#Munchausen

[megalynnan]

Me watching anything Ari Aster has made

[redacted-coiner]

All are Munchausen

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DNI is listed within my pinned post. Please go read it before interacting with any part of my content. Ask to tag!

@kiruliom

[kiruliom]

you know what mental disorder people make hard to talk about even within communities built on it, besides paras?

munchausens.

and I get the reasoning, its scary. even if the whole disorder's thing being faking another disorder/illness/trauma wasnt doing it, fakeclaimers love to abuse the word until it loses its meaning.

so as someone who actually has it Id like to clear some stuff up

first of all, this doesnt mean Im faking any of my conditions, maybe not all of them are entirely accurate, but thats because I havent been able to find disorders that better describe it. Ive researched each of my conditions religiously, and talked most of them with my psychologist, who we already agreed I shouldnt get a medical diagnosis for because it could literally ruin my future where I live.

we're not "transabled", yes a portion of our community unfortunately does swing that way, but thats because thats the only community that wont immedietly flip its shit when you say "hey I dont actually have this disorder but I feel like I should have it" and thats so fucking sad. Im very anti-transabled and similar things. hell, even I was terrified of bringing it up until now.

its not a delusion, not for me, at least. I know I dont have the disorders I feel like I should have. so its not a mental equivelant of BIID. most of us feel that way because we're neglected, or feel we should have been affected worse, and some part of us grips to the false fact that maybe if we were hurt worse people would actually care, even if deep down we do know better.

it is incredibly rare. rarer than plurality even. so most fakeclaimers who immedietly resort to blaming munchausens for disabled people they claim are cringe, guess what!! that shits even rarer than whatever bullshit you claim cringy teens are faking.

if you believe someone is faking a disorder, let them!! ignore them!!! personally Id let 1000 people get away with faking shit than fakeclaim someone who actually has that disorder you claim theyre faking. and similar to delusions, it often makes us 'get into character' even harder, and just ruins our mood and makes actually disordered people around us insecure as well. there is no 'right' way to be disordered.

me, personally? Ive never gone as far as to fake a disorder, but god damn did I have the urge to and still do. I would be that whole 'he has every mental illness' meme if I didnt have as much self control as I did. but honestly would you even know if I did? I wouldnt tell you. because that means Id no longer get the attention I already wasnt getting because realistically no one cares and those that do are annoyingly pitying about it.

if any of you have questions about this, dont be afraid to ask, as long as you dont accuse me of shit Id love to talk about it. I just want more information on us out there :(

fakeclaimers fuck off or Ill rip your throat out

-Reggie and Velvet

[lovesick0cupid]

can ppl stop bringing hpd and munchausen up just when it comes to faking disabilities. like can we stop being the scapegoats for Every diasbility faker ever.

bitches when im actually severely disabled and im not faking it and even the sickness i do fake is via hurting myself. girl its a disorder for a reason ill drink straight poison for a little love and affection

[cinemphatic]

Munchausen (2013) dir Ari Aster

[zombilenium]

Villa del Barone di Munchausen, Strevi, Piedmont, Italy,

Roman Robroek Photography

[ghostowlattic]

Baron Munchausen Extracting the Souls of Violins and Cellos Inside an Opium Dream

ghost owl attic

[lessvlese]

[zeldaspeaks]

In my opinion, the saddest movie that Ari Aster has made is Munchausen. Most of his films involve deeply upsetting, disturbing, and devastating events that the characters within them have to live through, but the majority of the resultant character responses are contextually understandable or even expected. Munchausen, however, presents the viewer with a fairly common scenario and gives it an ending that hurts so strongly because it's plausible, but not at all proportional to the events that led up to it.

A loving, devoted Mother wants to be her son's mom for just a little bit longer. She tries a subtle tactic that, as far as she knows, won't cause anyone major harm. Now she's not a mom anymore, and her baby is dead and gone forever.

Nobody does "Family Horror" like this guy.

[safaexists]

munchausen's is holding yourself back from drinking rubbing alcohol to seem sicker munchausen's is having celiac disease and wanting to intentionally eat gluten for illness munchausen's is intentionally avoiding healthy solutions for your very real problems because you can't let them go this is not an easy disease and the stigma surrounding it is shameful 'fakers' need help too.

