Faking an allergy?

[Call Me Cordelia]

My mother always claimed to have a specific food allergy. My paternal grandparents didn’t believe her, and would try to sneak the offending ingredient into her food in order to catch her out. So she never ate anything in their house.

So that’s pretty messed up. (Yep both sides of my FOO are heavily PD.) But today I was cooking with the thing and it occurred to me. It’s a common allergy, and I never ever saw my mother have a reaction. She never had an epi-pen, which I know for a fact because as an adult I tried to persuade her to ask her doctor about carrying one. Her response was, “Yes you’re probably right…” and then she hemmed and hawed never followed up and “forgot” to mention it at her physical and I finally dropped it. She would say her throat would close up and she couldn’t breathe, so she was claiming a serious allergy. I remember a time or two when she discovered what she had just eaten contained the thing, at least once distinct time at a social event when I was about 11, because someone told her she had just eaten it. She got all upset and rushed out of the room. My father followed her, and she came back a few minutes later all shaky and dramatic. But she didn’t follow up with a doctor. No one called 911. She never treated the “allergy.”

Oh my gosh, was she faking it my whole life?!? She also Munchausened both my sister and me by proxy as teenagers, so I wouldn’t put it past her. But my mind is absolutely blown right now.

[Andeza]

Well allergic reactions tend to get worse each time you're exposed to the thing. Like bee stings. It can take up to 3 bee stings to establish the allergy and then jump from mild hives to throat swelling shut. That said, my vote is on "faking it" or otherwise blowing completely and totally a minor irritation (like a stomach cramp or gas) out of the water and into the stratosphere.

[guitarman]

This post reminds me of my uBPD/NPD sister and all her illnesses and waif like behaviour. She claimed to have so many life threatening conditions which often changed.

She was being treated by a world renowned specialist hospital but said that they had misdiagnosed her illnesses and were incompetent.

She had lung problems. She was supposed to carry an inhaler with her at all times but when she visited she often asked to use our frail elderly father's asthma inhaler as she didn't have hers with her or she had failed to get a new one. It was all such a drama. Actors need audiences.

I often called for an ambulance for her when she said that she couldn't breathe. It was the sensible and caring thing to do. She would often drive away in her car before they arrived.

I used to believe all her medical issues but there were SO many. She was a walking miracle.

On one occasion I can remember her driving around to visit me, her walking up to the house and upon entering stating that she'd just had a heart attack!

I always remained calm and validated her feelings. I would say that she needs her condition to be checked out by a professional.

She would often go to A&E but wouldn't get admitted.

I have learnt about not feeding the narcissistic supply. I remained calm. I didn't criticise. I showed genuine concern.

I've learnt about cognitive dissonance where you can begin to doubt your own feelings, life experience and common sense. You can become gaslighted into believing that what is happening is real, not knowing any more what is true and what isn't.

My sister's illnesses were based on some kind of reality that were then exaggerated to the extreme because of all her worry, fears and stresses. She felt very threatened.

I was always concerned that her illnesses were genuine and she exploited that fear to manipulate me and to feed her narcissistic supply. She used them to elicit sympathy and to excuse her abusive behaviour.

Abusers are all about power and control.

It can be a bizarre, surreal and twisted world we inhabit coping with a person living with PD. Other people don't understand unless they have experienced it all for themselves.

Illnesses can be used by the abuser to become the victim. It is the narcissistic cycle of abuse where the abuser turns everything around to become the victim. "How can you be SO cruel to doubt me? I'M ILL!"

My sister would say that I caused her to have an asthma attack because I dared to not go along with the waif like behaviour and called her bluff by calling for ambulances when I thought that she needed them.

Keep calm. Stay strong. Stay safe.

You are not alone.

[guitarman]

It sounds like your mother had an emotional reaction to being found out, not from eating the food that would cause a life threatening physical reaction. It seems that she became hysterical and histrionic and faked a reaction. That could in itself cause a physical response.

It reminds me of the young character Violet Elizabeth Bott in the Just William children's stories who says "I'll scream and scream and scream until I'm sick" if she didn't get her own way. How very immature and manipulative.

https://youtu.be/HXiZHXkG-ac

I know someone who has a genuine serious potentially life threatening food allergy. They don't make any fuss about it. They have been taken to hospital several times because they ate something by mistake that they reacted to.

[guitarman]

We can have our minds blown when we finally realise what we've been coping with for years.

My light bulb moment came when I realised what my uBPD/NPD sister had been doing for decades. It came when a psychiatrist I was seeing informed me about BPD. I saw the psychiatrist because I was having problems coping with my sister's extreme behaviour and how she impacted our whole family.

How I changed was redefining her as my abuser and that I was her target of abuse. That helped me so much to know what I was coping with. I found out about PDs and Narcissistic Abuse Syndrome.

Now all the behaviours fit and what I am feeling as well.

[GentleSoul]

Such a validating thread, thanks everyone. 

My late covert narc/alcoholic husband also faked illnesses.  Of course I didn't realise it when he first started but over the years I came to realise.  Towards the end of his life he did confess to me that he had used this tactic all his life.  Starting as a very young child to get out of attending school.

Prior to us getting together he had had numerous tests of all types, stays in hospital but nothing was ever found, of course.   He had a very long periods of time off work with mystery illnesses that again no actual diagnosis could ever be found.  He as given a sort of vague label of "heart failure".    He was on a hoard of medications.  All prescribed based on his lies. 

