Paranoia Strikes Me

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I think I'm delusional, I know paranoia is fearing an illusion, which would mean I create illusions of other illusions. Today, I heard cop cars and I thought they were coming for me. I heard a funny knock and my heart started beating faster and faster. It was my mom behind the door just asking me to sign something. I eventually calmed down. I have done stuff where I haven't got caught. Some days I get so paranoid the police are after me. I'm very good at convincing myself the world is out to get me. I don't want to but it happens. I am thankful I am self-aware. Any thoughts?

I think you need to see a doctor for anxiety disorder. I did, and I am now taking Citalipram. Trust me, being free from this burden is a lifesaver.

I don't need medication for that. I prefer a holistic approach to this.

Basically stuff that is illegal. I'm just overthinking.

Yes, when I say Holistic approach: I take a breath and take a moment to clearly think what is really there. I know no one is after me in reality. I have a family who loves me and friends who love me. I am who I am and I embrace myself all around, no matter what happens to me. I try to maintain a positive outlook on reality. The reality is, While my mind tends to embellish what is around me, I do what I can to look past that. If I end up getting arrested for anything, too bad. I have gotten pulled over by the police for speeding, but nothing else.

It sounds like "ideas of reference". This condition is when you are aware of your delusional thinking, but you still can't stop it.

I was diagnosed with this once. The doctors will probe you to see if you hear voices, and if you can tell that your delusional thoughts are not real. My condition was largely due to torment from others; I gradually believed everyone was out to torment me.

This is a precursor to full delusion.


Persons with ideas of reference may experience:

-Believing that 'somehow everyone on a passing city bus is talking about them, yet they may be able to acknowledge this is unlikely'.
-A feeling that people on television or radio are talking about or talking directly to them
-Believing that headlines or stories in newspapers are written especially for them
-Believing that events (even world events) have been deliberately contrived for them, or have special personal significance for them
-Believing that the lyrics of a song are specifically about them
-Believing that the normal function of cell phones, computers, and other electronic devices are sending secret and significant messages that only they can understand or believe.
-Seeing objects or events as being set up deliberately to convey a special or particular meaning to themselves
-Thinking 'that the slightest careless movement on the part of another person had great personal meaning...increased significance'.
-Thinking that Facebook posts or Internet blogs have hidden meanings pertaining to them.
-Believing that the behavior of others is in reference to an abnormal, offensive body odor, which in reality is non-existent and cannot be detection

source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_of_r ... _reference

In case you do something illegal or something that might possibly be immoral, try to cut down on it or stop it altogether. I used to be quite paranoid. Every day when I came home from work I was thinking maybe today the police has visited my apartment, or maybe there's been software installed on my laptop to monitor me individually etc. Then I stopped buying, owning and using hashish and got rid of the related equipment, and I stopped filesharing and began buying legal DVDs instead. I know I wasn't committing any serious crimes, and the things I did are things a lot of people do. However I think that it's quite possible that you might get punished "in real time" so to speak, either psychologically, or spiritually in some way. Whatever one believes in it might make one get a more peaceful mind. I have gradually become less paranoid.

"If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear," springs to mind.

One thing that I have been thinking about that is related to what I wrote above is that it seems that many people that "wake up" to conspiracies and such do that after they have used some psychedelic drug. That has made me wonder if you become aware of something that existed before in an objective reality outside of you, or if that which you perceive as your outer world, including what you perceive as history, changed. When you think about it there really seems to be no way to prove which of the two is correct, which makes it a possibility. I think that's worth thinking about. That has also made me wonder if some forms of sin can actually serve to gain enlightenment. And indeed Gnostic philosophy says you should bite the apple, more or less.