[savelonkar]

CHERRIE NEVER HAD CANCER

Jesus said the truth will set you free. It’s time for me to speak my truth. I’m hoping one day it will set me free. All I want is peace in this life: peace of mind, peace in interactions, peace in relationships. Unfortunately, all my ex wants is war.

You see, we were together for 20 years. We built a life together and raised six kids. It was never easy. Did we struggle from time to time? Certainly, as would any couple. But in 2016, it all went downhill from there. That was the year she conjured up the fake cancer. Yup, you read that right.

CHERRIE NEVER HAD CANCER

Around the time Cherrie turned 35, I was already 41-ish, and had personally started going to the doctor to get the routine checkups you would as an aging individual. Cherrie had never really done the same, so I suggested she see the breast doctor since she was 35 and all. The first time she went for a check-up, or boob-smashing, she informed the breast doctor that her father had cancer years ago. The next appointment, I went along with Cherrie. At the time, I was working full-time, as I was always the sole provider, and I was teaching and working through my email during the appointment. After all, this was just a checkup, right? During the appointment, the doctor asked if anyone else in Cherrie’s family had gotten cancer as of late, and it just so happened that her aunt Carol, her mother’s sister, had breast cancer pretty recently. When the doctor heard that, she left the room for a few minutes, then came back. When she returned, she told Cherrie she would now need a double mastectomy. I admit I was half-listening when she said that. I was shocked, and like, “Can we get a second opinion?” The doctor explained that this was a preventative measure, based on an algorithm, and insurance companies started approving of this procedure, as it saves them money in the long run. Angelina Jolie was one that many will remember having done this same thing. When we went home, I started looking up other alternatives. I told Cherrie she should see another doctor, get another opinion, look at other options. Why did she have to do ANYTHING? There is NO CANCER. Plus, we were up to six kids at that time. Our littlest guy was just nine months old, and breastfeeding. Cherrie talked to family and friends, and then went full-tilt on doing the double mastectomy. She started a Facebook “tribe” to catalog her story, she started “Cherrie’s tribe” on Facebook, and started gathering followers, to follow her pseudo cancer story. 

She died her hair purple, an FU to the pink that represents breast cancer. She got others to wear purple to support. A few weeks later, in February, she gathered myself and a few friends, and she was singing and dancing and rapping all the way to the operating room. She fist-pumped to the Australian Sia/David Guetta’s Titanium. I really did not have much time to process all of this. With everything that was happening, we also had six kids, ranging from less than a year, all the way to eight years of age. All I really understood was that Cherrie was steadfast through this whole thing.

Three or four hours into Cherrie’s double mastectomy, Dr. K, the breast surgeon, came out and found me. I was grading a bunch of classes to pass the time. “Good news!” “We did not find any cancer.” “I know,” I said to myself, relieved but then again, there was NEVER any signs of CANCER. Check this actual post from her good friend that was at the hospital at that time:

UPDATE: first portion of the surgery (the bi-lateral mastectomy) is complete and "went off without a hitch" and everything looked good. The breast surgeon is “fairly certain pathology on the breast tissue will come back benign". Since Cherrie had no active cancer and the suspicious lymph node appears to have been only an infection as it shrunk back to normal size (cancerous lymph nodes do not do that without help) there is a 1-3% chance of anything showing up. Pathology results will be back Monday. They did not do a node biopsy or sentinel node biopsy as the node is normal, it is just standard procedure to send the breast tissue to pathology. The plastic surgeon is doing her portion now (placing the expanders) and should be done in the next 2 hours.

Read that again. That was the truth.

Four hours later, Cherrie was boob-free. For the greater part of the next two years, as Cherrie lie there healing and posting about her story on the “tribe” page, the majority of the days and nights at home, I became the kids’ father and mother all wrapped up in one. Our littlest child was not even a year old when she had the big surgery, so he had to stop breastfeeding, and he could not even go onto his mommy’s lap (due to all the surgeries and incisions) for a couple of months. Every few months, her body would not react well to its healing, there’d be an infection, the list goes on, and she would have to go in for more surgeries (first to heal something that was not healing correctly, and eventually for reconstruction). When the same breast surgeon went in there at the end of April, they called it a bilateral necrosis and unilateral infection. Dead tissue was removed, and the infection was cleaned. 

