Living with paranoia

[RawPremadePizza2]

There's something I want to talk about with someone... I've been living with so much paranoia since seven years ago or so, it has affected my life greatly.


These paranoias are recurrent, paralyzing, they are even nonsensical at times, and also paired alongside my catastrophic thoughts and self destructive habits.

These paranoid thoughts are so ingrained in me it's hard to talk about them.
One of them I can remember is the thought that if I become happy and do the things they fulfill me, they will be taken away from me.


I want to pursue art, and I'm studying formally for it, but the thought of going on with that eats and inside, because I think that suddenly I will be forced by my parents to follow another path, to fill my time with another thing, to give up on it. I had these thoughts for over three years and they never went away, and it's so hard for me to practice my art and flow with it.

I got to a point where I would put tape on my phone's camera and he afraid that there were police or random people recording me wtf.


I don't know what to do, I feel trapped in my own mind and as time passes I lose my mind and most importantly, time. Time, time, time. I'm so terrified.

 

[Volser]

Paranoia is hard, telling yourself it's not something to be concerned about is one thing, actually believing it is another.

It's not fair that you have to deal with these thoughts when others simply don't, it's so nice that you've managed to pursue your interests despite it.

This isn't totally the same as what you're going through, but I have a lot of childish paranoia problems involving the paranormal and stuff. I can't comfortably sleep in excessive darkness, and I can't always sleep with my back facing the room, because when I do paranoia about killers and demons in my room and stuff build up until I'm actively scared and can't sleep.

Even though I like horror stuff, it instills me with so much lingering paranoia that even if I was unbothered in the moment I'd need to turn on the lamp next to my bed overnight for possibly the next several nights. The worst episode I had I was watching some alien conspiracy theory iceberg video or something and I got so scared as the video went on that I progressively turned on more and more lights and pressed my back up against the wall so no aliens could get me or something idk. Eventually I had paused the video and was just sitting there unable to dismiss the idea that we don't KNOW for certain that aliens won't come get us and that ghosts aren't real and aren't going to jump out and drag you across your own room and whatnot. It was paralyzing.

I got out of that episode manually, by forcing myself to find a distraction. Within like 30 seconds of setting up and playing my favorite podcast, I had begun returning to a baseline calmness, and quickly forgot my cartoonish terror. Honestly, I find that distraction can bandaid over a lot of mental anguish. If there's anything that brings you immediate comfort, try doing it instead of lingering on the paranoid thoughts. I know that's easier said than done, but maybe the act of trying will still help somehow anyway.

The fact that you're aware it's paranoia is a really good sign I think. It's really bad when it starts to just feel like a valid concern. As long as you're aware of it, you can deal with it rationally. Also, when its not debilitating, just doing what you feel you have to do to address a paranoid concern isn't that bad of an idea I believe, like scratching a benign itch. So I can't sleep in a certain position sometimes even though there's not really a logical reason not to, fine, is that so bad?

Maybe try to differentiate between the paranoias that aren't harmful to entertain and the ones that are, choose your battles so to speak. I don't think it's a terrible idea to take measures to prevent unauthorized usage of your phone camera for example. Personally, I wouldn't tape them over, but if you're on android you can turn off sensors through some convoluted developer settings or something, including cameras. If that setting doesn't work then it's probably grounds for a lawsuit. Alternatively, you could just keep the phone in a way where the cameras wouldn't get anything important even if they were theoretically being used to spy on you.

I wish you the best in your art studies, don't let the paranoia take that away from you.