Ep. 188 Christopher Massimine Podcast Transcript

Steve Martorano
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The Behavioral Corner
Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano, and this is the Behavioral Corner; you're invited to hang with us as we've discussed the ways we live today, the choices we make, the things we do, and how they affect our health and well-being. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner. Please hang around a while.

Steve Martorano
Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Behavioral Corner. It's me, Steve Martorano, hanging on the Corner. You know we do here I hope by now, we talked about everything because everything is what affects our behavioral health. So...made possible by our underwriting partners, Retreat Behavioral Health, and you'll hear more about them a little bit later down the road. We got an interesting topic, I daresay the first time we've ever touched upon it. It's something we all do. Lying. We all lie. You run into somebody who tells you they've never lied. They're probably lying. So what's so interesting about this? Well, for most of us, there are reasons why we lie. We lie to avoid responsibility. We...we lie to make ourselves look a little better, maybe, in a tough situation, we live very often to save people's feelings...from hurting their feelings. So you know, there's plenty of reasons why people do lies.

Well, what happens when you lie, for no apparent reason? And the lies are grandiose and elaborate, and devastating because as you know, they usually catch up to us sooner or later. Our guest is living proof of that. Christopher...Christopher Massimine had his house of cards of lies, I should say, come tumbling down upon him about 15 months ago, resulting in you know, a devastating situation in his life. He is what's referred to in some quarters is a pathological or compulsive liar. And as I said, 15 months ago, the whole thing caught up with it. We're gonna hear Christopher's story right now. Hi, Chris. 

Christopher Massimine
Hey, Steve, how are you? 

Steve Martorano
Thanks for joining us in the middle of a hectic season for you. So did I pretty much that...that pretty much right. I mean, we do lie, but they're usually white lies. And they're usually understandable even if they're still lies. Right? 

Christopher Massimine
Right. Right. 

Steve Martorano
Your situation was a little bit different. And it didn't just start. Now through reflection in therapy, you recognize that you've had a problem with telling the truth, since you were, well, how old?

Christopher Massimine
Second grade, it was second grade. And I remember it quite clearly. I've actually started to write a little bit about these experiences. It's been a little helpful and cathartic and just kind of seeing the words on paper and just kind of reliving it more in a mythological perspective.

Steve Martorano
So, what's true struck me about the article I read in The New York Times was that it's certainly a problem of being able, to tell the truth, or wishing to tell the truth, but from what I understand, there are now people in the psychiatric field in the clinical field who think that well, perhaps what we're dealing with here is not somebody who just lies, but someone who is lying compulsively for psychological problems as a...as a coping mechanism. In other words, maybe this sort of lying is pathological or disease based.

Christopher Massimine
Right.

Steve Martorano
You've come to that conclusion yourself, I guess, right?

Christopher Massimine
So I've got a couple of disorders. I've got a major depressive disorder, I have PTSD. And then, of course, the Cluster B personality where the lying is part of that. Obviously, through the research that's happening now trying to change the DSM, it does feel apparent that the lying can be its own thing. That stands very much solo. It's been hard kind of reconciling some of the things within the Cluster B personality and not everything fits. And I think that's why they kind of group a bunch of things together and say, okay, of Cluster B personality, but the lying is always kind of been like you would put it in a coping mechanism. And really, as it grew over time, it just became more and more compulsive. More and more addiction, like. Where it's been something that's kind of controlled my life, whether I wanted to or not. Whether it was coping or not. But as some of these folks put in the article, it's, as Ellen I guess, narrating the article, you know, people think of people who have issues with lying, and immediately they go to this dark place where there's somebody who's manipulative and maybe has a little more ill intent, and that just never really was the case with me.

Steve Martorano
No. No, you're the most damage you did from what I understand to yourself. Your family is collateral damage, but you are lying with no apparent benefit to you except, perhaps to maybe just pump your resume up a little. That's when the problem began. But resume embellishment is not by itself a sign of any, you know, illness or sickness. People do it routinely.

