Paranoia… I need to know because I’m feeling very alone in this. I’ve never met someone with the level of paranoia that I have. I can logically explain things to myself and somehow my paranoia convinces me of another story. I’m constantly thinking exaggerated thoughts that there are so many scary possibilities. Am I alone in this or what? If so any suggestions on how to calm these thoughts
You are not alone, one time I spent 8 hours looking for a camera in my home (we don’t own any cameras) and when I thought I found one ( it was dust) I spend another 3 hours looking up tiny cameras on google, and when I gotten no hope I just cried myself to sleep.
I’m going through it with you don’t worry! The exaggerated thoughts are the worst it’s completely exhausting. I am constantly thinking of the worst case scenarios that could possibly happen. Even though it won’t I’ve convinced my self the scariest stuff is gonna happen and that I’m this complete monster. In your head you build it up to be something so big when it’s actually nothing. You’re gonna be alright! And I don’t have many suggestions to help with it but one thing that does help me is to just start going for a walk. Unless you’re already doing that lol. I know when your having these thoughts it’s the LAST thing you want to do but you have to force yourself to just do it. Just 1 mile and I promise when you get back you will have such a nice feeling and you start thinking straight again. And if you can’t walk start exercising if you can! It really does help it all go away even if just for a few! And being around friends and people you love can help lower the thoughts. Also treating yourself to your favorite food and watching a movie always helps me too!! Thank you for sharing! And I hope anything I said can help! Always remember your not alone!! Your gonna be perfectly fine! ❤️❤️
You’re not alone! I have heavy paranoia that I’ve been tackling piece by piece via ERP with a therapist. Often, OCD has us misreading and overthinking social interactions as much more negative or consequential than they are. Don’t let OCD run your life! It will be hard, but facing these fears with the guidance of your therapist and consistently working at it can be very freeing. Wishing you all the support! 💜
I struggle with paranoia often. I would strongly suggest avoiding social media and news outlets. The constant negativity can be a strong trigger. Being in nature, with loved ones, or doing acts of service are the best ways to get myself out of it.
Subject matter?
@Mindfulness6060 Feeling like I’m wronging everyone. I’m a bad person or something
Is it because of the doubt you get or uncertainty you have in your knowledge base that makes you feel vulnerable that you may mislead others and something bad can happen and perhaps at the same time feel self conscious?
@Mindfulness6060 It’s mainly the doubt I have in myself. My mind will completely make up a story that didn’t happen and I convince myself that that’s reality
Or neither of the above?
I'm reaching out in hopes of finding others who might relate to my experiences or offer insights. I'm dealing with a complex interplay of OCD, depression, and existential anxiety, and I'm struggling to make sense of it all. Here's what I'm experiencing: I have OCD with various manifestations, along with episodes of depression. I find myself in a cyclical pattern where, after a few weeks, I start to remind myself about my depressive tendencies. This reminder seems to trigger a cycle that actually makes me feel more depressed or at least more aware of depressive symptoms. When this happens, I often experience feelings of nihilism and existential dread. I try to think about my family - my two young boys and my wife - to find motivation or a sense of purpose, but this strategy often backfires, making me feel even more anxious and depressed. I constantly check my feelings, wondering if they're depressive or anxious. At the same time, I fear that my feelings of anxiety and panic might spiral out of control. I think about my emotions and thoughts on a meta-level, which means I'm not just experiencing feelings, but I'm also constantly analyzing the fact that I'm experiencing them. There's an existential component to my struggles, a fear of depression and anxiety itself, and a sense that this might be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps most frustratingly, I often have feelings, thoughts, or sensory experiences that I can't explain or put into words. I feel like I've never heard of these before, which leaves me feeling deeply misunderstood. Does anyone else experience something similar? How do you cope with this complex web of symptoms and experiences? I'm particularly interested in hearing from those who've found ways to break the cycle of meta-cognition and self-fulfilling anxiety. Any insights, shared experiences, or strategies would be deeply appreciated. Thank you for your time and understanding.
I'm so scared that by thinking about things I can make them happen. I know that's a central thing in OCD but I googled it and a lot of people actually say that if you think about stuff you can make it happen. I've been processing a lot of trauma and having intrusive thoughts about it and I'm so scared that if I think about people who hurt me it will make them contact me and it's making me feel really paranoid and scared and panic and I'm just so scared that I'm somehow conjuring bad people to come into my life and that I'm going to somehow get sucked back into my past or that I am somehow calling people close to me who could hurt me or that something bad is going to happen to me because my thoughts have been so scary and triggering. I'm also feeling really dissociated and I'm worried that these thoughts are actually me starting to have some sort of a psychotic break or something. Please help I'm so scared.
My last and almost life long theme/sub-theme largely subsided recently and my ocd felt like it wasn’t even an issue. Then I went on winter break from uni and being alone made my mind come up with a whole new topic to obsess over. TLDR on my fears, my advisor wouldn’t email me back for a while about signing up for classes so my mind started to worry “what if he doesn’t in time and you can’t enroll this semester and you lose this whole life you just built and all these new friends” So when that issue was resolved my mind found other scarier ways I could be uprooted from my current life and friends that I’ve grown so attached to. Then my mind remembered back when I was struggling with false memories and scrupulosity and I essentially made a post on a forum 2 and a half years ago saying I did something or was convinced I did something that I never actually did. Now I’ve been spiraling about someone finding it reporting me and I either get seen as a horrible person or arrested or something over something I never actually did but “admitted” to out of fear of going to hell. My mind won’t let it go and keeps finding new reasons for it to be “valid” “logical” or even inevitable. I feel like it’s just hanging over my head and I can never rest easy. Especially when I try to focus on my daily tasks or plan for the future I get this horrible flair up of “why plan for the future when this could come back in that future and you get uprooted from all of it” my mind won’t rest without certainty being uprooted won’t happen but certainty doesn’t exist, at least not with ocd. This sucks and I miss being care free.
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