Description
Mythomania is not a disease, but it has a number of symptoms that resemble a personality disorder. Sometimes the condition is considered one of the signs of schizophrenia. Experts say that pathology often occurs with hypochondria - a person constantly invents different diseases for himself.
Please note that it is one thing for a person to lie in order to protect a loved one from a terrible truth. It’s another matter if mythomaniacs believe in an invented reality.
Psychological portrait of the patient
Any mythomaniac has a special line of behavior. A mythomaniac is an artistic, talented person who has thorough knowledge in a certain field of medicine. He is characterized by hysteria, with which he attracts the attention of others. All patients with this disorder are characterized by self-centeredness, bordering on delusions of grandeur.
Mythomaniacs with a disorder in their faces also have masochism - getting pleasure from pain, and for the delegated symptom a characteristic feature is sadism - getting pleasure from causing pain to other people. Patients are completely unsuited to adapt to society. All mythomaniacs, without exception, suffer from a complex of dislike; it seems to them that the whole world should revolve only around them.
Who is susceptible to mythomania?
When a person cannot find himself for a long time to achieve his goal, he becomes completely disappointed and is sure that only some people can achieve the desired result. Subsequently, various myths, dreams, and unrealized plans appear, which the patient presents to others as reality. It also emphasizes how significant his person is.
After creating the illusion of success, a person thinks that this way he will be able to increase his rating. Subsequently, the mythomaniac believes in the invented situation. In addition, the patient does not want to think about self-deception, which seriously destroys the psyche.
For children, deception is a method of psychological defense. At a certain stage of life, this is a natural process. When children lie, they try to hide their fears and secrets. But adults have a completely different motivation.
Often, due to fantasies, various conflicts arise, and the liar begins to be taken lightly. Over time, a person completely loses confidence and self-esteem.
Features of mythomania
Children's fantasies and lies, as many psychologists have noted, always have a very specific motivation, but they also differ in that children do not realize the harmful consequences of their lies. Adults who have problems with self-esteem, in turn, understand that their lies have a negative impact on their lives and do not bring anything positive. But even despite this, mythomaniacs are not able to limit themselves in their fantasies and deceit. In people with this disorder, the desire to create believable and exciting stories about themselves is pathological. Often mythomaniacs do not have specific goals and do not expect benefits from their deceptions. On the contrary, sometimes they even admit that the deception will be quickly exposed. For a person with mythomania, inventing facts about themselves and imagining stories in which they have never been is something like a creative process; not all mythomanias invent to mislead. Their fantasies themselves give them pleasure, make them feel more significant to others and self-confident. This disorder can even be poetically called “deception for the love of creativity.”
The result of such behavior, of course, is only that the person exposed in his tales is considered a liar.
Mythomaniacs most often become hysterical personality types, that is, people for whom it is very important to constantly be in the spotlight, to be an object of worship, placed on a pedestal, receiving an endless stream of compliments. The lack of reaction from others leads to an increasingly deeper immersion in fantasies and lies, and therefore to easier exposure and loss of self-confidence. This is how a vicious circle of mental disorder emerges. One of the most famous literary examples of a mythomaniac is Baron Munchausen, whose name is sometimes (erroneously) given to this disease. If a person has realized the pathology of his condition and admitted that his fantasies are becoming a problem, he should immediately contact a specialist. In contact with
Causes
Most often, the disease is typical for those who have low self-esteem. A person begins to lie in order to feel important; he cannot treat other people differently. The patient thus tries to attract attention, while quite exaggerating the situation. Sometimes fantasies resemble entire humorous stories.
Attention! If you notice signs of the disorder or your loved ones suffer from mythomania, it is better to immediately consult a psychotherapist.
The psychologist returns the patient to the real world, finds the difference between lies and truth, teaches him to respect himself and not constantly live in a lie. If other symptoms occur in some situations, antidepressants and sedatives are prescribed.
Mythomania: reasons for the notorious lies
It is difficult to determine clear causes of mythomania; it is unlikely that it is caused by one specific factor. It is generally indicated that habitual lying most often coexists with other mental disorders or diseases.
Very often accompanies diseases such as:
People with very low self-esteem, who want to appear in company at all costs and be perceived as more attractive, can also fall into mythomania.
Experts also take into account the possible influence of biological and social factors. for the formation of mythomania. We are talking about disorders in the nervous system (for example, infections, mechanical head injuries), as well as the influence of the environment on the formation of the child’s character and personality.
Characteristics of a pathological liar
The patient quickly makes up different stories, and they are believable. Some external and internal influences cause lies. For example, a person previously had to endure blackmail, extortion of money, and as a result of psychological trauma he began to lie.
All stories are positive. The patient almost always decorates his heroes, and may become them himself. The patient may imagine that he has connections with famous, high-ranking people.
Sometimes pathological lying accompanies false memory syndrome. In this case, the sufferer is sure: everything he says really happened before. The patient is confident that he has achieved love and accomplished great things.
