[juxmee]

This is insane but for past year, I've made up parts of my life just to get sympathy. I guess I felt bored with my life and wanted to spice it up. But, it kind of got out of hand. I lied about being physically abused by my.. well he's wasn't real either, although I am emotionally abused by a family member. I was telling all this to my friend and I was loving her reaction. It was like every time I told her one of my stories, I felt so... good. Everything was going great until I was so into my "new fake life" I became depressed, so much that my friend contacted a psychologist and threatened to call the police if I continued my "relationship." I know it's not normal but I love and crave the attention. What do I do??

[smoothy]

I don't care if you don't WANT help... you clearly NEED help.

Nobody likes a liar because they can't be trusted. You WILL find yourself alone eventually.

[Jake2008]

A year is a very long time to maintain all the intricacies of an alternate personna. What you are dealing with is the unravelling, and the consequence, of this alter ego that surfaced and took on a life of its' own.

How and why this seemed like a good idea in the beginning, has turned into a snowball, gathering speed and size, and it is about to crash.

I don't know why you needed, or wanted this kind of attention from another individual in order to feel better about yourself. Sympathy, concern, caring, empathy, given freely to another individual (you) are genuine, but this alternate person, is not.

That you consider yourself a compulsive liar, and you are feeling some remorse and confusion over your actions, is a good sign.

All I can tell you from what you have written, is two things.

One is to seek professional help, to figure out, why you did what you did, and to address the issues that started this in the first place.

The second is, to come clean to your friend, even if it is in a letter form, and tell her exactly what you have said here, and that you realize you need to figure out how things got so out of control. And apologize.

[juxmee]

I understand I need help but how do get rid of the constant craving 4 attention?

[Wondergirl]

I understand I need help but how do get rid of the constant craving 4 attention?

That's what a professional therapist will do -- help you figure out why you need the constant attention and then what to do about that feeling.

[southamerica]

Jake gives you excellent advice, your second post on "how to get rid of this constant need for attention" has a simple answer: seek therapy. You have issues that you need to confront and manage in a healthy way, and a therapist will help you do that.

**edit: wondergirl beat me to it :)... I just need to spread my rep first!

[slapshot_oi]

You're definitely a narcissist.

Doing whatever necessary to keep all eyes on you while maintaining a flawless reputation (i.e. a strictly positive feedback) is narcissism, but attracting both negative and positive attention is histrionic narcissism. Since you victimize yourself in your stories to gain sympathy, I tend to think you fall under the latter.

You clearly see this as a problem and you sound pretty sharp, so I don't see why you wouldn't be able to control this on your own without the help of a psychiatrist. You can start controlling it by not contacting (NC as we like to call it) that friend you've been lying to all this time. Force yourself out of the social circle for a some time so you have no one to lie to.

It's worth noting that when it comes personality quirks like these, psychiatrists are in divided camps and disagree, some consider narcissism to be a personality disorder (a problem), while others consider it a trait (a feature). Up until late 2010, narcissism was officially considered a personality disorder, but it's since been removed from the list.

This is just my curiosity... how do you get started on a story anyway? Do you initiate it? Like, do walk up to someone you just met, tell them BS about yourself for several minutes when you can clearly see their bored? Or do you keep your fibs concise and only tell them if asked or spoken to?