Christopher Massimine
The irony of that, too, is actually there was very little that was made up on my resume. It was basically the six months following my previous to my resignation, where I really, really lost it. We were in the hiring freeze at the University of Utah, I was literally working six full-time jobs that were people who left who I couldn't replace. And I started to pay for these pay-for-play articles. And that's where a lot of that came on. But really, the main thing that was on my resume that was inaccurate was the master's degree, which I actually thought in earnest I had completed or I wouldn't have wrapped up that year, I would have spent another year to get it.

Steve Martorano
Your background was in theater, that's you've reached a pretty high position, you were a managing director of a theatre company in Salt Lake City when all of this began to come apart for you. Let's unpack a little bit about what you talked about. A Cluster B-type personality? What is that? Tell us what that is.

Christopher Massimine
Sure. So basically, it's a series of I guess you could call it mental disorders that are putting together what probably resonates maybe most with me within that is the narcissistic personality disorder. And again, you know, when people think of narcissists, they think of people who are trying to do this maliciously, really kind of for someone like me, it's because self-esteem didn't really exist on its own. And so, you know, pumping myself up, made me feel better. Because I didn't know how to deal with it really any other way. I came from a broken kind of family that was always on the cusp of divorce, physically and verbally abusive. A really tough time kind of growing up and very hard on me, for my academics like I was, I graduated with something like in high school, and a 102 average, because the honors classes gave you extra points. And it's like, you know, when this all started, in second grade, I had got my very first B plus. And it was in math. And math was like, the one place particularly I shouldn't have gotten a B plus because my father was an accountant. His father was an accountant and truly tracing our lineage back as far as we could. I forget the name, but it was like in Rome, and he was an accountant basically to like the Cesar, like, seriously. So it's like...

Steve Martorano
Well, I have to take your word for that. Okay, anyway, okay. So I understand that, you know, as you began to get a better grip on why you were behaving like this, professionals that you've seen, have diagnosed you as well, you suffer from PTSD from post-traumatic stress, depressive personality, you have narcissistic tendencies. Let's separate you from the malicious liar. We all have plenty of experience in that lately. To in what's your, what's you're engaged in, which is self-destructive, lying doesn't seem to be associated with anything. Now, pathological. As we all are familiar with the term, pathological liar. We usually throw it out. And we don't know what we're talking about. What we mean is somebody who lies a lot. But what it actually means is it is easy to based activity. You're doing this because your diseased. The problem, as I understand it so far in the clinical area is that it is not yet in the...you said the DSM that is the manual of mental disorders -- if it's in there, then it's really an annulment. Sometimes they can take them out of there, and they're no longer ailments. But if it's not in there, you cannot be diagnosed. And I guess in effect, it can't really be treated. So we're on the cusp of whether they're putting the type of lying you exhibit is an actual mental disorder. But right now, that's what's going on. Now, I know that you have run into people that you've told that story to why I may be suffering from a mental illness, and they would look at you and go, "No, you just lying."

Christopher Massimine
Yeah, I mean, that happens frequently. It even, you know, moving even a little bit previous to like the lying situation like the Cluster B personality disorder and, and narcissism. Like people don't even recognize that that is a mental disorder. And that's fascinating to me. It's made me really want to kind of take a heavy stand and, like, help educate people that actually, a lot of these things that we consider bad behavior aren't necessarily bad behavior. They're things out of people's control. And people like me really want to fix that because like you said, it's been a destructive force in my life like, really no good has come of this.

Steve Martorano
No, no. Do you struggle right now? Did you struggle today, let's say, with not lying?

Christopher Massimine
I do. It's getting better. I don't know if it will ever go away as far as I consider it. It's been at least 16 weeks since I told my last lie. And that's something my therapist jokes with me about. She says, you know, you're bound to lie, eventually. Lying is something we all do. It's something innate, it's...it's...it's natural within us because we had our fight or flight defense. And, you know, that's kind of where...where we're at with that. Just do it productively. If you're gonna do it, do it to cause somebody comfort or do something, you know, you're not grandiose. As she put it, "Don't invent another element on the periodic table."

