Hyperbole

[11JB68]

I love it when I can find the perfect word to describe a bizarre behavior.
It's always interesting to me now when I observe a strange behavior and can look at it calmly and see it for what it is.
Hyperbole. Updh does this regularly.
e.g. yesterday talking about wanting to make our yard look better. Instead of just staying within normal talk about it he eventually went to how right now it looks "like we're heroin addicts who don't care" (??? Huh?). Despite my attempts at mc I actually said out loud wow that went super negative.
I had another recent great example of this and now cannot think of it....

[Andeza]

Hyperbole, exaggeration, fish tales... Yeah, the PD person in general is not good at sticking to the facts. I believe they find that the facts get in the way of the narrative they want to believe or get others to buy into, become inconvenient, and therefore unimportant. Or, if they don't make the issue seem big enough, because to them it is a huge issue, they're afraid it won't get the response they want. All part of manipulation ultimately.

[Cat of the Canals]

It has been a running joke with my husband and my brother for years that PD mom is the Queen of Hyperbole. She'll use it in the negative, but because she's a grandiose narc, she loves to use it in the positive even more.

When my brother and SIL were getting married, it was described beforehand to literally anyone PDmom crossed paths with as "the wedding of the century." I'm pretty sure she got this from the Royal Wedding, which had happened a few years before. Never mind that my brother's wedding took place not at Westminster Abbey, but in his backyard. 

The daughter of one of her "friends" made a short documentary that was *nominated* for a Golden Globe. This becomes "won an Oscar" in PDmom-speak. If you call her on the outright exaggeration, she will insist she's absolutely 100% correct and refuse to hear anything to the contrary.

She does the same thing with things involving me and my brother. I've lost count of the number of times an old friend or relative will say, "Oh I heard you [insert some professional achievement that has been blown way out of proportion]." It's very awkward and embarrassing to have to tell them, "No, actually..."

She once jumped into a FB conversation I was having with a friend to remark that I was, "a world-class swimmer." It had very little to do with the conversation, and I HAVE NEVER done any competitive swimming.  I was a competent swimmer as a kid because we grew up on lake and it was the main "fun" thing to do in the summer. But suddenly I'm a contender for the Olympic team...

On the negative side: Anyone she disagrees with politically is "just so EVIL." Most of her neighbors are "selfish assholes" for landscaping to their own tastes. If I disobey her somehow, she wonders if I've been "brainwashed." Anytime she is anywhere near a man with a shaved head and tattoos, she comments, "I'm sure he was a skinhead." 

The sad thing is, when I was younger, I believed most of it. Only now that I'm Out of the FOG do I pretty much distrust anything remotely sensational that comes out of her mouth.

[SparkStillLit]

UpdM, and to some degree, updh both do this thing. M does it both positively and negatively (giving me bizarre conglomerations of job titles that she thinks sound good, because my real one is NEVER sufficiently elevated-sounding; or making up completely bullshit stories about my B to make him sound more successful than me; etc). H tends to only do this in the negative (the dogs were HORRIBLE!!! There is a HUGE MESS!!! The situation was a DISASTER!!!! When none of that was remotely the case, making a mountain out of an anthill.)

[CagedBirdSinging]

Yes, absolutely! Constant hyperbole, mostly negative, to create drama and gain sympathy. He once had to stay in hospital overnight due to an infection, very minor,  he was just on a normal ward, it was only a precaution (because he was making such a scene I suspect)- he tells everyone he was in ICU on life support.

There is generally a grain of truth eg yes he was in hospital..  but it gets blown out of all proportion.

This article was a good read, https://psychcentral.com/pro/exhausted-woman/2016/07/10-signs-you-are-married-to-someone-with-a-personality-disorder#3

This paragraph particularly resonated "For the spouse, there is a continual feeling that they are being lied to by the PD. While it may not be very evident, there is a pattern of futile exaggerations, avoidance of sensitive subjects, and omission of key information. Interestingly, the PD often projects these behaviors onto the spouse in an effort to divert the negative attention away from them."

This really opened my eyes to the fact that hyperbole and exaggeration IS a form of lying!!! Nons don't feel the need to do this.

