Is intense paranoia part of AS?

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I am so paranoid that I wonder if I am in the early stages of schizophrenia. I was paranoid even as a child, but I think being bullied all the time simply made it worse. If I wasn't constantaly teased and harasses, I think I would have outgrown the paranoia. Even as an adult I get harassed online all the time, but espicaly by a certian group http://ponylandcatfights.com/viewtopic. ... t=kalahari Just punch in Kalahari or meerkat in their search engine and you can see even more threads they made because they hate me so much. These people clearly don't know when to stop. http://www.blingcheese.com/image/code/29/catfights.htm (BTW, I plan on making a custom MLP of that just to piss them off) I was abused on another form but they made it private and refuse to acknoledge it or say I need to lighten up and find it funny as well.

These people obviously have some mental problem themselves since the only way they can aparently get their jollies is by trolling people. Other people have even gotten death threats from them and they seem so seriously delisional and evil, I worry that they will track me down in real life. My mom is no help and just keeps telling me that they are demons. Maybe they are but how is that supposed to help me?

I need a service dog to help me cope with paranoia. I can't leave the house without my pet lizard anymore or else I get panic attacks at just the sight of another person (espicaly children) the point where I throw up. As I said earlier, I had paranoia ever since childhood. Is paranoia normal for AS? Why do people with AS make such easy targets...even to total strangers? What extactaly did I do to piss these people off?

Dear PunkyKat,

I'm sorry that people in the bulletin boards you mentioned seem to be bare of any understanding what asperger's means and bare of sympathy. I know it's not easy, but ignore those people and start a therapy for treating your fear of leaving your home (I'm not a doctor, but it seems more like panic attacks than like paranoia to me).

Miara

At least some part of this feeling of being a target, and being recognised as unusual by strangers, is inside you and is a part of your anxiety. You feel bad, then you assume that the stranger sees you as bad (or whatever your thoughts are), and it reinforces your bad feelings. Once you are in this state, most social interactions will go badly, but becoming aware of what is inside you and what is actually real will help make interactions less painful.

I suffer from this a lot, and have found Mindfulness, progressive muscular relaxation and the anti-anxiety drug diazepam all helpful. There might be courses about anxiety management and social skills that would help - where I am these are run by the psychiatric day hospital.

Often these bullies just want our attention. Like, they want you to show interest in them, ask questions about them etc. When you do that it's suprising how they change. I've been paranoid before, had to take anti anxiety medication. I had extreme anxiety, it was difficult even leaving the house. Since I've learnt how to deal with NTs they don't worry me anymore, as long as I don't have to live with them. I think it might all come back if I had to. So, to me, learning social skills is learning how to not offend the NT ego therefore avoiding the "group think" or "lynch mob" mentality that results such as those rude people in your link.

From what I remember, they got pissed about you talking about your AS a lot and using is as an excuse. You say you don't but they say you did.

I guess if we talk about our AS too much and wanting accomodations, some people will get pissed off and think we are using it as an excuse. They don't seem to know the difference between accomodations and special treatment even though they made some good points. I don't trust none aspie boards to talk about AS issues. I don't think those are the places for them anyway. Here is or AFF or other aspie forums.

I wasn't sure if that was a rhetorical question you asked or not but I answered it anyway since you sounds like you want to know what you did that pissed them off.

About me getting paranoid, I sometimes get paranoid but I don't think about it much because I know it's a waste of time of energy, worrying about stuff that could be happening or might happen or what if. I get paranoid thoughts but I don't actually believe them.

I think it's probably a manifestation of anxiety of not being aware of the social world. I was very paranoid as a child; thinking people were reading my thoughts (this seems comical now, but I'm going to guess it was just missing that people were able to read facial expressions, etc. but knowing " something " was happening), I wouldn't sleep alone for the longest time, I thought people were out to kill me, slept with the lights on.

I know that most children can watch scary movies and the like and turn out "okay", but I'm sure this just didn't apply to me.

It seemed clear to me, back when I was a child, that I was oscillating between paranoia and excessive trust.

As for the forum trolls, forget about them. If the social environment is that bad (and from what little I have read, it is), you lose nothing if you switch to other forums (plus, they gain nothing either).

I do feel I can be overly paranoid, given some of the troubles I had here
and elsewhere, I feel like I have to look over my shoulder expecting trouble.

I was originally going to say it's not paranoia when people are really attacking you, but then I looked at the dates on those threads. They're eleven months old. They're behavior is despicable, but it's also in the past.

Given the age of what happened, I don't think you have a problem with paranoia at all. I think you have a problem letting go.

I do think you need to talk to someone about it.

I have always felt a little parnoid and mistrusting. It was the NTs who brought it out of me though their lies, trickery, and mindgames. I guess its my brain's way of protecting me keeping me from being abused or taken advantage of. I haven't developed schizophrenia in my forty years of dealing with Aspergers so you might not either. Good luck.

Last edited by Todesking on 08 Sep 2010, 5:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I read a few pages of the thread that you had linked. That entire website seems to be devoted to getting into intense arguments and talking s**t about other people. I can't help but wonder why you would want to join such a website in the first place. I would never join a website like that, because I tend to be very sensitive and it's generally not in my nature to get into heated arguments with people.

Reasonable paranoia is not a symptom of schizophrenia. It's only when you begin to worry the CIA is following you putting nutrasweet on your Post Raisin Bran that hints at schizophrenia. Paranoia is a healthy response to the chaos of modern society. It's a survival mechanism.
As long as you are paranoid about what could actually happen instead of some far fetched, unlikely circumstance (what psychiatrists call paranoid delusions), then, it's just being realistic and this is common in most past the age of sixteen. This state is a byproduct of our times.
Is it related to AS? Nah. Since most people are paranoid, it's normal.

Some of this sounds exactly like me. I have been severely bullied on multiple forums including this one. Especially last year. Many people ganged up on me and told my that all my art is pathetic, that my products were contaminated due to me suffering from a mental illness along with my autism, that my speeches are stupid, that I am faking my condition for attention and then posted my personal information such as my real name and where I live and much more. I was bullied here, schizophrenia.com, some other mental health site that wasn't that big and a few other places. I know they wanted to kill me through suicidal depression. I am also diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder so I am paranoid to the extreme at times. I am starting to get scared now but I know October is my worst month and I usually end up in the hospital.

I've experienced a great deal of anxiety, when I was in high school. I was bullied, teased and picked on, all the time. I was dressing like a hippie and wearing disquises, just so most of my bullies wouldn't recognize me.

I was never on that fourm. I was on My Little Pony Arena which is a tottaly diffrent fourm. They created a seperate fourm to bully people because you aren't allowed to on My Little Pony Arena. I only knew this ehisted becuase of others complaning about it I asked someone if I was being harassed as well. Someone is trolling my posts here or at least trying too and I wonder if they are one of those catfight people in diguise.

I read through those threads, and I'm very sorry you got trolled. Nobody deserves that kind of abuse. You should stay away from My Little Pony sites so you won't get bothered anymore.

As for the original topic question: yes, I do get paranoid. It used to be really bad when I was younger, because I was afraid that everywhere I went there were people giving me dirty looks or secretly laughing at me behind my back. Nowadays I'm less afraid of people in real life and more afraid of people on the Internet. I don't want to be trolled and have my personal information posted in public forums. So far I've managed to avoid those things, but there's a first time for everything....