Lived Experience Forum

[Corny]

I really struggle socially when I meet or come into contact with people who are clearly blatantly lying for whatever reason, and I second guess my judgment. Lies can be part of a person's mental illness, hence why I freeze when I am confronted with this IRL because it is difficult to talk about MI symptoms such as delusions, and it is no different with pathological lies. They are kind of, sort of like delusions in a way.

Because my father's lies and attention seeking was coupled with violence its really hard not to just want to run a mile if I am confronted with this symptom in others. We see it in the news, people like that Belle chick or whatever who got thousands of dollars out of people faking cancer, the recent women in Sydney who stole millions of dollars from her friends, faking being a financial advisor. So if someone can fake cancer people are capable of faking mental illness and abuse stories, for example there was an article in the ABC recently about bogus DVO's being taken out by intimate partners.....do we even try to engage with someone that lies on this scale? They are clearly mentally ill or are they just a-holes..... I think a friend of mine faked DV, and I feel really sorry for the guy. It would all be documented in official health/gov files etc. Whenever she contacts me I freeze and don't know if I should just ignore her, or if I should treat it just like any other mental illness, but I think if I said anything she would go troppo.....being a DV survivor it really doesn't sit well with me, and maybe not everyone is worthy of sympathy but it exploits it......

[NatureLover]

Hi @Corny 

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@Corny wrote:

Because my father's lies and attention seeking was coupled with violence its really hard not to just want to run a mile if I am confronted with this symptom in others.

I'm sorry this happened to you. Is it something you can work on with a counsellor maybe?

[Corny]

I guess I could @NatureLover .

What's so difficult, is trying to not paint everyone with the same PD as my father with the same brush, and trying to give them a chance, it was more than his MI. But balancing that with protecting innocent people like my friends ex-husband. If it is true that she made all the DV up, 1. that is infuriating for someone with my background and 2. she could ruin his livelihood which then ruins his health, and down it spirals 3. It is just wrong to lie about something so serious and life changing, it makes me really angry.

I guess its similar to those awkward times in life when an abusive, person that destroys other's lives gets terminal cancer.  

A lot of people in the Australian community believe that PD's are synonymous with abuse, but abusive people can get cancer, arthritis, asthma, cardiomyopathy....they were abusive a-holes 1st, and the diagnosis comes 2nd..........that's just my opinion of course, but yeah. Maybe she's just not a nice person, and she's very manipulative.....I thought I'd come so far in being able to judge people's characters, but then sometimes I worry I have not progressed at all.

[chibam]

Hi @Corny .

Personally, I tend to view lies more like tools: they can be used for good or evil - it just depends on who's wielding them and what their motives are. If their lies are meant to benefit the people who are being told them, then they can be wonderful things for all concerned.

I, for one, have found that other people opting to constantly tell me the truth instead of interesting/enjoyable lies has lead to very poor interactions and relationships with those people. I wish they'd had the decency and benevolence to present themselves to me in an uplifting, enjoyable light, rather then a truthful one. My life is poorer for having to bear the burden of their truth.

But I certainly get what your saying about people who lie for the purposes of exploiting others. Exploiters have many tools at their disposal: lies, shame, blackmail, threats... deception is merely one of the ways they ply their craft. But whatever their tactics, the results are always the same.

Hence my statement that a lie is just a tool; exploitation is exploitation, regardless of whether the exploiter uses a lie or some other tool in their toolkit. But in more benevolent hands, a lie can create joy and value in life.

[Corny]

@chibam you make some interesting points, do you mean that sometimes people over share and you wish they wouldn't. And in over sharing, and being too honest, you kinda get turned off by them?

I lie through omission with my diagnosis to protect myself and those around me. I only tell select people that I have PTSD, otherwise it comes with so many more questions, of something that is very personal and I know that they would find repulsive, I'm not stupid. If I had Bipolar Disorder or Schizophrenia people would just accept it as a serious medical condition, and the conversation would keep flowing and we would move on. I also don't want the little people in my life to know. I am not lying that I have a mental illness, but I don't want them to know about my traumas.....I'm not sure I will ever want them to know......I will cross that bridge when they are much older. 

I never lie on my tax return. And I never lie to government agencies. 

I do semi-sort-of-lie through omission for giggles sometimes. I live alone. I am in lockdown by myself with no puppy. Can you blame me. A friend told me he had this 'rash', a skin problem. Isn't skin important. You can tell so much about how someone lives their life by looking at their skin. I've kept myself nice. I knew that it was not a 'skin' problem at all, and started to giggle inside.....I didn't stop him from making an appointment with a Dermatologist.....I could of, but I am an uneducated person and its not up to me to diagnose PTSD or STD's......play stupid in life @chibam. Look as dumb as you can, people believe you that you are dumb. It gives ya some laughs....I have to go and get ready for Dr Kindness now, best Corny.

[chibam]

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@Corny wrote:

@chibam you make some interesting points, do you mean that sometimes people over share and you wish they wouldn't. And in over sharing, and being too honest, you kinda get turned off by them?

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No, not really. More that they make no effort to be interesting or enjoyable, but then expect everyone around them to act as if their company is actually desirable. In broader terms, this also flows into their strange expectations that everyone around them should abstain from committing suicide, even though they personally are doing nothing to make life an experiance that is worth enduring for any of us who know them.

I can sympathize with their being trapped in pointless dreary lives. To a large degree, it's not their own fault that life has trapped them in situations where they can't do anything fun or interesting; and where fun and interesting stuff never happens to them. But do they really need to inflict that bleakness on all the people around them, too? IMHO, we would all be much better off if we could all take some time out before socializing to dream up enjoyable narratives about our own lives and share those with the people we meet, instead of our pointless truths.

It makes no sense to hold society to a standard where sucide is an "irrational" choice, but then spend all our time illustrating to the people we meet that life is almost completely hollow, without any redeeming value to it. If our societal standard is that life has value and is worth prolonging, then the way we all depict life to observers ought to compellingly bear out that claim.