She's Brave Podcast - Kristina Driscoll
She's Brave Podcast - Kristina Driscoll
Why Do We Lie?: Breaking the Cycle of Lies and Self-Betrayal with Psychotherapist Hilary Silver
Breaking the Cycle of Lies and Self-Betrayal with Psychotherapist Hilary Silver
Let's get right to the point: We're all liars! Yes, even YOU!
In this riveting episode of She's Brave Podcast, Kristina Driscoll sits down Hilary Silver, a psychotherapist turned culture-changing disruptor. They dive deep into the topic of lying, exploring why people lie, how self-betrayal damages trust in relationships, and how radical responsibility can transform lives. Hilary also shares her personal insights and strategies for fostering honest communication and self-centered living. That's Self comma Centered (Self, Centered).
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Hilary Silver Bio:
After 15 years as a successful clinical psychotherapist, Hilary Silver closed her thriving practice to launch an online program designed to help smart, single women become just as successful in their love lives as they were in their professional ones.
She grew her company into an empire, generating over $13 million in revenue in 5 years, helping thousands of women work through her program with an over 95% success rate.
Hilary’s passion and deep understanding of the root causes of the struggles of her clients helped her develop her signature methodology, rooted in radical responsibility and being centered in self.
She now works to educate and inspire everyone to radically change the way they look at themselves (and get everything they want).
She lives with her with husband, two teenagers, and her dog Lola in Denver, CO.
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She's Brave Podcast with Kristina Driscoll featuring Hilary Silver
"Breaking the Cycle of Lies and Self-Betrayal with Psychotherapist Hilary Silver"
Kristina Driscoll, Host of She's Brave Podcast:
Hey, everyone. It's Kristina with the She's Brave podcast. Today's guest, we're going to be talking about a lot of different things, but we're going to start out with a really interesting topic. It's all about lying. Yep. I said it lying. Don't you hate it when people lie to you? Or Even when you lie to other people or even worse yet, you lie to yourself? We're going to dive deeper into topics related to that, into being authentically you and being centered on yourself.
So, today's guest is Hilary Silver. She's a psychotherapist and master coach turned culture changing disruptor. She's all about transferring negative thoughts self talk into positive action. Hillary is an entrepreneur and thought leader in the realm of personal development and relationships. She grew her company into an empire, generating over 13 million in revenue in six years, helping thousands of women work through her program with an over 95 percent success rate.
Congratulations, Hillary. And welcome. Welcome.
Hilary: Thank you. Thank you so much.
Kristina: You have accomplished so much. I adore your Instagram page, I'm like reading your posts and I'm giggling. They're so funny, so you guys, you got to check out her Instagram handle. What is your Instagram handle? By the way?
Hilary: 'I am Hillary Silver' (@IamHilarySilver) and I'm Hillary with one 'L'.
Kristina: You got this one post where the therapist says 'What do you say when life's looking up?' And then you answer, 'What goes up must come down'. Therapist answers, 'No!' I love that. So much. It's like you're a therapist, Okay, what do you say when your life's going really well? And then you're like what comes up goes down and your therapist is no, that's not the right answer. You have these cute little therapy dialogues that I think are hilarious.
Hilary: It's funny that our humor posts do so much better than all the others. We should just turn it into a comedy. Probably.
Kristina: I got really hooked into this topic of lying that you are an expert in as well. Because it really struck a chord with me and I was like, Oh my gosh, we all lie. A hundred percent of people lie. The question is why do we lie?
I loved the story that there was a clip of you talking about a married couple. They had a baby. He said he was going to quit smoking and he didn't. He lied. Yeah. I love smoking. Yeah. I love the story and it stuck with me.
Hilary: I was, this is a couple I worked with when I had a private practice and that was, probably in 2015, long time ago, but I just I've been using that, this little kind of scenario to demonstrate how we lie. Because it's unintentional, like we think about lies being told as with the intent to deceive, right?
We do, we think about people are trying to mislead us, trying to manipulate us, trying to hurt us, we do, we think about it that way. But a lot of the time people are not lying to us with the intent to deceive. They're lying to us because they don't want to hurt our feelings. They don't want to disappoint us. They don't want us to be frustrated by them. They want to please us, make us happy.
