Completely made up stories about you - gaslighting on steroids

[easterncappy]

I guess this sort of counts as gaslighting, but definitely on the more extreme end. Much more nefarious than telling you that "you're misremembering that", or something similar... which I also experienced plenty of. A thread on triangulation reminded me of this incident.

When I was in high school, my mom fabricated a story about how I beat her black and blue, made her bleed from her face, and left her bruised. This just... didn't happen. Really. I've never been in a physical fight in my life, I wouldn't even know how to beat someone up. At the time she was twice my size and I was an out of shape nerd. What actually happened is that she cornered me and screamed in my face and fight or flight kicked in and I pushed her out of my way just enough that I could run away and hide in my room. It reminds me of my husband's PD mom's "you jumped on the counter for no reason" incident, which even years later is cited as an example of him being a terrible, poorly behaved brat... in reality, he jumped over a counter to get away from a beating.

I actually had no idea any of this was happening until days after the supposed "beating", because she had no injuries. She was not bruised, there was no blood, nothing was physically wrong - there couldn't have been! She just wasn't talking to me for a couple of days... silent treatment was common in our home, but after a couple of days, she still hadn't budged. I had to learn from relatives that I "needed to apologize for doing something so cruel to my loving mother". Everyone was pissed. I was so confused. I had literally seen her for that past week and she was fine. Surely I'd remember doing something that terrible. It was absolutely bizarre to me that everyone was acting like this was a real thing that actually happened.

I was deep in the FOG and still apologized. It seemed like the only way to get my family to start speaking to me normally again. Did anyone else's PD make up stories like this about them? I don't even know what the point was. Like there were better ways to get an apology and make me feel bad.

[notrightinthehead]

Reading your post, I remembered something. Nothing nearly as bad as yours. My mother, and she has been dead for a long time, would boast about my achievements. I failed a class in school once and she just kept telling people that I had passed. So I became an almost mute, because I didn't want to show her up and didn't want to contradict her lies. She lied from a deep seated insecurity and a need for drama.

[easterncappy]

Reading your post, I remembered something. Nothing nearly as bad as yours. My mother, and she has been dead for a long time, would boast about my achievements. I failed a class in school once and she just kept telling people that I had passed. So I became an almost mute, because I didn't want to show her up and didn't want to contradict her lies. She lied from a deep seated insecurity and a need for drama.

I guess that explains it! There were ways to manipulate an "apology" out of me but also, this way, everyone in the family got to participate (the whole family being a system of narcissists who have each other on leashes).

She's also do what you're describing your mom did. "Oh, Cappy LOVES reading and history!". At the time I hadn't picked up a book in years and was failing both history classes I was taking. She'd lie about stuff that "made us look bad", like if I ended a long-term relationship, she'd lie to her friends about how we're still together. For years, even. She'd drag me into compliments she tried to give her friends... "Cappy LOVES green eyes!", directed at a woman with green eyes. I never said such a thing and honestly I think I was too young to even care what other people looked like at the time.

It was so weird. Looking back, even the more "innocent" examples made me feel like I was just a playable character in her little game of Perfect Cappy's Mom.

[escapingman]

I just thought about a story my uNPDx told me a couple of years ago, that was so weird as I was already together with her when the incident happened 15 years ago. But she told me how one of her relatives had stopped speaking to her and they had no contact for all this time. According to her story she had borrowed a car from him (this is true as she had this car when we were dating), but when she returned it she had just left it and then not said hello to him and just left the keys and then walked off. He apparently thought this was rude and told everyone this story so everyone related to him hated her. Her counter story then was that she had left the car, but he was not there so she had left the keys with someone else and then left. BUT, and this is a big but. When she returned the car, she went to his house and stayed there and enjoyed a meal before being driven back by him or another relative (I can't remember exactly as this was long ago). But, I had never heard this "new" story until it suddenly was told and I was supposed to endorse it, even though I remember what had happened and the story appeared after 15 years. I wonder if she had forgotten that I already knew her by then or that she thought I didn't remember anyway or what she actually was thinking. Now I can see it was complete gaslighting and for me to under no circumstance think that she was responsible for them being on bad terms.

