Paranoia seems to be a very common symptom in many mental illnesses expressed as a belief that people are listening to you, conspiring against you, or generally just out to get you.
Why is this such a common thread that runs through a variety of mental illnesses. Is there an organic reason for this?
WAG: cause in a way it’s right. People do talk about you and say mean things behind your back, and so on. Mental illness means you take your knowledge and suspicion of these things completely out of perspective.
Is it? It was my understanding that paranoïa is only common in schizophrenia.
Paranoia is a feature of many personality disorders, as well as social anxiety and other less serious conditions.
Is it a common symptom, or a common perception? Depression is a mental illness, but if you pass a guy with depression on the street, you’re probably not going to notice–but you’ll notice the guy wearing a tin-foil hat.
It seems rather Freudian.
I will say this, as a close relative to a paranoid schizophrenic, the paranoia is one of the hardest things to get rid of.
Just because you aren’t paranoid doesn’t mean that they are not out to get you.
Why? What have you heard? :eek:
Quoting Kissinger again, are you…?
Are you accusing me of being Henry Kissinger? WTF? Dude.
Just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get you.
That’s just what he said!
Nice catch!
It’s interesting, I was on an anti anxiety drug once which had the opposite effect. I DID hear voices, and they WERE conspiring against me. (They also forced me to listen to Bee Gees all the time). But I figured out what was going on and stopped taking the drug.
I’ve always suspected it was because mental illness makes you hyper sensitive to inconsequential things and totally oblivious to others. As such, if you are predisposed to noticing social interactions, you may decide that every person who makes too much eye contact or not enough is up to something. Those that turn away from you are clearly ‘avoiding you’ and those that turn towards you are doing so because they are ‘watching you’. So there is lots of evidence to support your conspiracy.
My wife’s best friend’s stoner brother is convinced that there is a Government satellite that watches him from time to time in Hawaii where he lives. I tried to explore this paranoia to determine exactly why he thought that with the limited number of satellites in orbit, that one was focused on him, given that he is a part time construction worker with nothing of value to offer any Government. Essentially he just fills in the holes with incorrect information and speculation to support this beliefs. In his case, I didn’t know how many “secret satellite” launches were happening everyday and that there were way more than I thought were up there. When I tried to point out how quickly that would bankrupt any Government trying to launch that many satellites, he just went with the “you only know what they tell you about the cost of satellite launches” - o.k. so apparently they cost next to nothing according to him. As to why they thought he was worth watching, well he admitted he didn’t know, but was sure it was “something he had seen that he wasn’t supposed to and he wasn’t even sure what it was”.
Oh course, I wondered why he didn’t conclude I was an agent from this same shadow Government sent to investigate what he knew, but I decided I shouldn’t go down that path, as doing so might mean my ‘cover was blown’ and he might decide to stab me with a salad fork.
I believe it’s a “common symptom”, but it varies in intensity depending on the underlying illness and that can affect perception. For example, I suffer from depression and anxiety which I can manage by taking antidepressants and utilizing some coping skills that I’ve learned. Basically, the effect of my illness is that my life is somewhat more stressful than it would be for a “normal” person who leads a life similar to mine. One example of this is that I sometimes worry excessively about perceived social faux pas on my part, or about trivial mistakes at my job, etc., and this could be classified as paranoia. On a bad day, my “symptoms” won’t ever include things such as wearing a tin foil hat, but I might get edgy if I realize that a report I submitted contained a run-on sentence, or other things that another person probably wouldn’t view as paranoia but it is a real “symptom” for me that I need to be very diligent about managing so it doesn’t get out of hand. So to give my $0.02, its actually a common symptom, but it often stays below many peoples’ radar because it doesn’t always confirm to their stereotypes.
People with axis I diagnoses (schizophrenia, bipolar, etc) are very frequently delusional. And for some reason, delusions frequently have paranoid contents, probably because paranoia generally arises from fear, and delusions tend to be quite frightening, because the individual with them recognizes that something is not right between their perceived and actual reality.
People with axis II diagnoses (the personality disorders like borderlines, antisocials, narcissists, passive-aggressives, etc. etc. etc.) are often paranoid because their overall behavior often estranges them from others, isolates them, and/or makes others hostile, thus giving the person a legitimate to semi-legitimate reason to feel paranoid.
Why are you asking me, specifically? Haven’t you persecuted me enough? You keep asking me these questions. Tens of thousands of them since 1999. Asking, always asking.
I surmise it’s because people who are mentally ill may well be aware that something is wrong, but they’re incapable of accepting the possibility that they are wrong, so they have to blame The Problem on an external source. I’ve met and indeed worked with people who are pathologically incapable of accepting blame, or even accepting the possibility that they might have made a mistake - imagine a salesman who absolutely has to accentuate the positive of a product, and then imagine that it’s perpetual and involuntary. Or the former internet lawyer Jack Thompson, who continued to boast about his dominance of the law even as he was being disbarred. Or any man when confronted with a piece of self-assembly furniture. They cannot accept that they are the problem, so they externalise the error to a ludicrous degree, beyond all sense.
e.g. it was the theatre staff, they ordered the wrong tools, not my own incompetence which is not possible because I would not be a consultant surgeon otherwise. That kind of thing.
That’s just what they want you to think.
Hey! You could only know that if…
:: looks warily at Tom Tildrum ::
I’m more than a little mind blind about peoples motivations, and it makes me fantasize about people being contrary, obstinate and generally obstructive.
For instance, if I need to get a tire fixed, I might imagine the staff at the tire shop will be uncooperative and finicky to deal with.
Of course I am self aware enough to know that generally this isnt true, or at least, I’d be a major contributor to it in instances. But its a persistent way of thinking. I finally started telling myself “You are tilting at windmills”, every time I would get thinking that way. Imaginary giants.
And it worked eventually. I’m more positive about my interactions with others.
I still havent figured out how to stop being contrary, obstinate and generally obstructive myself!