There's all kinds of reasons, but it's usually to avoid letting us down, disappointing us, hurting our feelings, like that kind of a thing. So in the scenario that you're talking about, the woman was upset with the husband because he was still smoking and she called him out on it.
And he said, I won't, I'll quit. I'll quit. I promise. I'll quit. Blah, blah, blah. But it turns out she caught this, caught the cigarette smoking in the garage. She was still smoking and sneaking it in the garage. So, they were in my office having this argument about him smoking. And I have to say like a lot of therapists would get stuck in the trap of helping them negotiate how he's not going to smoke or how he is going to smoke, but that's not the real issue.
The real issue is the lack of being able to have trusting, honest conversations with each other, with both people showing up fully honest and represented in the relationship. And so I, actually in the it's part of the podcast episode, so I'm spoiling it but I'll tell Basically, the reason that this husband was saying, yeah, I'll quit.
Yeah, I'll quit is because he obviously doesn't want his wife to be mad at him. He wants to make her happy. He doesn't want her to leave him all the reasons you can imagine. But when we're looking at him as the bad guy for lying, we all think we've, we think bad husband, bad lie, he's lying.
He's misleading her, whatever. But what it came to, what we came to discover is that she's a complicit in the dynamic. She's part of the problem too. And the reason that he's lying to her in this case is because she's making it difficult for him to be honest.
Kristina: Okay, hold on. This is so freaking important. What you just said, she is part of the problem. She's complicit in. this. issue. This is a game changer, Hillary. It is a game changer.
Hilary: So, we all want to point the finger at the person who's the liar as the bad guy, right? They're the villain.
Kristina: We do.
Hilary: But my whole platform is about taking personal responsibility and that we all contribute and that.
So what unlocked the whole gridlock for them and power struggle was for her to understand that she gave him an ultimatum that she gets really emotional and really upset. And so who isn't going to lie to her just to get her to go away. I would, she's scary. She's unpleasant. She's so when we can see how we are creating an un.
healthy, a scary, whatever dynamic an environment that's not making it safe for the truth to be told. People will lie to just avoid you. They will. They're not trying to deceive you. They just are, don't want to deal with your attitude, your behavior, your emotions, your whatever you're doing. The recrimination.
It was more about teaching them both how to show up and foster this safe exchange where he could say, look, I'm not going to quit. Period. I'm not, I know you want me to, but I'm an adult and I get to decide and I can take responsibility for myself and I have, dominion in my life. So no, sorry.
I know that disappoints you, but what I will do is I won't smoke around the baby and I won't smoke around you and I'll always blah, blah, blah, have smoking hygiene or something like that. So now she won't get lied to about that.
Kristina: I love this so much because I think, so many of us run around and we're thinking, why is everybody or why is this person lying to me continuously?
But the thing is that if we're hostile to them, Yeah. If they tell us the truth and they think we're going to be hostile back to them, of course, they're not going to tell us the truth.
Hilary: That's right.
Kristina: So what are some tools like I'm just gonna make an up an example. So Just I'll just say, my son keeps lying to me, how what do I do about that?
How do I change to, to get him to stop lying to me?
Hilary: Yeah. You can't get him to do anything. You can't get him to stop it.
Kristina: Okay. True.
Hilary: But so part of that is we're letting go of the outcome of what you want someone else to do. But your role would be. Okay.
How asking yourself, how am I contributing? How am I making it potentially difficult for him to be honest with me? Is he going to get in trouble? Is he going to lose his privileges? Am I going to take this away? I'm going to yell at him. I'm going to punish him. So, what is it that you're doing? That's making it not safe for him to be honest.
And the only, and the first best thing to do after you have that conversation with yourself is to then tell him, I'm sorry that I've been reactive. Take responsibility because that will allow him to drop his wall, let down his defenses, and then show up and be more honest about himself. And I know he's 20, so he's almost, he's young adult now.
Continuing with your specific example with your son, he might be actually be able to say, thanks mom. I appreciate that. You're right. I'm not always honest with you because I'm scared of this and that.
