Entire childhood was a lie, and possible MBP?

This sounds plausible, I suspect my uBPD parent might have done something similar to my younger brother. Have you heard of Munchausen syndrome by proxy? Parents get attention for themselves and make themselves look like caregiver of the year by insisting their kids are sick.

I’m so sorry. And no, you unfortunately don’t sound crazy for thinking it’s possible your mother could have done something to you.

Not the same thing but there were times where I had to seriously consider whether my mother stole money from me (she had), cheated on my father (she had), lied about being stalked (she had), considered killing my father (she had).

I’m not saying your mother is guilty but I know this is a lot for you. I hope she didn’t. But I share some of the stuff that happened with my mom because I think it might me par for the course with some of our BPD moms to consider what exactly they’re capable of.

Seeing as Factitious disorder (FD, formerly called Münchhausen) and factitious disorder imposed on another (formerly known as Münchhausen by proxy) are in 90% of cases comorbid with a personality disorder to the point where the „patient suspected of FD“ checklist for doctors contains „is there a known or suspected personality disorder?“, you‘re probably correct in your assumption that your mother was faking her own illnesses and injuring you with fake illness claims towards your health. That‘s medical abuse by the way.

Factitious disorder is different from hypochondria, by the way. The hypochondriac is usually self aware that they‘re having health anxiety and desperately doesn‘t want to be sick. They’re very often very relieved when a doctor properly examines them for the issue they fear they might have and tells them they’re physically healthy. They have some form of self dystony around their feared illnesses and actual hypochondria. People with factitious disorder might claim they don‘t want to be sick, but their behaviour tells a different story: they usually revel in the attention and medications and treatments they get and might even use them to show off or garner empathy. They might seek out tens and scores of nth opinions to get the desired result of a diagnosis they fixed on and will be angry at or might even smear campaign doctors who do not find that that‘s the case (caveat: some chronic health issues are known to be dismissed for years or even decades until proper diagnosis, so that alone is not an indicator). They’re oftentimes frequent fliers in the ER for no actual ER reason (and might be malingering, e.g. drug seeking; although drug seeking and FD are separate issues that can occur independently). They might deliberately injure themselves or others - some to the point of death or getting whole limbs amputated through repeat self-infection with fecal matter and repeat messing with healing. It‘s a self-harming (or other-harming if imposed on another) form of attempted empathy vampirism, in a way. That also explains why it‘s predominantly done by people with personality disorders that come with an empathy deficit and self-centeredness (in a twisted way because the self is unstable in those people and requires an other as a reaction mirror to give them a sense of self, hence the constant self-drama to elicit a reaction from others).

ETA Fun fact: men are statistically more likely to exhibit FD behaviours. I believe the gender ratio is ~60/40 iirc. Faking Women just get talked more about and exposed quicker because medical professionals tend to treat all women‘s accounts of their alleged health issues with distrust no matter whether they‘re real or indeed (rarely) faked.

I’m wondering too if it was how she manipulated your dad to come back from work trips early

I’m so sorry this happened to you and your brother. If she was always making up maladies for herself (like her friend has cancer and then all the sudden she has cancer too and is blasting it on Fb to get attention) I would consider that mbp. But because she did it with her own children, I consider it more of a Florence nightingale syndrome type thing. She wanted you guys to be sick so she could take care of you and look important that way.

It’s situations like yours that remind me of the evil mom in “the 6th sense” that intentionally poisoned her kids. It’s so sickening to see this happen.

I had a similar experience with my mother…

In and out of the hospital in Europe (2 stays for suspicious salmonella poisoning)….moved to Canada under my father’s supervision and medical indifference, and all of a sudden her focus was elsewhere and she was endlessly kicking me out of the house to “go play.” It was a miracle you see? j/k She had a deathly ill baby that was constantly suspected of anemia but after our move, according to her, I wasn’t sick once for years to come. I think in actuality she just changed her MO and any time I became ill she would accuse me of faking it.

When my brother was born 10 years later he was neglected so badly after his initial baby phase that he developed autistic like symptoms. He would be left on the computer 6am - 6pm with pizza pops he could make himself from the time he was 4 years old. He’s only now learning the basics of socialization. Her mental illness destroyed his life. (I suspect she had post partum because she would complain that my infant brother wasn’t bonding with her and cuddling her the way I had, and was extremely explosive at the time).

My mother revealed in the martyrdom of mothering a special needs child while not even satisfying my brother’s very basic needs. He never acted out in school or with me the was he would around her….she would instigate fights by threatening to throw away his computer games, so she could wrestle him to the ground (like she was taught by autistic specialists in the field) and then cry hysterically afterwards while he hyperventilated. I think she was using him as a release to her own pent up anxieties.

It was so messed up to watch, and I felt so helpless and confused. I always assumed she new better than me because I didn’t have the life experience and she loved to play nurse…until of course shit got really twisted and obviously morally wrong.

She dominated his life and isolated him further from his friends and family. She would accuse my father of not caring about his children and weaponized us against him. She would manipulate my brother into begging my alcoholic father to stop drinking. I think he became dangerously clinically depressed at 11 (just like I did at his age).

I promised myself I would get him out one day but wasn’t able to do much until my mother started splitting my brother black when I moved out. Then I was temporarily the golden child and I was to get him “off her hands” because she “had lost the ability to love him.”

Even then the FOG was so solidly in place that I thought she was still my saintly mother, endlessly sacrificing herself completely and perpetually at her wits end. I’m sure we all know the pull of the temporary golden child statues when we’ve been painted black for years. Cognitive dissonance is weird like that.

So I started to invite him over for dinners at my place and it turned out there wasn’t anything wrong with him. He was just really quite and didn’t understand boundaries. But when I’d ask him not to do something (like eat all my cereal cause I was pretty broke at the time) he’d instantly compensate (and show up with his own groceries). He was much more mature by default than she was ever able to become. This by the way quickly turned into “he likes your cooking better” “he loves you more” “you’re turning him against me” and so forth.

Anyway, my point is….if it feels icky in your body, it’s probably true. It takes us a lot to wake up to the fuckery of our primary care givers because we’re so invested in them being our caregivers. I tend to think that by the time we, as their children recognize the discrepancies in their behaviour, it’s long since been painfully obvious to the bystanders and practitioners that truly care for us.

My brother and I barely mentally survived our childhoods….and I know in my bones that I would never survive another do over. Her presence derails my existence to such an extent that it would be literal mental suicide to let her back into my life again.

Yes that sounds plausible

I’m so sorry you’re having such a horrible revelation. It’s awful to think that our parent might lie like that, let alone induce illness. Unfortunately, I agree that it’s in the realm of possibility. BPD parents seem to thrive off of unprovable statements and vague situations where their illogic may not be easily spotted or questioned. A true fog.

I’ll never know for sure, but I recently realized that my uBPD mom may have lied about or at least exaggerated her abuse by my father. I feel awful even thinking that. But I know how she twists words and generally tried to poison my sister and I against him. You never really know what someone is capable of and certainly don’t want to think someone meant to care for you could be manipulating you.

I have very similarly suspicions about my very sickly childhood. My therapist agrees that it doesn’t actually matter if she did it or not — the fact that it is a believable possibility is the point. You know what your mother is capable of. You will probably never know for certain what she actually did, but she was sick enough to do it, and you have to heal from that.

I think sometimes we are met with realizations like this and connected dots, but we are left with no concrete proof and no one to get answers from.

Our realities were manipulated by an unreliable narrator and now that we realize we've been living a life of fiction, it's hard to know what was real in the fog of abuse and neglect we lived in.

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