All that foul language and bile...and yet STILL no economic formula? You're slowly coming to the conclusion how bad you look in this string...aren't you, Georgie?
What are the Symptoms?
- Frequent Unnecessary Dishonesty
The symptom most easily recognized when diagnosing Compulsive Lying Disorder is frequent unnecessary dishonesty. Individuals will lie about anything and everything, even in cases when they have nothing to gain from concealing the truth. For example, an individual affected with this unfortunate disorder may lie when asked what his or her favorite food or drink is. In the majority of situations in which this question is asked there is no logical reason for answering dishonestly, yet a compulsive liar will automatically. This often results in inconsistency in relationships when the compulsive liar happens to be incapable of keeping track of his or her lies.
- Attention Seeking Behavior
Compulsive lying disorder often develops very early in childhood due to a child’s need or desire to seek out attention from caregivers and peers. By fabricating stories in childhood, they often gained the fascination and disbelief of those around them, which led to others paying more attention to the extraordinary nature of the child’s story. Children have vivid imaginations, so at first parents often brush off the child’s lies and allow them to get away with it under the assumption that the child will simply “grow out of it”. However, if the lying behavior is allowed to go on too long, then it becomes nearly irreparable and compulsive lying disorder develops.
Compulsive liars feel the constant need to convey to others that they are superior and deserving of more attention then the other children in their cohort. In order to achieve this goal, they construct elaborate stories about themselves, often involving fantastic adventures and incredible feats that are intended to display them as a hero in the eyes of their peers. However, once the individual is caught in the lie, they are looked upon with contempt and dislike, which then causes them to lie even more in order to shake the unpleasant label. Once the compulsive liar reaches adulthood, these mystical stories because more grounded in nature, but still maintain their awe-inspiring intent.
Though compulsive liars often take extreme care to keep others under the spell of their deception, once in awhile the web of lies unravels and the liar is seen as is without any of his dishonest walls. When this occurs, the liar works quickly and frantically to rebuild those walls, constructing more lies in order to rebuild himself into what he was previously seen as. This often involves elaborate stories of being falsely accused, constructing lie after lie with the intention of defending his or her supposed innocence. If this method, as well as any other attempt at lying, fails and the compulsive liar is forced to tell the truth, he or she will often become incredibly nervous and display a great deal of uncomfortable behavior.
- Same Story, Different Characters
Plagiarism is a key factor in the life of a compulsive liar. This often involves twisting and warping stories heard from peers, acquaintances, or movie plotlines into plausible adventures that could have occurred in the liar’s life. Crafting these storylines takes a great deal of effort on the part of the individual since the biggest fear of a compulsive liar is being “found out”. Of course, much of this effort is done subconsciously, which results in individuals being unable to recall that the story is a lie. If a compulsive liar was attached to a lie detector machine, it’s likely that their statements would come across as the truth simply because they’ve told them so many times that they sincerely believe the fabricated event actually occurred.