Kristina: And by the way, my son doesn't lie to me. And I figured this out. He lied to me when he was younger.
He doesn't anymore. So I was using him as an example, but I don't want the world to think he lies to me all the time, but yeah yeah it's just, this is such an important topic because right now we're all just we love to point the finger and say you lie to me. And end of case I'm right, you're wrong.
Hilary: That's right. But all of this it creates the villain and the victim dynamic, and nobody wants to be either. And so, when we're all willing to look in the mirror and see how we're contributing, releases all of that. We're never a victim. Ever when we are willing to take responsibility for how we are showing up, how we are creating whatever it is that's going on in our life.
It is. It's true. Like I have this belief that we are always our own problem. We are, but we're so busy shirking that responsibility because we think it's going to feel better to blame somebody else, but it actually feels so much better than we think it's going to when we can just acknowledge our role.
What have I done? What am I not doing? What am I doing? Yeah. That's because if you're the problem, you're the solution. Yeah. Simple as that.
Kristina: Beautiful. Beautiful. Which. That leads right into this topic that I'm dying to talk to you about today, which is you're a huge advocate of what you call radical responsibility. Love it. Love it. Love it. Hillary. What is it and why do we need it?
Hilary: Radical responsibility is exactly what it sounds like it is. And what, and to build on what I'd already just said, which is, everything in my life is my own doing. And I know this really sounds crazy coming from a therapist.
I consider myself a recovered therapist. I really don't identify that way anymore, the old way. Or the unhelpful way is to tell people it's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong, big, bad, scary ex husband or horrible parents or, patriarchy blame. But that just makes us feel stuck and powerless to make a change.
So if we are willing. And to use your favorite thing, be brave enough to acknowledge that we're not perfect and we don't need to be. And so what have I been doing or doing? What am I not doing? That's potentially creating this issue that I'm having or the problem that I'm salt stuck in or that I'm not moving forward.
If I can own it, I can change it, fix it, heal it. learn something, grow. It really is the number one thing that we all need to be willing to do to get whatever we want in our lives. Whatever we want, inner peace, happiness, joy, contentment, success, whatever it is.
Kristina: I love how you said something super interesting, which is you don't really identify that much with being a psychotherapist anymore.
That's a powerful statement for you to say. Your monologues, like your reels are amazing. That's why I like the one on the lying. I just went, Oh my gosh, we have to cover this on the podcast I wanted to start with the lying thing because I was like, this changes everything.
Yeah. It literally does. Yeah. And then like on the other side of it, just one last thing on the lying: Do we lie to keep the peace too, right?
Hilary: Yeah, for sure.
Kristina: And you're very much like me and you want to learned to be very authentic, be real, don't lie to keep the peace.
Here's a quote that you wrote: Telling someone way to hear the quote that you wrote, telling someone what you think they want to hear is a form of self-betrayal
Hilary: Whenever you bite your tongue and withhold your truth or whenever you change, edit, alter, modify, shift to please somebody else.
To avoid the conflict, whatever, it is self-betrayal because you're not speaking your truth just for somebody else's sake. Yeah. Now there's always a nice way to say something, right? But to not speak it is a problem.
Kristina: Yeah, for sure.
You are all about being self comma centered.
So, we think self-centered, especially as women, Oh my God, she's so self-centered. She's all about her. She's selfish. As women, we shame each other about being self-centered. And, you talk about being self comma centered so tell us more about that.
Hilary: Yeah, I have to say I am a dis shit disturber disruptor. I do like to ruffle feathers love because I really wanna disrupt things and get people thinking about things in a different way.
So when I'm working with my clients and I'm, helping them feel powerful in their lives and take responsibility, it is about being centered in yourself, meaning you're not. Anyway, the wind blows, you're not bending and pleasing and shape shifting to make other people in your life happy that you are firmly rooted in who you are and your number one primary goal, or you're not coming up with the word right now.
And it's such a simple word. This is starting to happen to me now as I'm getting older. You're like the only thing that matters most is being true to you. And. Getting your own back. You come first. Your opinion of you matters more than anyone else's. How you take care of you is way more important than anything else.