Steve Martorano
Yes. Well, you didn't do that. Did you?

Christopher Massimine
No.

Steve Martorano
Okay. Oh, I only asked because reading the description of some of the things you've lied about. I was struck by a couple of things. One, how just ridiculous some of these lies are. And secondly, why you missed your calling. You should have been a fiction writer. I mean. You lied about climbing Mount Everest. 

Christopher Massimine
I did.

Steve Martorano
You lied about having an affair with one of the Kardashians? 

Christopher Massimine
Yes. 

Steve Martorano
You lied about attending, Burning...I don't know why anyone would lie about attending the Burning Man festival in the desert. You did. And you did this to your wife. I mean, you told...you told your wife. You were supposed to be someplace else on a business trip that you had scaled Everest? Did you really think you were gonna get away with that lie?

Christopher Massimine
No. I mean, again, it's one of those things where it was actually this one wasn't a business trip. This was...this was like, I was supposed to get away and just kind of decompress from stressors that were going on in life. But I mean, I do know why I did it. Because I was determined to do it. 

Steve Martorano
To lie about climbing Mt. Everest?

Christopher Massimine
No, no, no, no. To climb Everest, and I couldn't get the pieces in place at the time. And I felt like I was, you know, I had told people I was doing it. And then I kind of decided to commit to doing it, even though I didn't do it, which was completely absurd. And no, I ultimately, that's the danger with these lies in general is, you know that they're not going to come through, you know, they're going to bite you in the butt at the end of the day. But you can't stop doing them.

Steve Martorano
The compulsion thing is interesting, too, because the more we talk about this with one on one, you and I, the closer it resembles the addiction model. And the addiction model is still struggling even after all this time, even with all the medicine and all the science that's been directed towards the problem of substance abuse disorders that are a medical problem, not a criminal justice problem. They're not a character flaws. This is brain chemistry. Even given all of that research and evidence, you still have people who will go, "Nobody forces them to do drugs. Nobody forces them to drink. It's a choice." So now we're talking about something, as I say, you know, so ordinary, so every day is lying. You're trying to tell a lot of people you have a disorder. Their instinct is no, you don't. I think it's a choice you're making. I only point out a couple of these stories you made up -- these lies because of the spectacular nature of it. In your head, when you told your wife you were having an affair with I don't know which Kardashian. It hardly matters. What did you think you're going to accomplish with that. Make her jealous? Or what? What did you think you're going to do?

Christopher Massimine
No. So at that time, work was increasingly stressful. And something else I deal with is extreme workaholism. Like I will be at work five days in a row with very little sleep if I need to accomplish a goal. Like one of the areas where I wasn't really lying until that spilled over and Utah was work. And in my mind, I couldn't reconcile keeping a relationship together. While pursuing what I was pursuing. This was at the beginning of Fiddler on the Roof, which was a very big undertaking for us. The company really wasn't ready to do it. It wasn't really aptly staffed. You know, I tried to make my cases to the board and to my partner there and at the end of the day, we knew we had to go forward with it. So even though we weren't ready, we went forward with it. And of course, that took an enormous toll on me mentally, and physically, I was sick I have my...immune system isn't great to begin with. So I'm gonna get sick frequently, but I wanted to kind of softly push my wife away and have her come to the decision that...

Steve Martorano
Softly...softly push her away telling you were having an affair with...

Christopher Massimine
With well...well, if it starts with one thing, that's the problem with it. You know, it's okay, you know, maybe I just have the conversation that I'm not, I can't do both. And I can't figure it out, which of course, is ridiculous. Obviously, my priorities were wrong. But it became, you know, an affair with a Kardashian. It became hiring voice actors. It became emails from different email accounts that could look like they were legit and verified. All kinds of just so my wife could say it's over, which is ridiculous because in hindsight, my wife has really only been the person who's standing beside me throughout this whole thing.

Steve Martorano
Well, you know, here's what's interesting. All that effort to push your wife away from you could have been accomplished much, much easier without the benefit of a single lie. 