Fast forward to today, I combed through Cherrie’s Tribe page, because I really wasn’t sure where the fake cancer story started, when she went from saying there was no cancer, to saying she was a cancer survivor. But I can bet that Cherrie knew where this story was going even before she got to the hospital for that first surgery. It was primed and fluffed to be a well-scripted string of half-truths and lies.

You see, Cherrie has this weird thing. She takes bits and pieces of other peoples’ stories, or she crafts her own stories to garner attention or favor or money, and then she morphs them into what she says is her own story. You know that lady that made up crap about her daughter Gypsy Rose? Well, Cherrie makes up crap about her own conditions and diagnoses. I would not figure all of this out until after we had split, years later.

Let me give you an example. Over the years, Cherrie said she had 11 miscarriages. That’s right, she said she had 11 miscarriages with me. More often than not, I would get a call while at work, and she would tell me she “lost the baby.” I grieved hard every fricking time. There was only one time I remember going to the doctor, during one of our “pregnancies,” and then they told us that we no longer had a baby. There was one time, we had to do a D&C (Dilation and Curettage), and that really happened. But all the others, like the other 9? Who knows if they ever happened. You know, Cherrie was engaged to a guy that was already married, before I was in the picture, back in 2000-2001. He had an apartment with Cherrie, while his wife and their babies lived in a neighboring suburb. To throw the scent off, Cherrie’s then “fiancé” informed his actual wife that he just had a crashpad w/Cherrie, as they were flight attendants together. He also said that Cherrie contracted HIV at a very young age due to all the blood transfusions she had as a child. The actual wife grew suspicious, as her husband had many late night/early morning phone calls with Cherrie. There was one phone call she overheard, when her husband was speaking to Cherrie, he said, “Everything is gonna be alright, as long as I continue to get sympathy from my wife.” Back in 2001, Cherrie went with her mother and her “fiancé” and bought an engagement ring/wedding band set. The rings cost her mother $5500. The "fiance" that was already married, to his college sweetheart. His actual wife had a baby in 2000, they had another baby in 2002. Cherrie and her "fiancé" were together in 2001. Cherrie told me that she got pregnant with his baby, too, and then lost it. Who knows if that ever happened.

Back to the “cancer.”

Here’s the thing, she NEVER HAD CANCER. It was all a lie. She started fabricating the “cancer story” immediately after she came home from her double mastectomy. Like IMMEDIATELY, like the day or two after she was able to come home. March 1st, 2016, to be exact. She became my ghost writer, and put a bunch of loving husband posts and fictitious information about her surgery and her recovery. She did this for two entire years! When you look through the Cherrie’s Tribe page on Facebook, I’ll bet like 1-2% of the posts “by me” were actually written by me. In fact, when Cherrie was in the hospital (the first time, February 2016), she asked for my Facebook login and password. This was all a setup, one that helped her gain followers to follow her FAKE CANCER story. While she was healing, she was on lots of drugs, pain meds and such. She sat their like a vegetable many days, sat their in a very nice big electronic lounge chair that one of her friends purchased with their bingo or knitting club money. We had a Meal Train on and off for like two years, and since we did not have any relatives here in Arizona, sometimes relatives would come to visit. “What can I do to help?” they all asked me. I told them that I would take care of all the six kids, and their best efforts were to stay by Cherrie’s side, make sure she is taking her pain meds, and be there for her. By the time I would get to bed, I would be absolutely beat, from working all day, and running around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to create some normalcy with the daily routine for our kids in an abnormal situation. Once Cherrie was “healed,” she started taking girlfriend trips immediately, to celebrate her “beating cancer.” It was all a lie, one that she used to broadcast a fake condition, and one that helped her grow socially to grandiose proportions. After all, who wouldn’t love a super mom with six kids that fought and beat cancer? Cherrie then told me that, given her “near death” experience, that she changed and I didn’t. When did I have time to “change?” She never had cancer, and I had to run my ass off and play along with her fakedom, taking care of six kids while working a full-time job, going to college, and teaching classes at the university.

Cherrie then used her newfound notoriety to start what is now her thriving business, that serves the special needs and foster/adopt population. The thing is, she NEVER HAD CANCER. Yet that one truth, or in her case, that one LIE, is what she built a million dollar business on.

