I have to stop doing this... It's just residual paranoia

DX'd - Other
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I’ve read that a few people on the forum have a common problem I do. If they hear of someone going through something, they apply it their life as well.

I do that all the time. I guess that’s a different take on the points of reference. In my Sz group there was another guy who had younger sibs and he would vent on how mean and incapable of understanding his sibs were.

I would then think, “Hey, My own sis might react this way and think this way. Man, she doesn’t understand at all. She’s just going through the motions to placate me.” Then I start to get very upset.

I’ve set up some experiments to TEST and see if my kid sis would really understand and try and see just how supportive and on my side she really is. One guy told me he really wanted to apologize to his sib so he walked into the sibs room and woke the sib up. The sib freaked out and got angry. That story made me very sad and I was wondering how my sis would react so I started the experiment.

So far, I can wake her up about 5 times in a night for no real reason and it’s only the 6th time that she gets upset with me and pretends she won’t wake up. Or she’ll go sleep in the car.

I read the story here about a sibling who accidently hurt their brothers feelings at a restaurant. I then wondered, would my kid sis still handle this as badly as she used to? So I set up the experiment.

We went out last night and I was trying to be loud to see what she would do if someone got rude. The thing is, no one said anything about me being loud. So we went to a tea shop and I got loud there and no one said anything and neither did she. Then I was getting sort of mad that nothing happened.

That’s stupid. I was angry that absolutely nothing happened when I went out. Then I was a bit angry with her because she didn’t understand why I was angry that nothing happened. Then she locked herself in her room for the rest of the night. I felt really bad about that too. So since she doesn’t sleep with her door locked in case of fire; I was able to wake her up about 1:00 a.m. and apologize.

I am going to have to stop doing this and trust that the people who are on my side really are on my side.

Just trust it. Hard for me to do sometimes, but I have to learn how to do a better job at trusting. My head circus nearly destroyed that ability. But I see now it’s something to build back into my head.

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You have strong insight into your weaknesses, which is great. I remember when my paranoia had my life boiled down to me against the world. I was too delusional to trust anyone at all. It wasn’t fun being alone and trying to figure out why everyone was against me. Now I trust pretty much everyone, I have recovered from the paranoia. Now I worry about things that matter, I used to not care about school or working out (although I still was pretty good at both), I cared more about my delusions.

Good to hear that you’re aware of yourself and keeping your symptoms in perspective. You’re no longer legally insane if you have insight into being mentally ill, that was something I learned in one of my classes.

Actually, no one on this forum is legally insane. We all know we are mentally ill, which is no longer insanity; insanity is being mentally ill and not understanding that you are mentally ill or being in denial of it.