Getting rid of the problem
Treatment of patients with Munchausen syndrome is a complex process. In addition, the full concept of therapy has not been fully developed. The biggest difficulty is the refusal of patients to be treated by psychiatrists. They deny the presence of a mental disorder and react aggressively to attempts to establish contact.
It is necessary to make sure that the patient can adapt to society and find people with whom he will feel comfortable communicating. People who have poorly developed Baron syndrome are advised to get a pet or start helping the homeless.
The use of antidepressants and antipsychotics helps to get rid of severe manifestations of the disorder, but the problem is that it is impossible to force patients to do this. Even when treated in a hospital, mythomaniacs manage not to take medications. Today, treating the disease is almost impossible.
A pet will help overcome the complex
Diagnostics
The disease is quite difficult to diagnose in a timely manner, because it is necessary to take into account different criteria for assessing the condition. Pathological lying is accompanied by narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial behavior, psychopathy, and borderline disorder.
During a lie detector test, the doctor notices stress, increased arousal, and a feeling of guilt from deception appears. Please note that if a person has suffered due to an antisocial disorder, he is lying for his own benefit - power, sex, money.
Danger
Mythomania is an internal pathological condition. A pathological liar tries to overcome feelings of abandonment, cannot tolerate abuse, and blames others. But with borderline disorder, a person is confident in himself, so he lies successfully.
If you compare mythomaniacs with theatrical figures, liars always lie dramatically. Narcissists believe they are perfect, so they should be idolized.
The patient often invents situations because he is bored with life, and motivates his condition with fictitious psychological disorders and various diseases.
Mythomania through a representative
The most dangerous variant of the development of a nervous disorder is delegated Munchausen syndrome. Mythomaniacs, obsessed with the passion of their importance, begin to manipulate the health of other people. Their victims are:
- children – 70%;
- disabled people, people of advanced age – 30%.
Patients with a nervous disorder choose as their victims categories of people who cannot tell others about their bullying: children under 1–2 years old, deaf and mute people, bedridden elderly people. Delegated syndrome is typical for mothers. Less commonly, the disease is observed in nurses working in pediatrics, caregivers, and wives of disabled people.
Usually, with delegated Munchausen syndrome, patients pretend to have abnormalities in the functioning of organ systems in others.
- Bleeding.
- Vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps.
- Increased body temperature.
- Asthmatic attacks.
- Allergic reactions.
- Poisoning.
- SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome).
They do this using various improvised means: they do not give the necessary medications on time, they deliberately increase the dosage, they can suffocate them with a bag or a pillow. All these actions make it possible to provoke the appearance of a picture of a severe pathological condition in the victim, and then take the necessary measures to restore the vital functions of her body in order to appear as a heroic person in the eyes of others.
Delegated Munchausen syndrome allows sick people to abuse their victims with impunity. A mental disorder may remain undiagnosed for many years. When someone from the environment tries to prove that a person is sick and is torturing his victim, the mythomaniac reacts extremely aggressively, immediately takes on the role of a victim who has been slandered in vain, and tries to win over as many people as possible to his side, receiving additional attention.
Description of delegated Munchausen syndrome
Treatment methods
To help the patient get rid of pathological lies, doctors use psychotherapy. Pharmaceutical drugs are rarely prescribed. Some studies show that many patients are predisposed to deception. Even with the use of modern psychotherapeutic techniques, processes in the brain do not change.
Pathological lying is a rather complex phenomenon compared to other mental illnesses. It negatively affects life and completely changes its quality. Today, scientists continue to work on this problem.
So, mythomania is a rather dangerous condition that can lead to a distortion of reality. Often the mythomaniac begins to get too carried away with his roles and gets confused between reality and fiction. This condition interferes with personal relationships and at work. Although some people achieve success through lies, they are not interested in material matters. They have a different goal - to make people notice, start to be proud, and bow down. Be careful and take good care of your mental health!
Symptoms
Symptoms in people with Munchausen syndrome are difficult to identify. They simulate somatic illnesses, less often mental disorders. The choice of disease will depend on the availability of thorough knowledge in the development and treatment of the pathological condition, as well as the possibilities of simulation and the availability of visits to doctors of the required profile.
In studies of past years, descriptions of mythomaniacs’ simulation of diseases with unknown etiology predominate:
- mouth bleeding;
- vomiting, diarrhea.
But due to the emergence of highly specialized medical specialties, the list of simulated disorders has grown significantly. For many patients, it is not a problem to repeatedly simulate exacerbations of a perforated gastric ulcer. In particular, there is a known case where a woman repeatedly feigned an “acute abdomen”, as a result of which she underwent operations on the gastrointestinal tract about 40 times and was hospitalized 500 times.
It also remains unknown on what basis patients choose doctors. Some go to the hospital at night, on holidays, believing that the most inexperienced specialists work at this time. For the same reason, patients go to young doctors. Others try to get an appointment with a professor of medical sciences in order to gain the reputation of a seriously ill patient and increase their self-esteem at the expense of the doctor. Denying a diagnosis brings patients great disappointment, sometimes even aggression. All mythomaniacs deny simulation.
Description of Munchausen syndrome
