How to Liberate Yourself from the Liars in Your Life (A 3-Step Framework)

The people lying to your face aren't your biggest problem. The ones you keep letting back in are.

You know exactly who I'm talking about. The one who burned you. The one you swore you were done with. And then let back in anyway.

Here's the thing most people don't want to hear: you've probably already known. You've already felt the gut punch. You already sensed something was off. But you let them back in anyway. And every time you do that, you're not just dealing with one liar. You're lying to yourself.

Those lies compound. The same patterns, the same types of toxic people in your life, keep showing up on a loop until you learn to see them clearly and cut them loose. What follows is the framework that stops that cycle.

TL;DR: Toxic people don't appear in your life by accident. They're attracted to unhealed patterns you're still carrying. To break the cycle, you need to: (1) deal directly with the person causing harm instead of avoiding or venting to others, (2) identify your blind spots, the normalized behaviors from your past that make the manipulation invisible to you, and (3) remove toxic, double-dealing people from your life as an unapologetic act of self-love. The universe will keep sending you the same type of person until you learn to spot them fast and protect your energy without guilt.

Who I Am and Why This Matters

I'm Mike Volts. I help people doing the deepest work of their lives, taking back their outer world and meeting themselves in the inner one. I'm not here to tell you who to be. I'm here to walk with you as you remember who you already are. Take what resonates. Leave the rest. This is the path of the SOVRN Soul.

For most of my life, I was the happy-go-lucky, easy-going, water-under-the-bridge type. Nothing stuck to me. I let everything roll off my back.

What I didn't realize until much later was that I was that way because I'd spent most of my childhood being controlled. My opinions weren't really mine. My identity had been decided for me before I even knew what identity meant. I was completely blind to it.

So naturally, as an adult, my passivity became an open invitation. People walked all over me, repeatedly, until I'd eventually snap. And of course, when that happened, I looked like the one overreacting. Like I was the problem.

Getting toxic people out of my life has been a lifelong journey. But over the past ten years, that journey has settled into something solid: a set of deeply held skills and boundaries that serve me every single day. I don't waste ten minutes with someone who's trying to take from me, manipulate me, or triangulate others against me. I remove them. And that removal has been some of the most freeing energy I've ever experienced.

I want to help you get there too. The following three steps are where to start.

A note: this framework applies to relationships in general (friends, coworkers, acquaintances). The deeper complexity of navigating parents, siblings, or partners deserves its own conversation, and we'll go there in future pieces.

Step 1: Deal Direct

When conflict keeps resurfacing in a relationship, the first and most important move is to go directly to the source. Not to a mutual friend. Not to your journal (well, maybe your journal first). But directly to the person you're having issues with.

Why? Because you might have some responsibility in the dynamic too.

Before you write someone off as a liar or a manipulator, you owe it to yourself, and to the relationship, to show up honestly and give them the chance to respond. Share what bothered you, how it made you feel, and what you'd like to see change.

Then, once you've said your piece, do something equally important: observe.

Watch how they respond. A person with genuine care for you will receive what you've shared, even if imperfectly, and meet you with some form of accountability. They might say, "I didn't realize that affected you that way. I'm sorry. I'll do better." That response is gold.

But pay close attention to the other responses too. Deflection. Minimizing. Gaslighting. Turning it back on you. "That's your problem." "You're too sensitive." "I never said that."

These are data points.

And so is the person who apologizes sweetly to your face and then goes right back to the same behavior, or worse, vents about you to others behind your back. That triangulation is a red flag all on its own.

The goal of dealing direct isn't to win. It's to be honest, observe clearly, and make an informed decision about whether this relationship deserves more of your energy.

I've had multiple moments in my life where I finally gathered the courage to deal direct, and in many of those moments, I lost friendships and family relationships as a result. That sounds painful. It was. But I learned to pre-accept that outcome before walking into those conversations. Because here's the truth: if someone doesn't care how their actions affect you, that tells you everything you need to know.

It's not about being right. It's about being honest, and then choosing whether to honor yourself or keep absorbing the damage. Some of those conversations strengthened relationships I thought were broken. Some ended relationships I thought were solid. Both outcomes turned out to be the right ones.

The common trap here is leading with accusation rather than vulnerability. "You made me feel like this" puts the other person immediately on the defensive, even if they're a genuinely good person who made a mistake. Try softening the delivery instead: "When this happened, it made me feel this way. I don't think that was your intention, but I need you to know, and I'd love to find a better way forward together."

That shift, from accusation to expression, changes the entire temperature of the conversation. Think about how you'd receive both versions. Which one would make you want to listen? Which one would make you shut down? Deliver the version you'd want to receive.

Your action for this week: Identify one person in your life you've been avoiding a direct conversation with. Write out what you want to say using "when this happened, I felt..." language. Then decide: are you ready to have that conversation? If yes, schedule it. If not, ask yourself honestly. What's really stopping you?

Step 2: Get to Know Your Blind Spots

So many of us carry patterns that are deeply embedded in our psychology. Grooved into us from childhood, from environments we didn't choose, from relationships that taught us what "normal" looked like.

Those patterns become blind spots.

When you've grown up around certain behaviors (dismissiveness, manipulation, emotional volatility, backhanded cruelty) your nervous system stops flagging them as dangerous. They just feel like Tuesday.

So when a coworker pokes fun at you in a way that crosses a line, or a friend subtly undermines you, or someone speaks to you with a sharpness that would horrify an outside observer, you might not even blink. Not because you're weak. Because that behavior got normalized long ago.

