UNTREATABLE.COM
Patient is throwing their 4-year-old a birthday party with a balloon arch, a custom cake, a bounce house, a pony, and a 'professional party photographer.' The 4-year-old wanted to watch Bluey. The Venmo requests for splitting the entertainment with another mom have not gone out. Patient has already started a Pinterest board for next year.
Annual. Each year more elaborate than the last.
Untreatable. The 4-year-old will not remember any of it.
Patients with Pathological Birthday Party One-Upmanship typically present with some or all of the following:
Pathological Birthday Party One-Upmanship belongs to the Institute's growing taxonomy of behaviors that real medicine has declined to name. It exists, roughly, at the intersection of internet culture, interpersonal friction, and whatever is happening in the lives of our patients. It is fictional and it is everywhere.
Under its Latin label Competitio festivitatis natalis totalis, the condition appears only in the Institute's own catalog. Real clinicians do not recognize the term. They recognize the behavior.
Think you have it? Find out what else you might be suffering from at the diagnosis generator. Or browse the full index of afflictions.