An invalidation of what you have done or of your capability, may equally cause disturbance. Accompanying these factors are the decisions that have been made in the face of stressful situations and anxiety, and which have become fixed ideas and serve as defence mechanisms. It is emotional pain, or the threat of such pain, that holds distorted ideas in place. Any person is of the opinion that he is right in what he believes - otherwise he wouldn't believe it. The fundamental considerations of his belief system, the things that have made sense of past confusions for him, are not changeable by reasoning alone because they are held in place by force - by an unwillingness or inability to confront certain things.
All defence mechanisms are forms of lying.
They misrepresent the truth, both to ourselves and others. Gurdjieff was insistent that most people lie, most of the time. That they do not know they are lying makes their situation even worse. When you know you are deliberately lying, your perception of reality is probably adequate. When you identify with the lying and experience the lie as truth, when you deceive yourself, your perception has become very distorted.