Christopher Massimine
That's right.

Steve Martorano
To say, "We're done. You got to get out of here. I don't want to be with you anymore." It's the fiction. It's your need to make it. Elaborate and Byzantine. I mean, really, Kim Kardashian? What's that about? What...what...what...what are you learning about why your mind works that way?

Christopher Massimine
I'm still learning. I'm still trying to figure out why I do that. But I think in many ways, traces back to my childhood and just the what would you call it? The expectation may be of excellence from my parents to me, and as I said, you know, this all started off because of a B plus an on a math test or quiz that ultimately didn't change the fact that I got an A in math that semester anyway. But my parents always wanted bigger, better, grander things from me, you know, and like, things weren't good enough. If I, one time I was one...one of several people who, and this was before this started in second grade, I won an art competition through school, like there were five of us or something like that. And, like, that wasn't good enough. No matter what I did, there was never enough.

Steve Martorano
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, our guest is Christopher Massimine. He was the subject of an article in The New York Times. He's written a piece now about his compulsive lying, which, about 15 or 16 months ago, well brought down his professional and private life and almost wrecked his marriage. So I stood by you, I would have, and I would love to talk to her. Maybe at some point, she can come in at some other show and talk, talk about how she got through this. You know, I am struck by a couple of things. You seem to be able now to not assign blame, but cause you seem to be able to go, Well, when I was a kid, this happened. Or when I was younger, my parents behaved this way. Or when I became an adult, I was a workaholic. When we lie to other people, it's one thing, but we probably lie to ourselves way more often, but we call it rationalization. Or we call it denial. We're really lying to ourselves. Are you worried that you're lying to yourself about why you lied?

Christopher Massimine
Oh, I could be, you know, I mean...

Steve Martorano
Do you think it was your parents? Do you think it was your parents, your reaction to the way your parents treated you, that really caused this? Really?

Christopher Massimine
I ultimately don't know, to tell the truth. I mean, and that's something I've been, I've been separating, you know, the earliest account, you know, the first time I lied, that I know for sure, was in second grade. And I don't recall lying spectacularly, you know, are really lying before that, because I get punished terribly for doing that.

Steve Martorano
It's interesting that you remember the first lie, I don't think most people will remember the moment they lie.

Christopher Massimine
It took work. It took a lot of work and therapy to get there, which has been helpful. But what I was gonna say is, I've been lying for so long about so many things. I feel like it's, it's a bit of a tragedy for me there are things that may be real, and they may not be real in my past because I've been so committed to those lies. And that's been devastating. Like, like one of them. You know, I thought I was a Broadway actor growing up as a kid I have these very, very intense memories of things both good and bad in that space. But I don't know if that's just because I had convinced myself that's what I did. And there's no real...so we had a moving theft incident when we left Utah, and we don't really have any of our stuff anymore. So I really have no way of going back into the past now and not just tracing that but anything. And that's really kind of tough for me because I'm not sure what's fact and fiction in some cases.

Steve Martorano
Yeah, what you've made up in your head and convinced yourself was the truth when it wasn't. While you were telling other people, you know, outrageous falsehoods. Let me ask you, what kind of treatment are you getting? Now? Can I ask? Do you see a psychiatrist or...

Christopher Massimine
So, I see a therapist once a week. I do see a medical provider as well. We work on a lot with in therapy.

Steve Martorano
You are being treated with medication as well? 

Christopher Massimine
Yes, yeah. Medication is mostly for mood disorders.

Steve Martorano
There's no true syrup out there to form. Let me ask you about the act of lying again. Your lies are. Listen, in the world of lying, your world-class, there are no two ways to put it. You were really good. You created a humanitarian award and then flew to New York to accept it. And nothing existed. The award didn't exist. The organization didn't exist. New York City, last time I checked, did exist. So but your lives were spectacular. When you were lying. I've asked this of addicts, by the way, when you were using? Did you enjoy it? And for the most part, they said, Yeah, they like being hot. That's why they go to the lengths they do to get drugs and be high because it feels good. Did you feel good when you lied?