And I know that's really hard for some people to hear, but being selfless is not noble. Self is not less. Self is more. I'm not more than you, but I, in my life
Kristina: -equal-
Hilary: it's, I am. In your life. You are. And so, our only alliance or allegiance is to ourselves first and foremost. That's how you stay true to yourself.
That is how you are authentic when you do things that you don't really want to do. It's not authentic when you say things that aren't really true for you, that's not authentic. That's not being there for you.
Kristina: Yeah. Love that so much. Yeah. Don't sacrifice yourself for others.
I thought that was like very powerful punch in there too. Yeah, and I'm not saying don't be giving and helpful. Yeah. And generous, but you can't do that. Coming from a place of need. Need to be needed or a place of lack. Being generous and giving and helping other people is only. There's only virtue in that when it's not self-serving. It becomes self-serving when you're doing it to meet your own need to be needed.
Kristina: Yeah, sure.
Hilary: So true generosity, true giving comes from a place of abundance where you're not coming from lack.
Kristina: Just getting back to that statement I just touched upon about, are you lying to keep the peace? You said, when we have shame or fear of people discovering the things we're ashamed of, we will not tell people who we really are. This is a form of lying. It destroys the trust in a relationship.
Hilary: Yeah.
Kristina: And yet it takes a lot of courage, right?
Because I think a lot of us have a lot of shame. And sometimes it's just baby steps, I think, to get over. Being honest about something, just starting with something small, and sharing and divulging something.
Hilary: But if we're, but again, if we're taking radical responsibility for ourselves and we're actually being true grownups in this world, then it's our responsibility to work on our own shame so that we don't lie.
To other people because of it, or that we can have the intimacy that we want because we deserve that, and we want it. And so, it is our responsibility, like shame might've come out of trauma that happened to us, which isn't our fault, but it is our responsibility. And so carrying around shame is destructive.
It's toxic for ourselves. And then there's fallout and consequences in our relationships.
Kristina: Yeah.
Hilary: And so it's not. I don't, I just I want people to deal with their stuff. I just do. I want them to deal with it. Yeah. And not just perpetuate it or carry it around or blame other people for it. Because one of the reasons that I chose, my ready for love company helps really successful women be successful in their love lives too.
And as long as you have shame, there are things about you that you do not accept within yourself. You will never let anybody close enough to see who you are because they may discover that you have that stuff that you don't want them to see. So, it's our responsibility to do that work. It is.
Kristina: You are doing some really incredible, powerful work. I love it. I just want to unpack another concept here. You've said you are your own worst enemy. You're the only one standing in your way. The good news If you're the problem, you're also the solution.
Hilary: Yeah.
Kristina: Tell us more.
Hilary: Nobody is going to say anything more hurtful to us than what we say to ourselves, but we often don't listen. And if we do listen, we minimize it, act like it's normal to talk to ourselves that way. If our opinion of us matters the most, and we have this tough inner critic, we can't give ourselves a break.
Like it's, we have the more damage. And how we talk to ourselves and what anyone else could ever say. And so we are our own worst enemy. We are usually the only obstacle between where we are now and what it is that we're aiming for, striving for, working towards what we want. It's us.
Kristina: Yeah.
Hilary: It often looks like other things on the outside, on the surface, but it, you can point to the surface, but it doesn't, it's not going to help.
You're not going to get anywhere until we discover what it is about. Ourselves that is preventing this from happening. A lot of times women say they want love, but they're scared to death of intimacy and rejection and getting close to somebody. So they're ambivalent about it and they want it, but they don't, and they want it, but they are scared of it.
They want it, but nevermind. They want it, but I don't know what I'm doing. I'm going to mess it up. So, push, pull, push, pull driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. And then wondering why you're not getting anywhere. So, we do that to ourselves. With our self-talk with our limiting beliefs with our fears.
It's all subconscious. We don't think about it, but it's there.
Kristina: Yeah, how do we go about even starting a process of maybe you know, changing some of that inner dialogue Inner negative dialogue?
Hilary: I think we have to hear it first. Sometimes we numb out, we tune out. We don't even hear ourselves doing it.
