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My Friend Is Constantly Attention Seeking
I have bad anxiety and I put a blog explaining why anxiety made me leave school so that people wouldn't ask questions, a few weeks later a guy I've been friends with for years but grown apart from came to me saying he has depression. I didn't think anything of it until he came to me everyday saying he wanted to kill himself, and then came to me with a knife saying he didn't dare cut himself so wanted me to do it, and asked for tips on the best way to do it. Ever since then I haven't wasted my breath on him, just listened. Nothing he says ever adds up: he was taking 20 anti-depressants a day, he said his doctor diagnosed him with depression and then told him that he was wrong and then re-diagnosed him and then told him it wasn't, he said that his counsellor said that it sounds like has bipolar, depression, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and anxiety. This all seems like such rubbish, and I don't want to waste my time on an attention seeker, because it made my anxiety worse at one point that I couldn't help him. He constantly says that he would rather have social anxiety, agoraphobia and panic attacks like me than have bipolar like him, saying that I have it easier than him.
Is there a way I can find out if he is lying or attention seeking? If I stop going out for walks with him then I'll never leave my house, making me worse. I don't know what to do.
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Being that hes 17, I am guessing you must be about the same age or younger, basically under 18. If so, you're still under the care of your parents so as Razhie said, I would tell my parents what he's been doing. If there is any tiny bit of truth in what he says, he needs to be seeing a Dr. As adviceman said, if he were really taking 20 anti depressants a day, he'd likely be dead. All Drs warn not to take more than a prescribed dose because it can have terrible effects like instant death at the worst, or conditions that lead to death. So only a Dr. wanting to lose their license to practice medicine would tell a patient to take 20 antidepressants a day...cus thats misuse of a medication and yes, the other diseases are found in older people. Some of those symptoms have shown up as I've read in areas of smaller towns reliant on well water and runoff from farming toxins got into the water and reports have pointed at testing being done when a great majority of residents began to all display Parkinsons symptoms, although it was all adults, no teens or kids and all i remember is it was somewhere in California. So he is having definate issues if asking you to cut him and he needs help but going to anyone other than a professional means he is not going to get proper help.
As stated, the only person you are responsible to look after the welfare of is you. If avoiding school is helping you with anxieties and you are okay with being house bound then you don't need to change anything. If its not working for you then something needs to change for you. When you are ready to seek out something that can help make you anxiety free and work on getting out of depression, you will be ready to check out anything that claims to do so that you haven't yet tried. If you see a Dr. and they haven't help, I can share about a type of Psychologist who most likely can, it really depends on what methods the Dr. uses. If they only know medication and no other therapys, then when you are ready, ask me. I used to be socially anxious, extremely so and remember being like that as far back as I can remember, even before school age. I was tired of it by time I was 17 and wanted to be normal and sought a lasting answer. I know you only wanted to know if we thought he was attention seeking but you didn't ask for how you could avoid getting worse and in fact get better. So I am willing to give you some hope there since you likely didn't ask cus you feel this is something you will be stuck with the rest of your life. I am proof, anxieties can disappear forever without medication. Yes, I also think he's seeking attention but likely due to having depression or whatever other issues he has.
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Your friend is doing just as you said he is, he's attention seeking. To answer your question from a medical standpoint - it would be extremely unlikely (read: you can bet he's lying) for him to have Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. In face it would very unlikely for him to have either of those unless he's elderly which I doubt he is.
He is definitely not taking 20 anti-depressants a day, he would be dead plain and simple.
If he had bipolar disorder then this could cause him to have symptoms including anxiety and depression, but you should ask him next time to provide proof of his diagnosis. I'm sure he won't be able to.
He probably just googled symptoms and diseases and then chose the ones he thought sounded the most like people would feel sorry for and decided to pretend to have them to get attention.
I would shut him out of your life if I were you. He sounds like a compulsive liar.
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Just tell an adult. This is not your problem. You can't really know for sure if he is lying or not, but it's not important.
Look, maybe he is full of shit, you can't know for sure what is real and what isn't, and it's not important. What is important is that you take care of your own mental health, and right now he is infringing on that. He is using up your emotional resources on his oneupmanship bullshit. Maybe he really is in pain and having some problems—that doesn't mean you can help him right now!
If he is telling the truth, you should tell an adult about the stuff he's saying.
If he is full of shit, you should tell an adult about the stuff he is saying.
In either case, the right thing to do is put this problem on a grown up. His shit's not your shit, and his shit is making your anxiety worse whether it's real or made up.
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