When I feel anxious, my most common delusions are about a time 15 to 20 years ago.
At this point most of these delusions could be based on false memories.
I vaguely remember running my mouth on the internet extensively, but extremely carefully under my real name. I vaguely remember saying some things about some organizations that could be interpreted as negative.
https://www.google.com/search?q=free+speech+retaliation
I tried to avoid causing damage. I almost never said anything negative about any individual. I talked in backwater corners of the internet, trying to avoid large traffic or fame. I also consciously tried to avoid damaging organizations. I used my real name so that organizations could just ask me to shut up if they wanted to. None ever did. I didn’t have access to any classified information, so no harm was done there. I think I succeeded in avoiding fame, although once a famous author tried to make me famous and I basically ran and hid.
The most common delusion that I often have is that some of those organizations may have a knee-jerk, stupid reaction of retaliating in some way. Hierarchies of humans can be pretty stupid.
In my experience, saying negative things about individuals draws the most retaliation in reality. It is called libel in court sometimes. Negative things about organizations may be retaliated against if it effects stock price or something. Some countries in the world may retaliate for negative things said about them by their citizens or former citizens, but I’ve never said bad things about a country, to my knowledge, or been a citizen of or visitor to a country that retaliates like that.
Anyway, retaliation after 20 years for words typed on the internet? That seems ridiculous. Even if anyone remembered the words for that long, they couldn’t possibly remember all of the relevant context. If they printed a paper copy and kept it in a vault, I still wouldn’t trust that the copy hadn’t been tampered with. There are statutes of limitations on libel in the U.S. for a good reason.
Maybe I should be thankful that my worst delusions are ridiculous fears about retaliation for words 20 years ago, and I never accidentally physically injured anyone.
I think I feel better just typing all of that stuff. Thanks.