We become numb to it. It's what we talk about in with like violent movies now and violent video games. We just gotten used to it. It's a whole new level of getting used to something. That's what we do. I think we get so used to hearing ourselves talk to ourselves the way we do.
That it's not alarming, but it, we should be alarmed at sometimes how we talk to ourselves and the things that we say to ourselves and how mean we can be and critical we can be. So it starts with just hearing what you're saying.
Kristina: Awareness.
Hilary: Yeah. We have to make what's subconscious conscious. If you're paying attention to how you're feeling, often you'll notice your reaction is a feeling to something that you've been saying to yourself but didn't notice it.
So I teach that if you're all of a sudden feeling dread to just stop what you're doing and ask yourself, what was I just thinking about?
Kristina: Love that.
Hilary: And it'll help bring awareness to what you were talking about in your head.
Kristina: Everything you're talking about, like I know that you work, you have in the past in particular worked a lot with women trying to, get into like romantic relationships, but I was thinking about everything that you've been talking about it, and you could really apply it to friendships as well.
Every single relationship in our life, we're in a loneliness. epidemic. And like you were talking about the gas pedal and, just like shame and we're, I'm feeling ashamed, and I can't talk about this topic, and I can't, and I've actually become way more open in the last two years, since I started on my podcasting journey, I'm way more open, way more transparent about my struggles, things going on in my life.
In particular with my friendships and it has been a game changer. I'm telling you, Hillary, I have, my friendships have deepened. I have found things out about my friends that I've known for 10 years that I didn't know they, because I guess they just didn't feel safe to tell me, but once I stopped feeling ashamed of something that happened to me in the past or that, anyway, once I just said, Hey, this thing happened, blah, blah, blah. Opened up a little more than they started opening up and then the connection gets stronger, right?
Hilary: Yes.
Kristina: It applies for having a successful romantic relationship, but it also applies, I think to every single relationship we have.
Hilary: Oh, totally. It totally does. And a lot of the work that I do with the women in ready for love program, which launched in 2017 was, From the work that I had done, for 13, 14 years prior where I was working with men, women, and couples on all kinds of life issues.
The, all that curriculum was in, was, it was percolating and developing inside of me and then perfected over time. And so, it, I, I just chose to work with women in that way, but the Hillary Silver brand that's now out for everyone. Because we all need it, and it is for all areas of our life. You are right.
Kristina: I love that so much because I feel like, yeah, like what you said, like you're a disrupter and you are turning things on their head that need to be turned on their head. And I love the fact that you were like, I don't feel like I'm a therapist anymore, but you're just doing things differently.
You're helping people. It's just incredible. It's incredible.
Hilary: Thank you. And I'm so happy that you were able to do that with your friendships.
Kristina: Yeah. Yeah. And even in my marriage, I've just been, I've been married two years now and I'm widowed, my second husband who passed away, I think we naturally had a very good relationship.
There was not, we didn't feel ashamed or embarrassed. We could be, I knew all of his darkest secrets and he knew all of mine. And that's rare. I think it was a rare situation that came together. But in this marriage I've worked on being more transparent. Yeah. That's so good.
Hilary: Yeah. And what a blessing that other relationship was for you. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful experience that you got to have.
Kristina: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that like the dating, I'm sure you saw this too, and in working with women dating can really jade you and then you start, shutting down and, you don't open it up as well as much and you develop more shame.
And so I think that when I got into this relationship with my current husband, I was very guarded for a long time, and it has definitely been a work in progress. To, really have that really a hundred percent open lines of communication, but that's the key.
Hilary: And it's always the goal, it's not, but it's never perfect. It's just something that you always have to work at.
Kristina: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I just, I feel like today's conversation is a game changer as far as. Lying. I just can't get over it. I keep talking about it, but it's just really has changed things around for me. And I think everybody out there listening is going to have that question in their head.
They're going to be thinking right now, gosh, like here I've been blaming my spouse or my kid or my friend for lying to me repeatedly. So why are they lying to me? And start there. Yeah. Yeah. I think some people are more naturally able to just be honest and others aren't.
Kristina: True. That there's a spectrum.
