Rapid Fire Therapy
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When your therapist won't take your calls anymore, there's always The Last Show with David Cooper. It's Therapy Thursdays on a Wednesday, and we are doing rapid fire therapy. We are going to hit a bunch of topics to help you. Some you might like, some you might hate, but you know who you are going to love? Gary Dierenfeld, who is here. He's a social worker. He's a therapist. Hi, hi, hi, hi. You're so sweet to me. I like you and I like having you on the show. Our first topic, Gary, my mom would tell you that the answer to this question is yes. And the question is, are little white lies okay? My mom, I don't mean to throw her under the bus, but she is fine with white lies. She really taught me at a young age, white lies, little white lies, like little things, you know, oh yeah, I picked up the oranges that you wanted and then you run to the store without lying, you know, without,
having picked them up I don't know why I chose oranges weird choice but I just mean she did it a lot growing up and then she's like well the big lies you can't do that's dishonest that makes you a dishonest person and I don't even know if that's true Gary but that's how I was raised I'm sitting here laughing I've I've had clients give me heck for telling them to use little white lies
Oh, I've got to be honest. I've got to be this and I've got to be that. I said, well, tell me about Santa Claus.
Tell me about the Easter bunny. As a Jew, I don't really think we should be lying to our children about Santa Claus. But that's besides the point. That's not a white lie.
That's a different bias.
That's like a strange man enters your house and steals your cookies and gives you presents. It's a weird lie.
The issue for me is less the lie than the motivation. And, you know, no, there's no monsters under the bed. There's no such thing as this. There's, you know, if you don't eat this, you're not going to grow up big and strong. We use these white lies all the time. The caution is, again, who's being served by it? And, you know, could it backfire?
Yeah.
And so we still want people, parents, to be cautious about those white lies. Because listen, if you get caught in the white lie, you still have to deal with the fallout from that.
Are little white lies okay in relationships?
And the fallout is a lack of trust, anger, harm to the relationship. A person won't believe you anymore. So it is a bit of a risky maneuver. But again, I'm not in theory opposed.
That's kind of where I am too. Some people think any lie is bad. You know, for example, my girlfriend's traveling. She's leaving just in a bit. She's going to go to London. When she comes back, she's like, you better clean that apartment. If she asks me if it's clean while she's gone, I'll probably say yes. And then at the last minute, I'll clean it. Does that make me a good person? No, it makes me a bad person. But like, that's a lot different.
But no one's going to die on that sword.
Exactly. It's a lot different than being like, did you steal my money? And I'm like, no.
Did you sleep with my ex? No.
Oh, her ex.
That'd be really weird if I slept with her ex, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, those little white lies, yeah, keep them in check. If it's for the benefit of the other person more than for yourself, sure. If you're using it as a defense to get out of your own issues, you may want to look at that twice.
We were watching a show together, and I really liked it, and she kept on putting it off because it was a sci-fi show. So I watched it on my phone one night while she was sleeping in bed next to me. And then she said, did you watch the show without me? And I said no, which technically was true because she was there when I watched it.
Oh, come on, technically. Yeah, yeah.
Later I told her the truth, and she was so mad. It's still a fight that we have to this day.
My wife's thing is if I get a donut and I don't bring one home for her, she refers to that as cheating on her.
So you have to lie about the donuts? All right, let's do our next topic here. You were talking about this to me at the break. You've written on this. There's a shift that happens with kids.
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3 chaptersSpeakers
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FULL EPISODE: It's Not a Lie If You Believe It - April 10, 2026