Then, as I was sharing in another thread, when he did actually become terribly ill, he couldn't cope.  He couldn't accept it.

I think he liked being pretend illness but didn't like real illness.  Such a sad waste of a life. 

[guitarman]

I am still doubting myself whether my uBPD/NPD sister was exaggerating all her illnesses. Then I remember all the times she didn't seek help or take the correct medications prescribed.

I remember the time when she phoned me to say that she was very ill and couldn't do anything. She couldn't get up to buy herself any food. She was living on her own.

I went to visit her by train to buy her food. When I got to her station I phoned her to ask her what she would like from the supermarket. To my astonishment she told me that she had driven herself to a park and was walking around the lake there!

She hadn't bothered to tell me that she was feeling better and for me not to come. She didn't care about my feelings. That taught me a lesson. I have been no contact with her for over two years and never want to see her ever again because of all her loud abusive behaviour. I care but can't cope any more. 

I am living with chronic pain from sciatica but I don't go on and on and on about it all the time. Other people wouldn't really know unless I confided in them or I was having an excruciating flare up and they saw for themselves how much pain I'm really in.

[Cat of the Canals]

Both PDmom and PDmil have blown certain medical things out of proportion... to the degree that I'd consider it faking. My PDmom broke her foot some years ago. The type of break she had didn't even require a cast, just a boot. She did have to be careful to keep weight off of it, but she acted like she was bedridden, for crying out loud. I visited, and she spent the entire time lying on the couch like she was an invalid. She'd even borrowed a wheelchair from one of her friends. She kept it in the dining room and would wheel herself FIVE FEET from the entrance of the room to the table. I wasn't even Out of the FOG then, but I remember thinking, "This is bizarre."

PDmil was told by a doctor that some of her symptoms sound like gluten intolerance. She decided that means she has celiac disease. And yet she still routinely "accidentally" eats wheat products, and by "accidentally" I mean she shoves a fortune cookie in her mouth and then asks mid-chew, "Do you think this has gluten in it?"  The people I know who have actually been diagnosed with celiac do not "eat first, and ask questions later" like this.

[Call Me Cordelia]

Wow, y'all. I have definitely been aware of illness being used to manipulate and gain attention even as a child. My father also did the hobbling around and practically immobile act for an *ingrown toenail.* Point being, he wanted me to know exactly just how inconvenient it was for him to watch my kid and wanted me to cancel my plans because mom had stuck him with the kid while she and my sisters went to get their nails done. But I digress.

Guitarman your sister takes it to the next level, being too ill to feed herself and then out for a walk in the blink of an eye! Cat, if your MIL doesn't take her "celiac" seriously, I don't see any reason for you to do so either.

I'm NC with my mother now, but if it's such that she could even conceivably lie to the whole world about something like that for at least forty years... well that tells me something I really already knew. But when I think I've hit bottom on the depths of the crazy, I peel back another layer.

It also tells me something about how my own illnesses were only admitted at her convenience. So many times I was fine only to have her call off work to "take care of me," or had to power through a day of school or a basketball game with a migraine.

[Hilltop]

My MIL uses illness to gain attention.  We spent four hours in hospital with her after her COVID vaccination as she claimed she had a blood clot and then later told me she had fallen over and hurt her knee and that was probably why it hurt.  I knew then that she definitely didn't have a blood clot and sure enough 1 hour later we were taking her home, no blood clot, she failed to mention falling over to the doctors, funny that.

She just rang up all dramatic that her doctor wanted her to attend his office after a blood test.  DH was all concerned.  I told him this was normal procedure.  She then said that the doctor told her her neck muscles were pressing against each other causing her neck pain.  I don't know how he found this out with a blood test and lung x-ray.  MIL had told me about her neck about 6 months ago, so this was old news but she couldn't say there was nothing wrong with the blood test that it was normal procedure for her to attend for the results so she said old news.

I've not met someone with so many ailments.  After her hysterectomy she rang me crying hysterically that she was bleeding heavily.  Dh and I went to see her and she said she was upset DH hadn't visited her enough.  Then she told us how she had been gardening and shopping, nothing was mentioned about the bleeding.

During our last visit she told us that they had so much stuff in their house which would need to be emptied after they died.  No one is dying but she was kept saying how many bin loads we would need to empty their house.  DH changed the subject.

This is not even counting the many phone conversations about other random issues, blood pressure problems, blood sugar problems it goes on and on and on.  She even had her blood test after calling DH saying she couldn't breathe properly.  Dr at least gave her a lung x-ray however I knew it would be clear, the results always are.  I think the day when something does happen, it will be shocking to me.

I told DH that it was bad for him to be constantly stressed about their health.  He is so up and down, he worries.  MIL is also using health as a guilt trip since we have moved away from them.  Even FIL was on the phone the other day saying they wouldn't be around much longer.

Health is a PD dream to manipulate because it works so well for attention.  I am glad I can see it for what it is now, I just tell DH that we are not doctors and they simply need to see a doctor if something is wrong.

I would say if someone isn't carrying an epi pen for an allergy then it can't be that serious.

[Boat Babe]

My grandmother was an absolute drama queen when it came to her health. She died at the age of 101. My mother is similar, but more waify, and she's 89. For a woman of her age she's in amazing shape, physically. 

Friends with awful health problems are stoical and wryly humourous about their afflictions. I hope if I get ill that I have the grace to be this way.