MYTHOMANIA: SYMPTOMS, CAUSES, CONSEQUENCES, TREATMENT - ECONOMÍA - 2025

The mythomania or pathological lie is a psychological condition that causes those who suffer from it the need to lie and constantly distort reality, in order to get others to admire or pay attention to them. Mythomaniacs are aware that they are lying, but at very specific moments they can come to believe their own stories.

Mythomania was first described by Anton Delbrück, a Swiss-born psychiatrist who studied compulsive lying in his patients. According to this author and subsequent research on the subject, the main motivation of pathological liars is to try to impress others by pretending that they lead an exciting, unique and adventurous life.

However, those who suffer from this pathology are perfectly aware that their existence is far from what they are telling. In fact, they often consider their life to be boring and empty, so they feel a strong rejection of their routine and try to escape it through their lies.

In most cases, the stories of individuals with mythomania sound perfectly credible, making them difficult to identify. Therefore, many times those around them do not discover that they have been interacting with a pathological liar until they happen to find evidence that one of their stories is not true.

Symptoms

To consider that a person has mythomania, it is necessary that they lie repeatedly and constantly. However, in addition to this there must also be other symptoms related to the act of misrepresenting the truth. Next we will see what are the most common symptoms of people with this pathology.

1- His lies do not seem to produce a concrete benefit

In most cases, when people lie they do so to avoid a consequence that they believe will be negative in their life. For example, a child whose parents behave violently when he gets poor grades might lie about the results of his last test to avoid being angry with him.

The lies of people with mythomania are different. These individuals make up stories and misrepresent the truth for no apparent purpose, rather than for any particular benefit. This tends to be very disconcerting to the individuals around them when they are discovered, as they cannot understand why the liar is acting this way.

Thus, for example, a person with mythomania could talk for days about the new car that has been bought; and later, your interlocutors would discover that you have not actually purchased a new vehicle.

2- The stories they tell are usually very convincing

One of the most important traits of people with mythomania is that they tend to tell very convoluted, dramatic, and detailed stories. They often include elements that are hard to believe in, and are far removed from what usually happens in most people's lives. However, at the same time they are able to convince others that what they say is true.

Thus, mythomaniacs are usually very charismatic people, with the ability to move others and make them believe that what they say is true. On the other hand, they tend to work a lot on their stories before broadcasting them, so they can answer almost any question about them and give a great deal of detail.

3- They are heroes or victims in their own stories

The lies that people with mythomania tell are not usually neutral, but involve strange, unusual or highly exaggerated situations. As if this were not enough, in a great majority of cases these stories make them appear as very heroic individuals, or as victims of very negative circumstances.

For example, the pathological liar may make up a story about having suffered an armed robbery while walking down the street, and that all of his money has been stolen; Or you can talk about how a few years ago you managed to win a million euros playing on the stock market and then lost it all in a streak of bad luck.

The intention when telling these exaggerated stories is to create very powerful emotions in their interlocutors, such as grief, admiration, sympathy or acceptance.

4- Sometimes they believe their own lies

In most cases, pathological liars are perfectly aware that they are not telling the truth. They create their stories with the aim of deceiving others, and therefore they spend a lot of time thinking about how to manipulate the facts or what lies are going to be the most effective in achieving the emotional validation they seek.

However, different research on this topic suggests that sometimes people with mythomania are able to convince themselves that some of their stories are real. In other cases, these individuals do not believe the content of their lies, but they do internalize the vision they present of themselves in them.

Causes

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As is often the case when we talk about psychological conditions, no single cause has been found that can explain mythomania alone. In fact, there is a strong debate about whether this pathology can be considered an independent disorder, or if it is rather a symptom of other more serious mental illnesses.

At this time, the DSM-V (the most widely used diagnostic manual in the field of psychology) does not include mythomania as an independent pathology. On the contrary, within the field of mental health, compulsive lies are understood as a symptom of other disorders, such as bipolar, narcissistic personality, or borderline personality.

At a lower level, some researchers believe that the urge to mind compulsively is caused by problems with self-esteem, past trauma, or the need to get more attention than the person is currently receiving.

On the other hand, some psychologists believe that the person's environment plays a very important role in compulsive lies. It is believed that some cultures or environments may reward making up great stories more than others as a way of gaining attention or recognition, which would make mythomania more likely.

Consequences

Although in many cases lies can have some short-term benefits, mythomania often has serious consequences in the long run. For example, people who suffer from this condition can feel very high stress due to having to remember their own lies and the details of them.

On the other hand, individuals with this pathology often feel that they have to lead a life that is at the level of their own inventions, which most of the time is practically impossible.

In this way, they feel rejection towards the conditions in which they live, which paradoxically worsens their self-esteem even more and therefore the symptoms of mythomania.

In the very long term, if the underlying causes are not solved, people with this disorder often end up developing other more serious problems, related to their low self-concept, lack of honesty in their relationships and their unresolved need for attention from other people.

External consequences

However, not all the negative consequences derived from mythomania have to do with the self-esteem or emotional well-being of those affected. On many occasions, the individuals around them end up discovering the lies that they have been telling them, which usually causes great problems in their relationships.

Thus, when people close to a mythomaniac realize that he has been lying to them, they often feel a great rejection of him, which further aggravates their self-esteem problems and need for attention. Lies can also cause employment or even legal problems for them, making the situation even worse.

Treatment

The treatment of mythomania is usually quite complicated, mainly because people who suffer from this condition often do not admit that they have a problem. To do so would imply acknowledging that the life they have built in their imagination is false, and would force them to confront their low self-esteem and the underlying causes of the pathology.

However, once these people decide to change, there are many different approaches that can go a long way toward ending pathological lying. Most of them will involve finding out what caused the mythomania in the first place and working on it.

Thus, for example, cognitive-behavioral therapy will try to find the negative beliefs that the person has about themselves and that are leading them to think that lying is their only way out. A psychoanalyst, on the other hand, would choose to detect and resolve past traumas that have ended up causing the pathology.

On the other hand, as we have already seen, mythomania is sometimes a symptom of other more serious psychological conditions. In these cases, the urge to lie compulsively will tend to disappear as the underlying problems are resolved through a combination of therapy and medication.

References

1. "Compulsive lying" in: Good Therapy. Retrieved on: October 31, 2019 from Good Therapy: goodtherapy.org.
2. "What to know about pathological liars" in: Medical News Today. Retrieved on: October 31, 2019 from Medical News Today: medicalnewstoday.com.
3. "Mythomania: symptoms, causes and treatment in children and adults" in: Psychology and Mind. Retrieved on: October 31, 2019 from Psychology and Mind: psicologiaymente.com.
4. "How Do I Cope with Someone Being a Pathological Liar?" in: Health Line. Retrieved on: October 31, 2019 from Health Line: healthline.com.
5. "Pathological lying" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: October 31, 2019 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.