pathological lying

And even when they're being told to the very people who can confirm them, he's steadfast in his lies, and we're talking about law enforcement in, especially in this example.

Pathological lying isn't simply someone who just lies a lot.

It's a clinical phenomenon that sometimes is called pseudologia fantastica, where deception becomes pervasive and essentially a part of the person's way of functioning.

Jean-Claude is confronted with evidence that he doesn't work for the WHO, and instead of realizing that his deception is at its end, he instead produces another organization that doesn't even exist.

Lying is his default response because his reality is intolerable, and it's become his coping mechanism, and that's pathological.

She really is, I've, I've said this before, she is the most talented liar, um, I've ever met.

There's a term researchers use for extreme, elaborate, and persistent lying, pseudologia fantastica, sometimes described as pathological lying, and in these cases, the lie creates more problems than it solves, and we're about to see that pattern repeatedly when in 2004, Casey Anthony becomes pregnant.

Casey Anthony is now 19 years old, and she's pregnant, and now she's starting to show, and she goes to a wedding with her mom, and all these people were whispering and saying, "I, I think Casey's pregnant." And somebody said to Cindy Anthony, "I think Casey's pregnant." And Cindy said back to her, "No, she'd have to have sex to get pregnant." There was this level of denial that ran very deep in the Anthony family.

In a matter of months, Casey's pregnancy is going to become physically impossible to hide.

No, it's not.

It is a specific, severe phenotype defined by two distinct clinical features, right? Peregrination and pseudologia fantastica.

Let's break those down.

Sure.

They bolt.

They simply abscond, pack their bags, adopt a new, often grandiose alias, and present to a new A&E 100 miles away to begin the cycle anew.

And when they arrive at that new A&E, they deploy the second feature, which is pseudologia fantastica.

Yes.

is hers.

It is about marrying a compulsive liar or pathological liar.

And when I watched it, I just thought that's not my story.

I'm not angry.

What's the name of your

book? The Stories We Told.

The Dance Between a Codependent and a Compulsive Liar.

And where can people get that?

Got it.

And then what's pathological lying?

And then typically involves in a clear motive such as seeking attention-

Ah

[laughs]

Snoop.

Speaking of Snoop, I, where does kleptomania fall under compulsive or pathological lying, or is it like completely a separate thing?

I think kleptomania-

That's okay.

So my only resort at that point in time was pathological lying.

Pathological lying.

This is a condition of A, your parents probably didn't give you enough attention.

So in any sort of desire and grasp for attention, anywhere you can get it, you just start lying either to fit in, to get attention, to feel wanted, to feel desired.

You have nothing interesting about you.

And so you lie about it.

That is the condition of pathological lying.

Happy Friday everybody! I've got an interesting one for you today because it's about something that most of us have got slightly wrong in our heads, I think, and that's compulsive lying.

When people hear the phrase compulsive liar, they often picture somebody who's cold and calculating, who's sat there working out exactly what story is going to get them what they want.

And yeah, sometimes that's what it looks like from the outside.

But that's rarely what's going on underneath.

Most compulsive lying isn't strategic at all.

It's automatic.

It's fast.

Here's the bit that trips people up, you see.

But either way, I just thought it might be fun to explore.

So in particular, this is the Siddha known as Tagannapa, the compulsive liar.

And this particular individual was not a practitioner in the story when he began, but he was a compulsive liar and ended up finding a very qualified teacher who he could confess in and really feel some regret for just compulsively lying to others and not knowing what to do about it.

And very skillfully, this particular teacher actually gave him the practice related to Mahamudra of not abandoning the klesha, not abandoning the lying directly.

So he wasn't encouraging him to continue to lie, but he was using the very thing that the man was already good at to attain realization of Mahamudra or emptiness.

I kind

of like pathological liars.

I think they're funny to me.

They make life more interesting.