They make stuff up - and then they seem to believe it as gospel truth

[Tribe16]

My uBorNmom has made up a story. She accused me of "the story" 6 months ago. I know exactly how the story was made up. She took two separate events and made a mashup of the two to create an alternate reality. I know when and exactly where I was when I said both things. I have already tried to reason with her that she has mixed them up and she is adamant, "I heard you! You said this!"

I know I didn't. The thought had never occured to me, and I wouldn't have said it.

Scenario 1 - We're in a drama-filled, angst-ridden conversation that has built up after a weekend of me keeping my cool, but finally losing it and telling her, "I have had to measure up to your exacting standards my whole life and I feel like it is never good enough for you."

Scenario 2 - It's a really hot day. I've come to help Mom with projects. One of them is to go to the nursery and get river rock for her garden. She tells me to put them in the garage. She's in a snarky attitude, and after I put them down she tells me they're in the wrong place. When I ask her where she wants them she goes in her typical martyr mode and says "never mind, I'll do it myself". When I finally get her to tell me where she wants them, I start moving them all. She immediately goes from snarky to this very cloying "You look exhausted. You look so tired. Why don't you go lay down. You need to rest." Inside I'm about to blow, and I am still keeping my cool and saying "I've got this, just let me finish". She goes on with the almost weird baby talk of "But your face is all red! Go and rest, you should lay down." And I do blow and say "Mom! Stop! You are being annoying, just let me finish."

So here's what these two instances turned into: "You told me I've annoyed you your entire life! You've really hurt my feelings!" This statement is why she is ghosting me and talking trash now apparently to family.

This is what she has now told my dad, my sister and my niece that I said this to her.

I really believe my mom believes I said this "thing" to her. This is just the tip of the iceberg, I've been filled in on a lot of made up stuff that she is currently spouting off to other family members .  I wrote previously about my dad coming for a visit (in the elderly pd forum) and while it's been wonderful spending time with my dad, I realize and he does too that the poop is going to hit the fan when I bring him back home. She has done some super PA things and can't keep the stories straight that she's been telling poeple since he's been gone, I won't bring them all up because they're mostly stupid little things, but as some have described PDs before - it's death by a thousand paper cuts. I don't know whether she realizes that her untruths are catching up with her or not, but my perfectionist, martyr always-in-control mother has now turned into something I never realized until recently - a liar. Or just delusional. Not sure which.

[SunnyMeadow]

Your mom sure likes drama, same as my mom. That's what brought me to this site actually. I googled "why does she love drama" and it wasn't long before I found out about personality disorders.

My mom has done similar things, spun some memory into something totally wrong. She tells stories about my children and interchanges one for the other. She gets so angry if I try to correct her too. All my life she has always been RIGHT. I used to think she really had some amazing ability or voodoo that made her know everything. Turns out she was simply talking over everyone to state how right she is. 

I don't correct her now. I gray rock and medium chill through conversations because I just don't care to correct her. She can and will always think she's right so I just side step around it. It's so maddening to find out that they are spreading lies and stories about you to other people though. I've come to terms with it. I really can't change what she's going to do. I have discovered through the years that almost everyone knows she's a troubled woman and they don't pay her much attention. She's cried wolf too many times so to speak and people see that she's the one causing issues.

All this to say that I've had to figure out that she won't change. I have to change. I keep in mind she has a disorder and I need to minimize her inside myself. She has become less relevant to me. She's the kooky lady that spouts off a bunch of crap from time to time. It's not easy to put them on the back burner of our minds but I know, I need to see her as fading into the background of relevance. This helps get her out of my head so much. This isn't to say that when I find out she's spreading lies that I don't go ballistic, because I do!! But after a while I get back to realizing what I'm dealing with.

It is death by one thousand paper cuts. I hate that they take up so much of our lives and thoughts. I'm sorry you're dealing with this Tribe16. I know you do so much for your parents and shouldn't be subjected to this awful treatment.

[Sneezy]

My mom (covert NPD) told me a long, involved story with many details.  It was all about something terrible that Brother1 had done to her years ago.  About six months after telling me this story, she told me the same exact story, with all the same details.  Except this time it was Brother2 in the story.  My mom makes stuff up ALL. THE. TIME.  I can't believe anything she tells me, which is really difficult as she gets older because sometimes I need to know the truth about how she is doing or what her doctor has told her. 

Yesterday, she gave me a sob story about how her senior living center was doing absolutely nothing for the SuperBowl.  Nothing at all.  Nada!!!  She was going to be forced to watch the game all alone in her apartment because there was NOTHING going on.  A couple hours later, her senior center was posting pictures all over facebook of their SuperBowl party, including a photo of my mom smiling and eating a cupcake shaped like a football.  So much for her sob story 

[Tribe16]

That's the thing I'm struggling with. I have to accept this is my new normal and my mom will never be right in the head again. I think my mom has been on the low spectrum of PD and we've had some really good and fun times in the middle years of adulthood - but as she ages her PD traits are going out of control and it's not going to get better. It's been eye-opening with my dad here. He has validated a lot of my feelings and this is good and sad at the same time, but I've helped to validate things he's been wondering about. Dad had no idea that a lot of stuff was going on other than what he's experienced. We have talked so much about JADE this week, he's had a real education on JADE.