[stormbrewing]

If xuBPD said he didn't mind or didn't care then I could usually take that at face value, but the comment "I don't give a f#ck" was always a very clear signal that he did, indeed, give a lot of f#cks and I better put effort into working out what it was that he thought/felt/wanted if I wanted to avoid a massive meltdown. Is this opposite-hyperbole? Not sure, but it seems to fit the extreme exaggeration criteria in addition to being a manipulative lie.

[Boat Babe]

It must link into the black and white thinking of the PD mind. No subtlety, no nuance, no considered opinions!

*adds to red flag list.

[Prototypian]

My PD's hyperbole is always in worst case scenarios.   Things can't be left to even a remote chance.   An example is school scheduling.  Every year we have one kid who needs some specific junior high or high school English or math class at a certain period.  I have an assumption that the school counselors and other administrators have brains and leeway.  I figure they can help make sure a kid who has to have their athletic period at a certain time and they need to be in the only class for computer programming that is available that they will still help them get into the English class they need.

My spouse is positive that this may not happen and spends days and hours spinning the kid and the family up with "remember, you may not be in cross country" (said to the kid who is a senior going to college in the sport) all because if there is a finite chance that it won't happen then the assumption has to be that you plan for the worst. 


But I've learned this is actually a hyper honesty thing with her.  All statements must be 100 percent factual and anything superficial.must be clarified: "the doc said the surgery was very successful' is met with an interruption "no, he said that there would be pain and recovery afterwards and a lot of discomfort".  When you ask her about that type of thing later, her legitimate concern is that you are misrepresenting the surgeons words into what someone would believe was too positive.   

I've learned that the hyperbole is a form of hypervigilant adhesion to the absolute truth so that however remote the possibility of a bad thing happening, if it is possible, you can't discount it and must plan for it.  But this is for everyday activities.   Chance of rain should be planned for hurricane, kid doesn't turn in an assignment on time, there ris a chance they are failing out of school and will not get into college.   The statistics of probability and what you do or don't worry about are ignored and whatever the event is, you can't discount it as an eventuality.

I don't see her lying or exaggerating, rather correcting any discrepancy or clarifying any detail to ensure 100 percent completeness and never allowing for a casual activity to be planned for against a huge potential disaster.   

It's especially bad with waste.   We have chickens.  On rare occasions, the birds will lay eggs in odd places like a basket full of rags in the garage.   When you find one and it's not in the nesting box where they lay most of the time you don't know how long it's been sitting there.   When that happens and it's unrefrigerated I like to toss it.   My spouse goes into hysterics about starving people and waste and privilege and how I just don't care about wasting money and food. 

But it's one egg out of a dozen per day and we have no way of knowing whether it's a day old or a month old and we really aren't starving anyone by throwing it away and we are being prudent and not wasteful by getting rid of a potential salmonella bomb.

I think the hyperbole for her is caused by this moral and strict adhesion to the facts.

[Free2Bme]

Interesting thread here. 
However, as I read this I'm thinking, do I do this?   ....or something similar.  Is using negative hyperbole possibly a type of catastrophizing?

Truth, I know that I catastrophize things sometimes.  I am not PD (verified), but I struggle with some PTSD type stuff.  Like many of us here that have survived long term PD abuse cycles, high conflict divorce, FM, smear campaigns, and all the rest, I sometimes assume a bad outcome is heading my way. 

Hypervigilance is the close cousin to catastrophizing.  I struggle with both as I deal with fallout from my divorce, getting on my feet, finances, my adult children, never ending home repairs, no support system.  It's been such a long haul and so many things have gone wrong, that I am flinchy when something new pops up. For example, this weekend my geriatric refrigerator stopped working.  Immediately, I thought this is it,  I'm going to have to replace it ($$$), spoiled food, haul away, etc.  I spent several hours troubleshooting and it's running (for now).  But, I quickly ran the worst case scenario because that has been my experience on the other 43 issues that went badly. 

We read that PD results from childhood trauma/neglect/indulgence, or combination thereof.  I wonder if negative hyperbole is a way of expressing the fear of lack of control and a potential negative outcome.