Hilary: It is. And, but knowing this allows all of us to be more aware and conscious that people might be doing that. I, so for me, what I learned, as I was developing this whole kind of idea about it was, I'm a very powerful person. I'm five foot one, but I'm a very powerful, big energy, strong personality people.
I'm very enthusiastic and I can easily invite lies without meaning to. Because people don't want to disappoint somebody who really is excited about something or, whatever. So my work around is obviously knowing that about myself, knowing that there's, I can invite people to lie to me without meaning to.
And so what I do is I go out of my way to make sure that I'm getting people to be honest with me. I can't make them, but I can invite the truth. By saying, I know I'm very excited about this, but please don't tell me what you think I want to hear. I need your true, honest opinion right now. I surround myself with people who are very smart and know a lot of the things that I don't know and expect them to be honest and I'll say, I know I'm disappointed right now, but thank you for telling me the truth.
Like I reward them with my gratitude. There's a way to, there's a way to work around the lying thing, but it starts with us being aware of who we are and how we're maybe inviting the lies and how, what can we do differently or better to encourage people to be honest with us. Now, at the end of the day, they have to decide if they're going to be honest or not.
And we can't. Control that, but I know that I've done my part by doing my best to make it a safe place for them to be honest and to surround myself with people who are going to be honest with me.
Kristina: Man, you are just a fountain of wisdom, Hillary. I want to know, number one, let's start with this:
Any last words of advice, on anything that we've touched on today, because everything has been just incredible. Any last words you want to leave with my listeners? And then I want to talk a little bit more about your programs and how you help people and where people can find you.
Hilary: Yeah. I think we covered a lot today and I.
I could talk forever and ever, because I just love what I do. So if I'm just going to say one thing, I think it's just be willing to look in the mirror. It, it doesn't mean that you're a bad person. It doesn't mean any of that. We're all just trying to figure it out. So if you can be honest with yourself.
You will always find the answers to everything that you need, and you will never get in your own way. And you're more likely than to get what it is that you're after. Again, whether that's a tangible thing or a state of being, you get what it is that you seek when you are not blocking it subconsciously or out of fear or anything like that.
And so just be willing to look in the mirror and ask yourself, how am I contributing? And in fact, to lead into the second part of what you were just saying is I have on my website, www.Hillarysilver.com/subscribe. I have a free gift that walks you through that process. It's a three-step process on how to actually take responsibility for yourself and to be more self-centered. So, I would just point people in that direction.
Kristina: Beautiful. I love that so much, Hillary. Thank you so much for just being who you are. Like clearly, you've got, what is it lately over 20 years plus experience in, psychotherapy, you just got this wealth of experience and then got these programs and
you have so much to give to the world. I'm excited for you because I know that, I keep saying it, but tell us the name of your podcast. Cause you just maybe you didn't want to Oh, I just started, but you know what? Go girl. We want to hear about your podcast too.
Kristina: Yeah. So, it's, it is the Hillary silver podcast. The book that I'm working on is going to probably be titled self-centered and the, and though it's a personal brand, and I'm naming the podcast after myself right now, what I'm really focusing on all of my topics while there's a broad range of topics, it all comes back to the concept of being self, centered.
And all that information is on www.hillarysilver.com and just find me. Find me. I'm on Apple and Spotify and everywhere. And I'm on YouTube as well. YouTube. They're the same. It's the same video version versus audio version. So however you, your listeners choose tune in.
Kristina: We're all going to be learning from you. Like I'm so excited. I just feel very blessed that we connected here we are like, this is incredible. Thank you so much.
Hilary: Thank you. I'm glad we connected too.
Outro: Hey, brave friends. Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy life to listen to today's episode. I love learning about what makes you brave. I'm here with you. I see you. I hear you. And I want to hear from you. I want to know how you are showing up as brave and resilient and authentic. Connect with me on Instagram at she's brave.
Podcast, or check out my website at www. shesbravepodcast. com. If you're interested in learning more about podcasting, join my Facebook group, www. facebook. com slash groups slash podcast mastery journey. I'm sending you guys so much love until next time. Keep being brave.
