I am having a difficult time distinguishing fear from being truly paranoid.
My therapist feels that I am not experiencing true paranoia - she said that what I normally experience are fears based on reality, but I take it too far.
She feels that my fears stem from my childhood - I suffered from severe panic disorder since I was 5 years old and it lasted well into my 30s - I still get occasional panic attacks to this day.
I experienced fear on a daily basis - chronic fear - waiting for the next attack to hit me like a tidal wave.
She feels that my fear of being alone in the house and suspiciousness of strangers stems from my severe chronic anxiety - all originating from my traumatic fear ridden childhood - she feels that I never got to get passed and get over my traumatic childhood - so the fear is still with me to this day.
I have been truly paranoid before - what is the difference? Is all paranoia delusional?
I always thought that I was experiencing paranoia - my therapist tells me no - it is anxiety/fears/and phobias that I am experiencing -
I want to be able to discuss this with my psychiatrist - I have been using the word paranoia to describe what I go through - maybe what I have is a form of PTSD stemming from an anxious - fear filled childhood.
i get & have always had a lot of anxiety & fear. It’s harder to identify with me where it all comes from?
i’ve also experienced a lot of paranoia/delusions in the past.
The way i see it is that feelings/emotions don’t have be acted on or projected onto the World - i haven’t had full blown paranoid delusions for over 10 years - it is an internal feeling state that is the issue - not so much anything in my thinking. That’s how i see it anyway.
i find the mindfulness helps - dis-identifying/non-attachment & going into & working through things.
A lot i think has to come down to an acceptance of who/how we are & our lives. i’ve accepted a lot more how i am, & adapted my life to cope with it all. i’ve tried everything i can to more fully resolve the anxiety/fear, to little avail.
I guess for me… paranoia would be a fear that would have no basis in reality.
I guess my fear that my young niece and nephew might get kidnapped… would be a reality based fear that I take too far.
My fear that my kid sisters little school was trying to brain wash her at age 6 in to spying on me and disliking me… or trying to get my parents to poison me… maybe that was paranoia…
So lets say I am home alone and I see a car parked in front of my house with someone sitting in the car - my mind will take me to dark places - I will start to think - Who is this person? What does he want? Maybe he is here to break into my house?
What if he comes to the door and rings the doorbell and wants to break into the house and harm me?
All kinds of negative fear based thoughts enter my head, I will get super anxious.
The thing is that these thoughts are not delusional based - just a bit far fetched.
Is this kind of thinking paranoia? I do get confused
Actually a stranger at the door for no reason… I feel would be cause for cautiousness.
What you just described is sort what my therapist and I are working on with the catastrophic thinking. Not always assuming the worst out come to simple things.
I have the feeling for me… Maybe it’s a fear contrary to logical fact???
Once my sis was invited to a neighbor girls little birthday party and sleepover… so when my sis Did sleep over… I thought the entire “birthday party” (cake and presents and all) was a cover for our neighbor and his wife to kidnap all the little girls in the neighborhood. (They called the cops when I tried to break in go bring my sis home.)
There was a party… there were other neighbors there… it was the little girls birthday… but I was sure it was all a ploy. My doc said that was paranoid.
I definitely have a deep mistrust of others - ever since I was growing up - I think that what my therapist was trying to tell me was that my fears are based in reality, they are not truly delusional.
I am very embarrassed by my past actions when the catastrophic thinking becomes delusional and then everything on earth is suspect.
even recently I’ve had a few paranoia spikes… not every car in the alley is stalking me. Not every person in my entire neighborhood is keeping tabs on me.
Actual fear is a nervous response, controlled through cardiac system, schizophrenics tend to have an overexerted flight response. It’s part of our illness. Just think peace. Everything is going to be fine.
I am always thinking the worse about everything - do you think that antipsychotics can help?
I am currently on a pretty low dose - wondering if I would feel a bit better if I was on a higher dose
**My son thinks someone is breaking into his house all the time-which is not true…I believe that is a delusion, something that is not really true.
If you have had panic attacks most of your life and have a lot of anxiety all the time, that would be closer to PSTD.
I am the same way–with good reason. I have had a lot of trauma in the past 20 years. Im always waiting for the other shoe to drop, or thinking the worst is going to happen. I guess a paranoid delusion would be when you are afraid of something that is going on that is not true. @Wave Im reading a good book right now about trauma.
This doctor has a different approach. Instead of going over the traumatizing events over and over ( you already know pretty much what your own traumas are ) try to think of ways your past helped you now.
Doesn`t sound good when I describe it…the name of the book is Back to Life by Dr. Alicia Salzar.
Helping me a lot… **
Thanks for the title of the book bridgetcomet, I am going to check it out - I wonder if someone can get PTSD from living with a lot of fear ( severe panic disorder) for most of his life.
I really appreciate your support and advice bridgetcomet - I am glad to hear that you are on the road towards healing
I know that I am probably missing out on a lot but I don’t self-help books. I read fiction and poetry. If they would design them into a story format I could deal with that, but otherwise, no.
Then couldn’t the continuation of a fear beyond it’s original reality based setting be paranoiac in nature?
For example over 40 years later I am wary of people and find it hard to trust them as a result of teenage bullying. My default mode is to be wary although there are no clear indicators that all people are going to be like the people who bullied me.
A major difference between fear and paranoia for me would be the presence of suspiciousness in paranoia.
There are times when I am very fearful and yet not suspicious and other times when suspiciousness and fear go together. The latter I would call paranoia. With paranoia I’m on my guard against people but with plain fear it’s more a wariness of situations and what might happen in a negative sense.