The Lies We Tell Ourselves

A good rule of thumb, especially when you’re scrolling online, is that whatever someone talks about the most is what they struggle with the hardest. The woman who won’t stop saying how happy she is being childless? She absolutely wishes she was a mother. The guy who talks about how bad porn is? He’s fighting his urges every night. The people who become preachers against alcohol are the ones who attend AA meetings every Thursday in a church basement. They make it their entire personality because they have to. The struggle consumes them, so they cope by turning their pain into a moral crusade.

It’s easy to see this in other people, to recognize their projections, their justifications, their endless attempts to convince both themselves and everyone around them that they are at peace with something they are actually at war with. I’m not admonishing them. Everyone does this. You do. I do. It’s how people deal with their existence.

Coping isn’t inherently bad. I’m actually in favour of cope. It’s a function of the mind. It’s a way to reconcile reality with what we wish it was. People don’t want the raw truth of their lives, the unfiltered version, because most of the time, it’s unbearable. So they shape it into something they can live with. They create narratives, frameworks, justifications. They call it acceptance, or growth, or a personal choice, when really, it’s just making do with what they have.

Someone stuck in a job they hate will say that stability is more important than passion. Someone who has never felt love will talk about how overrated relationships are. A person with no money will scoff at those who chase wealth, claiming that true happiness isn’t found in material things. Maybe they even believe it. But the fact that they need to say it at all means something. If it truly didn’t matter to them, it wouldn’t even register as a thought.

When you genuinely don’t care about something, it takes up no space in your mind. It doesn’t pull at you, doesn’t haunt you, doesn’t make its way into your conversations, your posts, your thoughts when you’re lying awake at night. That’s how you can tell what someone is really struggling with. They can deny it all they want, but their words betray them.

It’s not just other people who do this. If you pay attention, you’ll notice the places in your own life where you do it too. The things you tell yourself to make your situation easier to accept. The ways you twist your thoughts to avoid feeling the full weight of your own dissatisfaction. The beliefs you’ve constructed not because they’re true, but because they’re necessary.

The mind is flexible like that. It bends reality just enough to make it tolerable. That’s why most people don’t actually want the truth. They want a version of it that won’t break them. If someone is too deep into their own coping, there’s no point in arguing with them. Why challenge the thing that’s keeping them afloat? You won’t win that fight, and even if you could, what would be the point? People hold on to their delusions for a reason.

But if you’re going to lie to anyone, at least try to not to lie to yourself. Tell whatever story you need to the rest of the world, but in those quiet moments when it’s just you and your thoughts, be honest. About what you want. About where you are. About what you desire. About the things that still gnaw at you even after you’ve convinced yourself they don’t matter. Because no matter how much you try to cover it up, that part of you will always know the truth.

So again, there’s nothing wrong with coping. Everyone does it. It’s necessary. But don’t get so lost in your own rationalizations that you start believing them. That’s how you get stuck inside them. That’s how you shape your entire life around a version of yourself that you don’t even like.

Tell yourself whatever you need to get through the day. Construct whatever reality that makes life feel bearable. But don’t get so caught up in your own coping that you forget what’s underneath it. Because no matter how well you convince the world, you will always know when you are lying to yourself.

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