Seriously, do you have any relatives that fake things like cancer? I have a cousin that once brought a baby that was not hers to a Christmas gathering, and I thought that was the lowest thing ever. But to fake CANCER? One more thing I have to say about that. In 2016, one of my closest colleagues Dave got diagnosed with cancer, and slowly deteriorated over the next two years till he died from his disease. When he was finished with chemo, as his body could not take anymore, he gave his bell that he got at his final chemo treatment to me, to give to Cherrie. He thought it might help her gather strength to beat it. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth, as my life was busy covering up this gargantuan lie. So, I brought it home and gave her this gift. Shortly after my dear friend Dave died, I asked Cherrie if I could give the bell back to Dave’s widow. Her response was, “Well, it WAS a GIFT to ME.” And she wasn’t having it. To this day, you will find Dave’s bell sitting like an unearned trophy in her bedroom, for all to see.

CHERRIE NEVER HAD CANCER.

The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “There is justice, and there is injustice. There is no in-between.” The last few years, I have experienced many injustices. I have cried more in the past two years than I ever have in my entire life. Life is not meant to be this hard. My life is supposed to be MY LIFE. It’s time to start shouting the truth from the rooftops. She’s the Facebook life. I’m the real life.

I’ve already lost almost two years here with my kids. Every time I think my life cannot get any worse, it does. When will this pain and heartache end? When will I be able to see my kids, back to the 50/50 it stated in our divorce decree from two years ago?

From September through December, Cherrie had other people in her life drop our kids off at the “transfer.” She “showed up” for the first time in 4 months to “transfer” our kids at the police station on Christmas Eve. She called the cops. They wished me a Merry Christmas, then asked her to leave. I took five of my kids to Phoenix to feed the homeless in their camps at 10th/12th and Roosevelt. Now, for my 48th birthday, I must go get fingerprinted, because she is saying I violated some order or process. We’ve been divorced for almost two years now. All I want is peace. All she wants is war. You would think after spending 20 years together, there would be some level of human decency. It’ll make a great book/documentary/movie, I guess. Merry Christmas and Happy Bday to me.

CHERRIE NEVER HAD CANCER.

If you'd like to find out more, keep an eye on this blog. I also have a GoFundMe. Do not feel obligated to fund me, but do feel obligated to support me, in mind and spirit, as I am in the fight for my life and for my rights as a father. I welcome your support.

[redacted-coiner]

Munchausen, Cotard Syndrome, BIID

All flags are Amnesia flags!(link)

Anxiety, General ED Recovery(link), Depression

DNI is listed within my pinned post. Please go read it before interacting with any part of my content. Ask to tag!

[shortnasties]

2589. Post-Traumatic Marriage

This is called “Post-Traumatic Marriage.” Drink your water. 

They come home after the death of the dog. She cradles the dog’s cremains in a box in her arms. 

       He says he is going to “make himself a soda,” even though all that really means is opening a can of soda. 

      She usually despises this but isn’t thinking of it now. She cradles the cremains in her arms tightly. 

      He sips the newly-opened soda in his hands. He wants to say cut the crap. He wants to say he knows she’s responsible. But he can’t say that. He doesn’t really know. 

      She says he was such a good boy. She thinks to herself she should do another cry. So she does another cry. 

       He looks at his phone. Consoling messages from loved ones. He hears their voices in his head and that makes him notice the unbearable silence of the house. He turns on the television. 

        She watches him flip through channels. She thinks if she didn’t know better he would look like a guilty man.

         He feels guilty (she doesn’t know this though). He feels guilty but he’s not sure exactly why. It’s ambiguous. Like he let something in that he wasn’t supposed to let in. 

      ��  She thinks of the moment he called her in a frenzy, already crying, saying “he’s dead, he died, he’s dead.” She thinks how effortlessly it was to create such a situation. She could’ve done anything. 

          He tries to think of the name of his favorite show when he was fifteen. It was an old show. About kooky roommates. Bellbottoms. What was it’s name? 

          You can be away for months and nothing changes. You can turn away for just a second and disappear into the years.   

[amaliasnap]

"I wish people would realize others don't fake anxiety and depression. --they fake being okay"

I wish I could find the Tumblr account that said that to reblog.

Just wanted to say they DO "fake" physical disorders and other social issues to AVOID talking about the root cause, bc there is such a stigma surrounding mental illness.