Christopher Massimine
At first? Yeah. I mean, it was like, like I had mentioned, that was kind of my coping mechanism. That was something that made me feel better. And buoyed myself, you know, like, it was kind of like, Oh, here's the escape from this. Or here's the. Maybe escape isn't the right word. But here's the counter reality to what it really is. And that feels fantastic.

Steve Martorano
Well, I called it a coping mechanism, you know, drugs and alcohol for people in crisis. It's also a self medicate. So you think your lives were a way of self-medicating?

Christopher Massimine
I think so. I mean, my parents, this isn't pointing blame. This was just, I guess, maybe the generation was different. And the times were different, I didn't really believe in therapy and things like that. Which is ironic because when I was little, they took me to therapists a couple of times and who they said, like, we think there could be more to this, but they didn't like the idea that I could have mental disorders, you know, that was stuff lie...

Steve Martorano
Why did they take you to a child psychologist because of lying?

Christopher Massimine
Because of the lying, I was always kind of depressed and sad. I didn't really have a positive growing-up experience. So... 

Steve Martorano
Do you have siblings? 

Christopher Massimine
I don't. I grew up alone. I grew up alone. And in many ways, so it was, you know? I think them taking me to these, these psychiatrists and psychologists and all these clinicians were kind of like their attempt to say, No, Chris is the problem. 

Steve Martorano
Yeah, right. It's not us. It's got to be him. 

Christopher Massimine
Yes.

Steve Martorano
Let me ask you what has happened as a result of the lies catching up to you as long as always will. And 15 months ago, everything came apart. You lose jobs, are devastated, struggling to find out what's wrong. Make your way back through, you know, through therapy and an acceptance that maybe this is a mental disorder. And than a New York Times article appears you write a piece for, I guess, Newsweek. Was it new Newsweek or Newsday? A big, big article. What's that done to your...your prospects for employment, and to your...to your social life, your world?

Christopher Massimine
I mean, honestly, when everything happened, and my wife and I decided for me to kind of come out and say, "Okay, I have disorders. I've been struggling with stuff." That probably hit worse than anything any of the reporting previously had because, as you earlier had mentioned, too, you know, there's kind of like, you haven't said it this way. But there's this stigma with mental illness where if you go out there and you start talking about it...it's...it's not really understood yet. It's not really accepted in a great way by society. I think we're starting to have conversations. But you know, when that happened, it was all the sudden, "Oh, and he's got this settlement. And he's used that the settlement..." They bought me out of my contract with my mental illness,

Steve Martorano
So people, so people understand when you lost the job, and in Salt Lake City, there was a monetary settlement to your contract. Yeah. Well, in addition to the stigma attached to mental disorders, which...my office, one of which was on my computer, that person may or may not have been the person who gave the quote in New York Times, there were a lot of issues that were really bad that HR was aware of, and stressors. And really, when my stressors are activated to a certain degree, that's when the lie becomes that much more prolific and that much more present.

Steve Martorano
I wish your wife had been able to join us. How long have you guys been married?

Christopher Massimine
Since 2013, so almost ten years.

Steve Martorano
Okay. Have you lied to her throughout the entire marriage about things large and small?

Christopher Massimine
Absolutely. And this is a lie that happened a long time ago. And I'm not even sure where it came up. But, like my birthday is in May, you know, I carried on for years that it was in September. I made like...I got a fake ID. When I was underage, that was still underage. So that I could just confirm that I was, you know, a birthday in September. I mean, that's how absurd it is.

Steve Martorano
Yeah, really. It's completely, it's completely, completely baffling. Why do you suppose she hung in with you? Are you just a lucky guy?

Christopher Massimine
I think that's a big part. I love her very much. And I think she sees that. She's seen how I've struggled with these things. And that, ultimately, I don't feel good about what I do. You know, it's, it's first a buoy thing. But then there's almost immediately. It's not like, I guess, somebody who's doing it really with great intent, where it's like, okay, I'm nervous so much after it's, it's like almost skip that I go to shame and guilt. And just like, self-loathing.

