Why does my mom make up stories that have never happened? They aren’t even close to being true.

I think sometimes it’s to cover for not knowing what's happening but thinking they have to say something. For my mother ( vascular dementia and NPD) lying about everything is just what she’s done her whole life so why change now😉?

My mom tells me all kinds of things. Like showing me something that I bought her for Christmas and telling me her parents bought it for her. Telling me my dad visited yesterday (my dad is deceased). Once she told me Donald Trump had been sitting on our couch and they went for a ride in my car. I told her I just can't see the President in a Hyundai! The list goes on. The point is, they all go through this. Their brains are shrinking and being destroyed by this horrible disease. My thought is when the connections to memories etc can't be made then the brain just makes stuff up. It used to bother me a lot because I'm a very logical truth based person, but with dementia we have to remember that they can't live in our world anymore, so we have to live in theirs. We have to change our thinking from they are making stuff up or lying to this is the disease. Now when my mom tells me my dad visited, I ask her how he is. If the President is in my house I ask her how his visit was. It doesn't help to correct or argue, that just causes anxiety and sometimes anger. Just let her find what little happiness she can in her world and for a while join her there and talk about it. I also redirect with suggesting a car ride or a game. Redirection is amazing.

Thx all for your comments. It’s hard to understand this stupid disease and helpful to know our family is not alone in dealing with it. I wonder if demon possession they talk about in ancient books is really what has become known as dementia? Something else has taken over my mother’s mind. Sad.

My Dad makes up some fascinating stories. Most of the time they are positive in nature...great accomplishments or how rich he is. I just go with it because it makes him happy. I did learn not to ask for details because he would become confused and distressed. Now I just listen and affirm.
Mom is starting to make up stories s well but often her stories are paranoid in nature. The worst is that my Dad and my sister are planning to run away and shack up together. Too creepy! When she gets into paranoid talk I try to redirect her thinking to a more positive subject or I'll ask her if she wants me to get her some coffee. By the time I get back the subject is usually forgotten. Dad is easier than Mom.

I think you have some good reasons here and as long as it isn't hurting anyone she is happy and engaged telling these stories I would engage her and ask more about these parts of her life. It might be interesting to hear what kind of work she did there or who else she has been to this establishment with, did she enjoy the meal, anything she would recommend if they still have it on the menu? Enjoy living in her fantasy and the fact she seems content. That's what I would do anyway, no point in worrying about it if it isn't hurting anyone or causing problems.

My grandmother believed that the nice people in photos talked to her and moved about her apartment. Later on, she was always "going on a business appointment" or "taking a cruise," while being pretty much confined to board-&-care.

Back then (80s), pretty much nooooooobody spoke of these behaviors, so it was truly out-freaking!

The good folks at her board-&-care assured us that this was fairly typical.

Her world made her happy. She said nothing to harm anyone's reputation or threaten their freedom, and we (slowly) learned to "visit" her there.

From the internet:
"Confabulation is a memory error defined as the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive."

I think with dementia people make up stories to make their own kind of sense of a world they no longer understand. If they don't remember, they imagine. I read that as we age, even without dementia, our memories get worse as our imaginations get better. In the winter Mom looked out at the trees and made up a story about all the trees in town dying because of a flood and that no one else lived on the street, except next door where a doctor had moved in and fixed his place up, but he still had not replaced the trees. The story was so depressing that I tried to convince her that it was winter and the trees would come back alive. NO, she said, they are dead. Right now she is so happy that there are such beautiful trees around her. There are people living there too! I'm thinking that this will go on and next winter will have dead trees again because she tends to tell these stories in circles, leaving a story alone for months, then circling back to it with absolute conviction. She never forgets the details of her stories while at the same time not remembering what happened 2 minutes before.

Dementia. Oliver Sacks, before his death, and later in his life wrote some amazing essays about the brain, including about dementia. It is a different world. Not your world. Think about the dream world you go into every night. Not the same as real life, right? And you know the difference. But imagine if you did not. Learn to look upon her world as a whole world, but one different than yours. Argument about "No you did NOT work there" only adds to all the angst and discomfort, as dementia patients are almost always aware that no one believes them, everyone wants to argue with them. And that is uncomfortable for them. Just learn to think of her as writing the next great american novel.

My mom had dementia. One of the weirdest things she ever said was that I had changed into a man and that man told her he used to be me. It made everything else she hallucinated about seem tame by comparison.

I think that even when their brains are completely consumed by the disease, there is still one little brain cell that tells them they need to function in society and they absolute and positively believe what they are saying is true. In my mom’s case, she would look right into my eyes as she told me stories about how she was a famous actress on the New York Stage. I agreed and even asked her if she ever met my favorite actress, the late Lauren Bacall. She said of course she had and what a wonderful person and beautiful lady Ms. Bacall was. She was happy and at peace telling these stories. And since she passed in 2016, I still have peace knowing I didn’t argue with her and deny what she was telling me was true.

Spotcat1, I see from your profile that your Mom has Alzheimer's/Dementia. Unfortunately, some people with Alzheimer's/Dementia will make up stories due to the fact that their brain is broken.

It is best to just go along with the story as that will be less stress on you and you won't be upsetting Mom.

https://www.agingcare.com/articles/how-to-handle-alzheimers-disease-lying-144204.htm

Mentally unsound, there is no way to fix this. I would just nod and go about my business, no sense in correcting her, it won't help.