Proof that she fakes psychosis. Long post, sorry.
I haven’t seen my mum in 10 years and was no contact for about 2. After that we texted sporadically and had a few phone calls. For context she’s always been physically and mentally ill, though I’ve come to see that a great many of the physical illnesses have been either factitious or completely made up. I knew that she’d sometimes exaggerate her mental illness to get out of tricky conversations but I never thought the full on psychotic breaks were an act. She’s told me that she hears voices constantly, and has schizo-affective disorder (previously she’s said she has bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, dissociative disorder, PTSD,). However, she also worked in a top security psychiatric hospital for 20 years and then a prison for another 15 and never took anti psychotics so I always had my doubts about the ‘constantly hearing voices’ thing, though I’ve never voiced them to her.
Anyway, we had a phone conversation a couple of months ago and it got into rocky territory. She wanted to know why we hadn’t seen eachother in 10 years. Now, she knows perfectly well why because we’ve had this conversation many many times so I tried to get out of it this time. Still, she (calmly) asked to know again. So I told her some of the things that led up to the rift: stuff like telling me she should never have had kids, that my dad never wanted kids, that I was only born alive because god wanted to make her happy… not picking up the phone when I was in labour and refusing to meet the baby because my in-laws had first, faking an overdose at my dads funeral and telling me she hoped my husband dies soon so id know how she felt etc etc.
Anyway, she denied it all, despite having many times in the past admitting it. Then she said I was lying. Then she said she didn’t remember any of it. I replied ‘you do, but let’s just say you don’t remember… what kind of a person does and says these terrible things and doesn’t remember doing it?’
She went into a full psychotic episode. She’s talking to my dead dad, to her mother, she’s screaming and babbling. Normally when this happens I calm her down, get her to take her medication. This time I stayed silent. After a while she stops like she’s turned off a tap and I hear her making a call from her landline. She thought I’d hung up! Instead I listened to her call her friend and had a whole, very calm conversation about the weather, about her holiday and (briefly) about me. ‘She was bringing up all this old stuff, and ofcourse I knew what she was talking about but I didn’t want to get into it with her, so I just told her I didn’t remember.’
So I texted her while she was on the landline to her friend, saying I was hearing everything, how interesting it was to hear how she characterised our conversation and wow! What a quick and full recovery from a psychotic break she’d made.
I got a text later from her telling me ’as soon as I didn’t have to hear your voice I felt a lot better.’ Since then she’s been texting me as if nothing has happened. I haven’t replied.
It was fucking insane.I was in shock for a week or so, but finally have proof that she’s been faking psychosis has helped me a lot. I’ll never speak to her again.
sorry for the long post, I just wanted to share. Heres my cat