The good news is that as you heal, as you rebuild self-respect and self-love, these blind spots start to illuminate. You begin to see what you couldn't see before. But you have to be actively looking. Regularly reflecting on your relationships, asking "Is this person treating me the way I want to be treated? Has this dynamic shifted over time? Am I accepting something I shouldn't be?" is how you start catching what used to slip past you.

Here's a personal example I'm not particularly proud of. When my kids get snappy with me, talking back with a sharpness that crosses the line, I often don't correct it in the moment. My wife will catch it before I do and say, "Hey, our kid cannot speak to you that way." And she's right. But because I grew up in an environment where that tone was just part of the background noise, my nervous system doesn't register it as a problem. It's familiar.

That familiarity is exactly what a blind spot feels like. Not an absence of awareness, but an absence of alarm where there should be one.

The mistake I see most often (and have made myself) is doing a round of healing, feeling clear and confident, and then slowly allowing an old pattern to creep back into a new relationship. It happens gradually. The honeymoon phase ends. A communication style that's subtly unkind or disrespectful starts appearing in small doses. Because it's slow, because it mirrors something familiar from your past, your nervous system adjusts to it rather than flags it.

Before long, you're back in a dynamic you thought you'd left behind. And you didn't even notice the slide.

The antidote is regular reflection. Not paranoia, but honest check-ins. Has this relationship changed? Am I showing up as the best version of myself? Is the other person? If the answer has quietly shifted, that's worth paying attention to.

Your action for this week: Think back to your earliest experiences with conflict, criticism, or emotional manipulation. Who modeled those behaviors for you? Now look at your current relationships. Are any of those same patterns present? Write down one blind spot you suspect you might have, and one relationship where it might currently be in play.

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If you're resonating with this, I built a free community called SOVRN Soul. It's where I post daily reflections, drop every new video and blog the moment they're out. It's also a place to stay close to the people actually doing this work. No fluff, no upsells, no algorithm deciding what you see. You can join at the end of this post.

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Step 3: Remove the Double-Dealing Toxic People in Your Life

Once you've dealt direct and done the work of examining your blind spots, there will come a moment of clarity. A moment when you see someone for exactly who they are, and realize they have no intention of changing.

When that moment arrives, the most loving thing you can do for yourself is get them out of your life. Not as punishment. Not out of anger. As self-preservation.

Toxic people don't just annoy you. They poison you. The stress they generate cascades through your psychology and your biology in ways that compound over time. The mental load of managing someone who lies, manipulates, triangulates, or undermines you is enormous, even when you've gotten used to carrying it.

Just as you'd remove toxic food from your diet or a harmful chemical from your environment, you remove toxic people from your inner circle. Depending on the situation (a workplace, an extended family, a social group) that might mean eliminating contact entirely or simply reducing your exposure significantly. Either way, the direction is clear: less of them in your life means more of you.

Over the years, I've hired hundreds of people across my companies. In that time, I've encountered the full spectrum: the occasional narcissist, the compulsive liar, the quiet manipulator who weaves webs of distrust through an entire team. These people can be surprisingly invisible, especially in larger groups. But the damage they do to morale, trust, and team culture is profound.

Time after time, when I've finally identified and removed someone like this, the response from the rest of the team has been almost identical: "Thank you. I didn't realize how bad it had gotten. Work feels fun again. I'm not being undermined. The drama is gone."

One person, operating with toxic intent, can quietly destroy a workplace. And one decision to remove them can restore it almost overnight. That same dynamic plays out in friendships, families, and social circles too.

The most common mistake here (one I've made more than once) is giving these people another chance. Sometimes another chance is warranted. People carry trauma, and sometimes that trauma drives behavior they're genuinely willing to work on. But watch carefully for the person who plays the trauma card as a deflection from accountability. Trauma explains behavior. It doesn't excuse it indefinitely.

If you choose to give someone a second chance, give them one. A real one, with clear expectations. And if they blow it, don't let guilt or history pull you back in. Giving chance after chance after chance is almost always tied to your own unhealed wounds. And it will cost you more than it costs them.

Your action for this week: Make a list of the people in your life who consistently drain your energy, create drama, or repeatedly disrespect your boundaries. For each person, ask: Have I dealt direct with them? Have I given them a genuine opportunity to change? If the answer is yes and nothing has shifted, identify one concrete step you can take this week to reduce or eliminate your exposure to that person.

The Pattern Behind the Pattern

Here's the insight that took me years to fully understand, and that my wife and I have seen confirmed in our lives over and over again: the universe will keep delivering the same type of person to you, different face, same pattern, until you can spot them clearly, stand up to them, and remove them without guilt or hesitation.

There's a strange psychological gravity at work. The original wound creates an attraction to familiar dysfunction, and until that wound is healed and that pattern is recognized, you'll keep finding yourself in the same story with a new cast.

So when you do finally see the pattern and remove someone from your life, stay alert. One or two more will likely show up. Less obvious. Testing whether you've really learned what you think you've learned.

Don't let them back in.

Protect your mind. Protect your heart. Protect your soul.

That protection is not coldness. It is wisdom.

A Question to Sit With

Where in your life right now is there someone you've been avoiding having a direct conversation with, and what's the real reason you haven't had it yet?

If this framework resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you're navigating the harder terrain (a parent, a partner, a sibling who falls into these patterns) stay close. We're going deeper on those relationships soon.

You don't have to figure this out alone.