People that lie or exaggerate

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Generally I cannot tell an untruth. If I were to, I would feel cognitive dissonance, it makes me feel weird inside, I'd ruminate, it's just not in my nature...

However I have a family member who persistently exaggerates and distorts the truth.

The latest one I was told my brother (who I haven't seen for a long while) was 6 stone and would most likely be dead within 5 years. I know what 6 stone looks like. Left me feeling very anxious for two days.

I asked my mother who sees him a lot and told me it was a load of rubbish - he's underweight but nothing like that.

Why would someone do that?

Exaggeration for emphasis

Manipulation

Your family member just guessed your brothers weight wrong

It is easy to overestimate or underestimate

Bakers dozen

"The price is right"


Six stone was a wrong guess, but, without a scale, any estimate can't be precise

My mum has a habit of exaggerating. Before I went on meds I used to have outbursts, and I always remembered when I last had one, and sometimes a few weeks could go by before I had another one. But my mum said that I had an outburst every day. I said, "no, I do not have an outburst every single day, did I have an outburst yesterday?" and she was like, "well, no, but you have an outburst nearly every day", and that still wasn't right. So I told her to give her definition of 'outburst', and she said "screaming, crying, slamming doors, swearing, upsetting everybody", but every time I said that those don't occur every day or even every other day, she insisted that they did. So I think she was just thinking of all the days I DID have an outburst instead of thinking of all the days I did NOT have an outburst. I'd say I had an outburst less than 10 times a year, and my outbursts only lasted an hour or less, so it's not like they went on for days at a time.

Ask your mum why , she'd probably be able to give you a more accurate answer

An astonishing (to me) percentage of people lie or grossly exaggerate routinely, seemingly automatically, and then get angry if you call them on it. I'll never understand this.

Perhaps they don't understand imperial measurements?
They probably meant 6 kilometres...

Don't you mean the percentage of neurotypical people lie or grossly exaggerate routinely?
Isn't indiscriminate lying considered rare amongst autistics?

I see lying as a form of power exploitation...
I manifestation of Nietzche's "Will to power"...

I watched a Dr. Phil episode about a compulsive lire. I nearly lost my lunch. I could never lie.

Tell that to the Gestapo...

Joking

Some idiots think everything unexpected is hilarious

Or should be funny


Lying

Some penis had the nerve to tell me that it was "lying" for me to ask him to call me "he" instead of "she". San Diego 2006. Ended up the penis was homophobic

Speak figuretively



Secondary definition

Misheard

I said "neuroplasticity" and counselor Jeanne Courtney thought I said "neurodiverse"

Misunderstood

Miss the point

Exaggerating



Logical fallacy

Manipulation

Implications

This specifically was an exaggeration. It's meant to imply that your brother is very underweight and sickly looking to them.

People use exaggerations for a lot things, sometimes it's done simply to drive home a fact, idea, or perception. It can be out of surprise/shock, out of concern, to bring attention to themselves, they get a kick out of disconcerting others, they might do it to mean, some people will do it without even realizing they are or they just do it in a conversational manner.

Most people I think wouldn't consider an exaggeration as an untruth. Truly it does distort but people that will exaggerate tend not to think about that too much.

It always surprises me when I catch people saying something that they absolutely think is them telling the truth but various details and facts have been misconstrued or straight up false. I think that generally happens when our biases get mixed in but I still find it strange. If I don't remember something exactly, then that's all there is. My mind doesn't try to fill in the gaps with what it thinks it was.

Anyway, most people that exaggerate and tells lies are typically attention seeking.

There are a couple of people in my family who way over exaggerate. It’s funny when they exaggerate something they’ve initially misinterpreted. It’s really easy to see how rumors start when I’m around them.

When they were around me once, they misunderstood something I said and then exaggerated it into a full scene that would never resemble something I’d actually do or say.

I’ve learned to take anything they say with a grain of salt.

It depends on the context too. Some exaggerations are just a way of expressing emotion and aren't to be taken literally. For example, when I volunteered for a charity we got loads of bags of donations all at once, and the boss said to us, "we've got about a thousand bags of donations just come", but I knew it wasn't a thousand. When she said "a thousand", I automatically knew she really meant "a lot, more than usual". There was only about 15 bags in total.

But it's when people deliberately use exaggeration to convince or to make the situation sound far worse than what it is, is what annoys me. Like what I mentioned in another post in this thread about my mum saying that I had meltdowns every day. She was focusing too much on the few times I did have a meltdown vs the many times I didn't have a meltdown. That kind of exaggeration annoys me.

Some precious lil "people" love making vague statements that are literally correct but grossly misleading

Logical fallacy

Statements involving the word "people" are correct, as long as two people on the planet are like that. "People" sounds like seven billion people, but literally means two


Words with multiple definitions


The counselor said her ex boyfriend "hurt" her . Imagine what the public defender would ask her. Cross examination. Physically or emotionally? Ask the boyfriend if she "hurt" him. We're they in a wrestling match? Did she file a restraining order?


Every action and statement "helps", "hurts", both or neither


You can't guarantee just the first two






There are things nobody has a method of knowing


Confidence not proportional to competence



Ambiguous words

"You got mad", Amy lee scheel b***h had the nerve to tell me





"Mad" is vague


The implication was that the b***h believed that I had a moral obligation to, passive aggressively tolerating everything she did. Legal or illegal


Anything other than tolerance is "you got mad"




Judgmental and manipulative



Some things are subjective


"Disrespectful"


You can't measure "respect"


"All animals have a right to be happy"




Idiots act like they have a moral right to be happy at all times and whenever they are not happy, someone must've violated their stupidass "rights"


Assumptions

Attitude


Bias

Ulterior motive

Connotation

Denotation

People tend to assume that I exaggerate or lie, probably mostly to get attention, even though I don't, and I don't remember ever doing it. For example, I can count on one hand, with fingers left over, the number of people who have spoken with me in person who believe me when I say that I have selective mutism and try to explain that there are times when I am literally incapable of forcing my vocal cords to move no matter how hard I try - they always insist that I simply don't want to talk (yes, several people have flat-out told me that - including my dad, interrupting me while I was trying to explain to say that). And whenever I have a medical/pain-related complaint of any sort, I can probably count on people assuming I'm exaggerating it if I mention it at all, even though I actually tend to do the opposite. I really have no idea what, but it seems that something about me says "I'm an exaggerating attention-seeker."

"it was THIS BIG!!"
"no it wasn't."
"ok, it was THIS BIG."
"are you sure about that?"
"well, mebbe it was.....this big."