustain distress. Even when one partner struggles with significant pathology, the relational system includes reciprocal responses that can be examined and modified.

Reorienting the Therapeutic Frame

When clients ask the mediator to decide who is right, it becomes an opportunity to clarify the purpose of the work. The orientation shifts from “Prove my partner wrong” to “Help me understand my partner and myself more deeply so we can reach a compromise we can both live with.” This reframing may need to occur repeatedly. Each request for a verdict is also data. It reveals an attachment need, a fear of invalidation, or an internalized belief about worth and correctness.

A productive stance emphasizes the following principles:

1. Emotional meaning takes precedence over factual victory.

2. Insight increases agency.

3. Responsibility is explored without humiliation.

4. Change is relationally supported, not imposed.

For example, when one partner presents narcissistic behaviors, the other partner benefits from developing insight into both the origins of those behaviors and their own responses to them. Increased understanding does not excuse harm, but it can reduce reactive escalation and clarify boundaries.

Listening for the Metaphor

The mediator's work involves listening for metaphor within the narrative. A fabricated achievement may symbolize longing for competence. A denial of wrongdoing may represent terror of shame. A demand for vindication may reveal a fragile sense of reality. By attuning to symbolic meaning, the mediator avoids becoming entangled in factual cross-examination.

This does not imply indifference to truth. In certain contexts, risk assessment, sworn legal disclosures, safety concerns, accuracy is essential. However, in the majority of relational disputes, insisting on definitive factual superiority offers limited benefit. The deeper transformation occurs when clients can tolerate examining the emotional logic of their stories.

Conclusion

Lies, distortions, and competing versions of events are often protective structures designed to manage shame, fear, and vulnerability. Challenging them prematurely may intensify defensiveness. Exploring them thoughtfully can reveal the unmet needs they conceal.

Mediation and relational coaching are not arenas for determining winners. They are spaces for increasing insight, reducing shame, and fostering responsibility that is sustainable because it is integrated rather than imposed. When we listen beyond the facts to the emotional truth embedded in narrative, we create conditions in which authenticity becomes safe.