[easterncappy]

I just thought about a story my uNPDx told me a couple of years ago, that was so weird as I was already together with her when the incident happened 15 years ago. But she told me how one of her relatives had stopped speaking to her and they had no contact for all this time. According to her story she had borrowed a car from him (this is true as she had this car when we were dating), but when she returned it she had just left it and then not said hello to him and just left the keys and then walked off. He apparently thought this was rude and told everyone this story so everyone related to him hated her. Her counter story then was that she had left the car, but he was not there so she had left the keys with someone else and then left. BUT, and this is a big but. When she returned the car, she went to his house and stayed there and enjoyed a meal before being driven back by him or another relative (I can't remember exactly as this was long ago). But, I had never heard this "new" story until it suddenly was told and I was supposed to endorse it, even though I remember what had happened and the story appeared after 15 years. I wonder if she had forgotten that I already knew her by then or that she thought I didn't remember anyway or what she actually was thinking. Now I can see it was complete gaslighting and for me to under no circumstance think that she was responsible for them being on bad terms.

Oh, wow. My mom had her fair share of "and for no reason at all, they stopped talking to me" stories, too. I believed her when I was younger, and I felt bad for her. As an adult, I realized that the reason why was often apparent to everyone but her. I'm not sure if they do this on purpose or not. A lot of them are convinced that their behavior is so normal and so correct that it can't possibly be a reason that someone stops speaking to them. Others might know but want to hide it because it makes them look bad... same with gaslighting. I think my mom's gaslighting was sometimes instinctive, she grew up with it so the "smaller" forms of it weren't even intentional, she looked up to her abusive mom so she probably thought she was practicing good parenting. Crap like what I said in the OP had to have been intentional, though, that was just way too elaborate.

I've caught the PD's in my life in a lot of really weird lies too. Things normal people wouldn't even lie about. And then they'd stop lying about it a year or more down the road, because they forgot it was a part of a lie. Why not just be truthful?

[Cat of the Canals]

Your story reminds me of one of my husband's. PDmil was physically attacking him for refusing to get his hair cut. They were in the kitchen and in defending himself, he pretended to reach for a knife. PDmil completely lost her mind, screaming as if he'd actually tried to stab her or something when in reality he'd never even actually touched the knife. When her boyfriend (now her current husband) arrived a while later, she went into full-blown waif mode, claiming that H had gone at her with the knife, completely unprovoked. She conveniently left out the fact that she'd been hitting him and spitting on him. Naturally, stepFIL made H apologize to her.

[Andeza]

UPDm didn't make up entire stories thankfully, well that I know of, but she did like to exaggerate to the point of lying. I'm a stickler for details, it's hardwired into my psyche to be as accurate as possible. I would pipe up, "No mom that's not how it happened!" and then tell the actual story. She hated it. I did it to her doctors too! She always played up how sick and I'll she was at home and then downplayed it at the doctor as though being stuck in bed for four days was no big deal. I'd out her every time until she finally left me reading my book in the waiting room.

[escapingman]

UPDm didn't make up entire stories thankfully, well that I know of, but she did like to exaggerate to the point of lying. I'm a stickler for details, it's hardwired into my psyche to be as accurate as possible. I would pipe up, "No mom that's not how it happened!" and then tell the actual story. She hated it. I did it to her doctors too! She always played up how sick and I'll she was at home and then downplayed it at the doctor as though being stuck in bed for four days was no big deal. I'd out her every time until she finally left me reading my book in the waiting room.

uNPDx never, as far as I know, made up a story from scratch. It always had a real event as the base and then everything around it could be made up to whatever level she felt the need to. For example as the most basic harmless and so not necessary one, we could have been stuck on the motorway because of a an accident for 2 hours, the story would be we were stuck for 4 hours. uNPDmil the same, she was delayed on a flight and kept moaning about how late she was and ow bad it affected her etc. I had to look it up, as the flight stats are available, her flight had landed 20 minutes late. It seems to me as if they have a real event to start with, then they can just add whatever to it. A worse one, also one story uNPDx used in court was that I had dragged her in her arms through the airport when we went on holiday leaving her with bruises all over her arms. Funnily enough I had a photo of her, with her arms bare from the day after with not a single bruise on her arms.....

[Cat of the Canals]

I was thinking that my own PDmother didn't make up stories, though she will exaggerate to the extreme. But I just remembered something that is entirely fabricated, as far as I know. When I was in 7th grade, I was obsessed with a particular band. I told her all I wanted for my birthday was to go see them live. After months of begging and her always saying no, I finally asked why I couldn't see this band live. She said, "Because Anne Smith's son went to one of their concerts, and it was completely out of control! He got hit in the head with a beer bottle and went into a coma!"

I didn't know this "Anne" well at the time, but a few years later I got to know her better and discovered she didn't have a son. Of course, the older I got the more I realized this story reeked of B.S. even without that damning little detail.

[Poison Ivy]

Making up stories  = lying. People do it because they get a thrill from it and often can get away with it.