How to Handle a Therapy Client Who Lies to You in Sessions

Clients lie in therapy. This is not a training problem or a countertransference failure — it is a clinical reality that every experienced therapist encounters. The question is not whether clients deceive, but what their specific deceptions are communicating and what the clinically appropriate response is.

How to Handle a Therapy Client Who Lies to You in Sessions begins where most training materials do not: with the recognition that lying in therapy is a move in the relational system. In Haley’s framework, every consistent behavior in a therapeutic relationship communicates something about what the client needs. A lie is no exception.

This book distinguishes two clinically distinct types of therapeutic deception: protective lying, organized around shame and safety; and manipulative lying, organized around relational control. The confrontation that helps with manipulative lying will damage the relationship with a protectively lying client. The two types require different responses, and the book provides both. It also covers structured omissions as their own diagnostic category, false progress reports and their clinical function, when a direct confrontation is warranted, and how Erickson’s utilization principle applies to the lie itself.

Worksheets included with this book — free for registered members:

• Lying Pattern Diagnostic — Distinguish between protective and manipulative lying for a specific client and identify the clinical response each type calls for.
• Omission Tracker — Document the consistent structured absences in a client’s account across sessions to identify what the therapy needs to approach.
• Confrontation Design Template — Plan a confrontation of a specific lie or deception pattern before delivering it, ensuring it serves a clinical purpose and lands at the right relational moment.
• Deception-Aware Case Formulation Update — Adjust the clinical picture of a client to account for known omissions and deception so the formulation reflects the most accurate picture available.

Published by Strategic Therapy Institute.