Published on 12, July, 2020
It's not something I like to admit. But when I was a teenager due to severe issues with managing to keep friends and randomly finding myself having inappropriate reactions to things emotionally I found myself making a lot of stuff up. But I keep reading that autistic people don't or can't lie. This leaves me confused. What would happen was, I'd not respond to something socially or respond in some way that others found funny (to things that weren't jokes or anything) and then other kids would laugh at me and then sometimes that would lead me to cry because I was overwhelmed by the whole ordeal. Someone would then eventually come over and ask 'what's wrong?' and because I had no explanation I would end up saying something like, "My dog just died," Even though my dog hadn't just died. Sometimes I'd use a real dog that had died but had actually died years ago. Or I'd hear of someone else's problems and I'd lie and say I had the same problem. Because otherwise, I didn't have an answer for them for why I was upset other than, "I'm confused by everything and everyone and the world is too much" It meant that for a moment the person appeared as they understood me for a change, but they understood me wrong because I was lying. But they also didn't understand me when I didn't lie. But it meant it felt like they understood my sadness for a moment. Like it wasn't just some random reaction I had no control over but was something for a 'real' reason that could be 'explained' I grew out of my lying phase though. And though I did tell those lies, I also did have a problem with telling the truth at supposed 'inappropriate' times. Which was incidentally another reason I never managed to keep friends...I was just wondering if I'm the only one, (I have a feeling I might be).
I don't think you were lying intentionally. I suspect that you have similar communication issues to the rest of us and you were put under unexpected pressure to create an answer - so you feel you have to give an answer quickly but you haven't fully finished processing the question along with all it's emotion, social expectations, the decision to work out if they really want a detailed, personal answer and the complication of formulating the 'correct' answer - so you just pop out a random answer that you immediately realise was the wrong answer - but too late - it's out there and has been accepted and logged in your history file so you're stuck with the results.
The anxiety you feel now is working out how many million combinations and permutations that the wrong answer could come back and haunt you - and what should you do if it does come back around.
I feel the same way so I never lie - i have a set of pre-programmed generic responses that fit most situations. On the rare occasion that something unexpected comes up - I glitch. It's when I'm most vulnerable to being outed as an autie. It's as though "Error 404 - page not found" appears across my forehead.
“If I were to tell you the next thing I say will be true, But the last thing I said was a lie ! Would you believe me?”.
;)
Sorry couldn’t resist that