I have a hard time being around people, especially strangers. I feel like there’s a cabal of them conspiring to destroy my life. The antipsychotic medication I take help cancel out most of these thoughts and delusions.
Yesterday, I was in a wooded area by my house and just the presence of another stranger in the woods clearing his throat in an abrasive way nearly set me off, so I walked home immediately. My brother told me the stranger was just a worker who was doing construction on a neighbor’s house and he was taking a break.
Earlier today, I called the pharmacy and asked when one of my meds was ready. I asked when it would be ready and mumbled 11pm while laughing as though he was in on some kind of joke I would be the butt of. I said excuse me? After clearing his throat, he told me the time.my meds would be ready. I said thank you, bye. He repeated my words verbatim then hung up. I think he was trying to make my life miserable.
I do what I can to avoid people and stay mostly in my room. I don’t even bother to make friends anymore. I just don’t trust them. At a doctor’s office, I feel strangers there, I could see they may have been from my past watching and judging me. I don’t care what they think, but it still bothers me. The COVID-19 mask mandate is a mixed blessing for that. Now I always wear my mask when I go out.
I sometimes wish I could have someone to talk to other than my family, psychiatrist, and my therapist. It’s hard because I don’t trust anyone and I generally don’t leave in the house, sometimes living in fear.
I would talk to your psychiatrist about the paranoia. Sounds stressful and not an easy thing to deal with on a constant basis.
I don’t get severe parnoia but I do just generally dislike dealing with most people especially people Im not familiar with. So I can appreciate some of what you are saying.
I dealt with that early on in my disorder. Finding the right antipsychotic for me was what helped, I am not so paranoid anymore. The ironic thing is sometimes people in the area I’m living now will lock onto you and follow you, asking for money or just babbing incoherently. I didn’t deal with this in Virginia. Very fortunately for me we didn’t move out here until I was already feeling better.
I hope things improve for you, I would suggest trying different antipsychotics until you find one that helps with this symptom. A good psychiatrist is important, do you have a good doctor and are they trying to find the right meds for you?
@StarCrazy Yeah, I mean, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t have the paranoid thoughts all the time. They mostly come when I have to go out for an extended period of time, and mostly in situations that involve stress of some kind. Lately, the paranoid thoughts have been relatively mild, but things aggravated a little in the past few days, so I further retreated into the relative safety of my home, mostly isolated.
Thanks for your insight, and I hope you feel better.
Yeah, the antipsychotic medicine helps with everything, including the voices and paranoia. It’s gotten much better lately after my psychiatrist upped my dosage. I think why some of the reasons I still don’t necessarily function well around strangers is I’m very introverted and have poor social skills, I guess. I also have a history of being ostracized and bullied for my whole life. It’s been hard for me to trust people, even before I had my disorder. Thanks for your advice.