Sunny, thanks for your example of how you have had to "minimize her in your mind". I keep telling myself that "Mom doesn't deserve this much real estate in my head". I know I need to accept and detach. I'm grateful for this site, because I know there are people who get what I'm dealing with here.

Sneezy, I don't mean to laugh but your Facebook story is priceless. You almost have to laugh, right? You'll have to journal about that one for posterity's sake 

[Starboard Song]

We faced this exact thing.

My DW once said (paraphrased) "I think you don't really like me at all, and right this moment I am not liking you."

We were told she'd said "I haven't liked you for years."

Nothing will ever convince our in-laws otherwise.

[Cat of the Canals]

We were told she'd said "I haven't liked you for years."

This and Tribe16's incident are prime examples of the way PDs engage in that Always/Never black and white thinking. If you tell them you don't like them right at this moment, they hear, "You said you haven't liked me for years!" If you say, "You are annoying me right now," they hear, "You said I've annoyed you for your entire life!"

PDmil's immediate reaction when told we wouldn't be attending Thanksgiving at her house one time was to immediately say, "So you're just never coming to my home again, I guess!"

[Starboard Song]

PDmil's immediate reaction when told we wouldn't be attending Thanksgiving at her house one time was to immediately say, "So you're just never coming to my home again, I guess!"

Holy crap! That's one of ours!

One year we missed both Thanksgiving and Christmas with the in-laws, but we did drive 1,400 miles to see them the week after Christmas. MIL was angry that we didn't drive to them for Christmas day. My wife explained that, since they lived far away, we wouldn't always be travelling on holidays, but we'd do our best to come close and do what we could. You should know that they were the ones who moved: we were in our home town.

Twenty years later my MIL turned this into (paraphrasing heavily) "you said you'd never again visit us at our house, at any time, and we would always have to come to your home." It's insanity: in the two years following this incident we made the trip 4 times a year at least. She'd been holding onto her manufactured misperception for decades. And my FIL dutifully claims she is right about everything.

[JenniferSmith]

This type of mental distortion is what caused the breakdown of my relationship with one of my siblings. 

This sibling learned some information about me from another family member.  I calmly explained to sibling why I made the decision I made.  This sibling had somehow convinced themselves that I was doing this for an entirely different reason, and they were enraged about it.  It didn't matter how many times I calmly told them that it absolutely was not true, and then explained my actual reasons, they 10000% refused to believe me.

I did not know how to respond. When someone is enraged at you for something that is fundamentally not true, it feels like a no win situation.  No amount of calm insistence for my actual reasons had any effect whatsoever.

I have to believe that another family member had been planting seeds in sibling's head about me and that person has more influence than I do.  It feels very painful to be accused of doing something for reasons you know are not true.

[Cat of the Canals]

PDmil's immediate reaction when told we wouldn't be attending Thanksgiving at her house one time was to immediately say, "So you're just never coming to my home again, I guess!"

Holy crap! That's one of ours!

One year we missed both Thanksgiving and Christmas with the in-laws, but we did drive 1,400 miles to see them the week after Christmas. MIL was angry that we didn't drive to them for Christmas day. My wife explained that, since they lived far away, we wouldn't always be travelling on holidays, but we'd do our best to come close and do what we could. You should know that they were the ones who moved: we were in our home town.

Twenty years later my MIL turned this into (paraphrasing heavily) "you said you'd never again visit us at our house, at any time, and we would always have to come to your home." It's insanity: in the two years following this incident we made the trip 4 times a year at least. She'd been holding onto her manufactured misperception for decades. And my FIL dutifully claims she is right about everything.

Wow. It really is shocking sometimes how much they seem to be using the same "playbook."

In my MIL's case, her little snit totally backfired. My husband decided that if he was going to be pre-emptively punished for not attending future Thanksgivings, it'd be all the same if he really didn't go. (For the record, we had attended Thanksgiving AND Christmas at their home for the last 10 years straight, at least.) We've celebrated Thanksgiving at home ever since then.

[Sidney37]

I am so sorry Cat that she is doing this.  My PDm is guilty of the black and whiie/all or nothing thinking.  If we did anything around the holidays to upset her, like not answer the phone when she called (we could have been in the shower or not home, it didn't matter).  The response would have been that sh was "never buying a Christmas gift" for us "ever again". 

When my kids were young, the school social worker noticed that one of my kids was extremely anxious just before Christmas and my parents arrival for the holiday every year.  It was affecting all of the kids in the class because the anxiety and anxious behaviors were so extreme.  The social worker, who happened to be of a religion that didn't celebrate Christmas, suggested that to figure out if it was my parents' visit or stress over Santa Claus that my parents delay their yearly visit by 2 weeks.  She believed it to be my parents that were causing the stress. I suggested to my mom that she come a week or two later because the social worker thought that the visits were causing lots of stress at school.  She flipped out that this person doesn't celebrate Christmas and that if I listened to her, they were never visiting again any time of the year, they would never purchase us another gift again and that we better never allow any other relative on DHs side to ever visit us again.  She said that she would wash her hands of us and my kids should be told they no longer have grandparents. And she would be telling my kids that I had banned them from my house and it was all my idea!!!      Needless to say, I should have held to it and let her choose never to visit again.  It would have reduced my oldest child's stress immensely.  But I mistakenly gave in and let them come for Christmas year after year so she could insist that my oldest was acting out all because of things I was doing and what a terrible mother I was.  NOPE.  Its was the reaction to my PDm.  All her.