That's what munchausen syndrome basically amounts to, you fake being sick bc "you can't admit you are mentally ill". Not even to yourself.

From personal experience with my own family members, it is hard to tell where the boundary between mental illness and physical illness lies.

But that makes it harder for people who have that physical illness because it will eventually be obvious that some people are faking it.

Also malingering is when you fake illness for financial gain OR to get certain drug (like pain medicine)

And munchausen syndrome is where the motive is anything else.

People do not fake being mentally ill, but they will fake any number of physical illnesses, (or even a different mental illness in some rare cases), to avoid admitting they have been traumatized or what-have-you.

And there isn't really a treatment plan or diagnosis criterium for those things-- I would guess because the profit motive isn't there--but I would like to know if there are other barriers of which I am just unaware?

I'm not a trained health professional so maybe there are barriers in the way you can ethically treat patients-- where crossing that ethical line is worse than allowing this problem to be a silent one?

Best wishes to anyone who has family members like this, bc I ALWAYS question any health problem I have.... Just because I've seen people lie to themselves about this stuff. I'm low key gaslighting myself basically. "Maybe I'm not sick and I just am crazy"

No! You have a normal cold! Allow yourself to be human!

[peachesanmemes]

Munchausen by proxy is a mental illness as a result of over care. People think it's malicious like a horror movie, but it's actually just extremely damaging love.

my grandpa was a good man. and it really wasnt his fault - recreationally lying to kids is a proud family tradition - but he told me, once, that cutting a worm in half resulted in two worms.

i think he said it so i'd be more morally okay with fishing? i actually dont remember the context.

point was, he told me this, and he understimated (by a very large margin) how much i liked worms. i was a worm boy. very wormy. and after hearing that, i went home, and i dug through the garden, flipped over every rock, did everything i could to gather as many worms as i could, and then i uh.

i cut them all in half. every worm i could find. all of them. with scissors.

i then took this pile of split worms, and i put them in a box with a bit of lettuce and some water and stuff and went to bed expecting to double my worms overnight. i have math autism, so i had a vague understanding that if i did this just a few times in a row, i would eventually have a completely unreasonable amount of worms.

i was very excited to become this plane's worm emperor.

(i think i was...six?)

anyway, i did not become the inheritor of the worm crown. i instead woke up to a box of dead worms and cried. a lot. i got diagnosed with panic attacks as a teenager, but i think i had them as a kid, i just had no idea what they were. i was kind of processing that a.) i had killed what i had assumed was every single worm in my yard, and thus would have no more worms, and b). i was going to like, worm hell.

(six year babylon spent a lot of time worrying about god.)

so i kind of freaked out, and i climbed a tree, because god can only smite you if you're touching the ground (?) and i sat up there mostly inconsolable until my mom came out and asked, hey, what's up? what happened?

so i explained to her that i had killed all of the worms, forever, and was also Damned, and she took me to the compost pile, and we dug for all of five seconds and found like twenty more worms.

the compost pile was full of worms.

and she told me that a). there were more worms, and we could put them back under rocks and stuff and recolonize our yard and b). that one day, i would die, and i would go to heaven, and i would be able to talk to the worms, and i would be able to tell them all that i was very sorry, and that i killed them on accident out of excessive Love, and that they would forgive me, because worms have six hearts and no malice.

at that point, i think i was sixty percent tear-snot by weight, and i had no choice but to gather enough worms that i could hug them. which my mom helped with. and then after that she helped me put some worms back under each rock.

and for my epilogue: i spent a significant portion of my childhood in trees. and for many years after, even when my mom didnt know i was watching, i would catch her giving the space under the rocks a light spritz with the hose. not because she loved worms.

but because she loved me.

[tanya-shiza]

The adventures of Munchausen // Style test

For some inexplicable reason, YouTube recommended me an ancient (1974) USSR cartoon about a European baron named Munchausen. There were no English subtitles, but I really liked the art style.

For school reasons, I had to buy an A3 sheet and, given my gigantism, I couldn't resist and drew Munchausen’s head on almost ¼ of the sheet. 🥲 At least he looks so pretty! I also drew a mouth for practice. And an arm, because it is surprisingly thin, like branches. And I like it. 😍

The video with USSR cartoon, if you suddenly interested in: [LINK]