Steve Martorano
I can certainly understand that. But it would seem to me that the people around you, your wife in particular, but any prospective employers, employees, employers, or family members have another problem regarding the unique nature of your lying. And which is, since it's not tethered, anything that he's going to benefit from if it is compulsive and pathological. How do we trust anything? 

Christopher Massimine
Right.

Steve Martorano
I mean, how can we possibly be sure that when we ask him how he's doing, how are you doing, Chris? He's telling us the truth. So it seems to me that you have the struggle of controlling your line, which you say, you still struggle with but are doing better. But the other one is regaining trust. Do you think that will ever fully come back that trust?

Christopher Massimine
No, no, I don't. And that's, you know, I dug my own grave throughout this whole thing, you know, maybe it could have, if I was able to get the help, that would help identify this earlier on. I think maybe that could have been something that could have been completely avoided. Like if my parents actually went with any of these psychiatrists or psychologists and I actually went through the methods, but, ya know, I feel like I'm gonna be, to some degree, jaded a bit of a pariah throughout my entire existence. I even talked with Ellen, the reporter at the time, and she said, like, what do you want to get out of this? Do you think people are gonna resonate with it? And I said, "Yeah, I think some people are gonna resonate with it. But I don't think we're at a point in society where we're really taking it that seriously. And I don't think we're going to because it's so tied to like negative behaviors."

Steve Martorano
Well, this is a particularly tough one. I can tell you from years of interviewing and interviewing lots of people who had addiction issues and mental health issues the struggle with gaining empathy from a broader, wider group it's not a character flaw. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's a disease that your situation is somewhat more difficult. I mean, it is much more difficult to hear this and go, This is ridiculous. Nobody wants to take responsibility for anything anymore. It's too easy to say I'm sick.

Christopher Massimine
Right. And look, for what it's worth, I do take responsibility for this, you know, it's something I'm learning how to deal with and how, hopefully, to course correct my life moving forward. But I mean, even saying that Steve, you know, just saying, you know, I have mental disorders, and I'm taking responsibility for it. It's not enough, you know, the condemnation or harassment. When we were in Salt Lake, I was getting death threats. I mean, that's how absurd it was.

Steve Martorano
People don't like to be lied to make them feel foolish if they get angry. Chris, I know we said we keep you for only a little while. love to have you back in a year and see how the control of lying has held. I'll tell you this, and yeah, I know that the Times reporter and any reporter and anyone that talks to you are going to, if they're honest, say to you, "Okay, just had a great conversation with this guy. I don't know if he's bullshit and just told me stories. I will say this if, if this is your greatest...if this is just another Chris Massimine fable, another lie. It's the grant, the grandest one you've come up with. And I just don't think I prefer to believe it. This is honest. This is you baring your soul, saying, "Man, did I screw up." But if I'm wrong, and this is another story you made up, you're good at this. You should start writing it down. But label it fiction. So we were all in on it. Good luck, man. 

Christopher Massimine
Thank you. 

Steve Martorano
Good luck. It's probably not going to be the easiest time of your life right now.

Christopher Massimine
But I appreciate you having me on and talking about the conversation, and hopefully, a good amount of people, you know, pay attention, and the conversation continues. That's really all I'm looking for these days.

Steve Martorano
Well, I'll tell you this again, again, taking what you say at face value. It takes a lot of guts to stand up and do this, whether you're telling the truth or not. It still takes a lot of guts to say I'm a liar, and I'm trying to get better at it. Christopher Massimine. Thank you for joining us on the Behavioral Corner, and again, I will be getting back to you because I want to check your progress. I wish you nothing but the best my man. 

Christopher Massimine
Thank you. 

Steve Martorano
Okay, guys, thanks so much Behavioral Corner. Don't forget, please push that subscribe button. Subscribe to the Corner. And I'd love to hear your reaction to Chris. I can imagine what some of it's going to be. But I'd still like to hear your idea of whether lying can wind up being a mental disorder. Thanks. See you next time on the Behavioral Corner.

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