[Guest]

I'm almost embarassed to post this but sometimes in the midst of my worst anxiety/DP/DR I start having really crazy "what if" thoughts.. like "what if this is a dream and I can literally walk through people around me since they are not real" or "what if people are against me" or "what if people want to harm me and I can't trust them".... I know these thoughts are JUST thoughts and I don't they're not true but I can't seem to shake them off and can't seem to be scared of them. I know that paranoia is a sign of some mental illnesses and I'm truly scared of it... I mean , do I accept insane thoughts such as "what if everyone around me is an alien in some nightmare" or is it a sign that I should go seek help now?

 

[falling_free]

I was talking with my social worker a couple of weeks ago about paranoid thoughts simliar to what yoour saying, and she says it just shows that I have an imagintive mind and that is why I always think thughts like that, I think as long as you don't actually believe without any evidence any paranoid thoughts that you have that you can maintain your santity, I just see paranoid thoughts as white noise, like static on the radio of the mind

 

[Guest]

Nope, no one else has that. It's just you.

evil grin

(thought I'd provide your worst fear so you could have a little catharsis)

I had those thoughts all the time, and I know for a FACT that many people on this board have them because I get PM's about them alot! Most people are not wiling to even admit to those thoughts, because they are so afraid of sounding truly insane.

Listen to me: you are making yourself MISERABLE. However, you will NEVER succeed in driving yourself into madness. That is not how the mind works. You can however, drive yourself deeper and deeper and deeper still into a morbid terror of insanity. Over time, you can become so afraid of your every thought, and terrified of your every impulse, that you cannot trust yourself to have one moment without self-monitoring.

You will have spiraled back into self so deep and so firmly that you will believe you ARE insane. However, you will not be. You will "merely" be an obsessive anxiety patient who has painted himself into such a tight corner that his life has become utterly horrible.

At that point, you cannot just turn around and say "oh, okay...now I get it." and bounce back into normal thoughts. You will have ingrained a pattern of cognitive experience that RULES you and it will take you a long damn time to work your way out.

Got it?

Read this post again.

REALLY got it?

Love ya,
and ONLY because I recognize myself am I being so tough on you!!!!
J

 

[JAG]

what Janine said

 

[Guest]

God, Janine... what would I do without this board?=)

I think it's so important to hear that others might have the same thoughts because I felt like I was THE only person in the world who thought that I made up things around myself, that I was in some nightmare or that I shouldn't trust people etc.

I think I'll just let myself think whatever... and not react to it with fear...

I did take your advice to just live, interact with people and not turn inwards so much so hopefully I'll be able to beat this horrible sensation and be as wise as you are=)

Thanks and love ya!
I'm truly truly thankful for your posts and this board.

 

[Guest]

Ahhh, Tidal, you talk a good game, but I suspect there are sneaky little thoughts lurking in there somewhere, grin.

You said that it's "good to know other people also have these thoughts, so I don't think it's just me."

DANGER signal, my friend. Yes, it's good to know that basically any horrible idea you can dream up has already been dreamed up by some other neurotic, but there is a trap.

What you need to do now is TURN around on a dime and try as hard as possible to NOT need to compare your own bizarre mind to anyone else's. Instead, what often happens is that the person gets addicted to being reassured.

You know the cell phone commercial with the guy in the field, testing the sound clarity...."can ya hear me now?" "....can ya hear me now?" "how about now? can ya hear me now?"

There is a dp/obsessive version too.

"how about THIS crazy thought? Do you have this one?"

"but wait, here's my WORST thought...am I crazy now?"

"how about now? am I crazy now?"

Got it?

grin,
one who has BEEN there,
J

 

[Guest]

Ok Janine, now I trust you more than ever. I actually was doing that...trying to get reassurance for each and every thought that I had to try to see if it's "normal". How would you know that?=) Your post made me speechless ,lol=)

 

[Guest]

Dear Tidal, I've the same thoughts you have, and I'm sure many others have...welcome to the Obsessive's Club :wink:
I have some advices for you (actually, they're also for myself!)
1- Focus your attention outward...on your life, your hobbies etc. I know it's difficult, but listen to this: I always try to scare myself and obsess myself with absurd thoughts...obviously, all the ones that involve the question: "I've thought a crazy thought, so am I going crazy?"...well, there are two things that blow away all obsessions I have (at least for a while!); they are:going to the disco and dancing, and the friday evening, when I go to a club where there's a girl I like a lot...well, all the time when I'm in the car driving from my house to this club, I think: "What if tonight I'll not be able to push away my obsessive thoughts and maybe I lose control in front of this girl?"...well, it never happened, but even if it will happen, I know that it's not for some kind of psychosis but for my ability to ruin everything with bad thoughts; ok, I go to this club, and when I see this girl, I become the Tau I was 3 years ago...maybe even stronger!
So: go out, try to relax even if you are SURE you'll not be able to, and live even you think crazy thoughts.
2-I don't know if you do it...but if you are like me, please, don't read psychosis symptoms on the net...why? Well, here's what I typically do:
Phase 1:Oh my god, I feel anxious and detached (of course, I'm always checkin' my thoughts instead of living my life)
Phase 2:Why I feel so bad?Let's do a search on the net (bad choice...)
Phase 3:What would be the worst think that can happen me?Hummm...psychosis!Well, let's read psychosis symptoms, this way I'll be sure I don't have them.
Phase 4:Lol, what a stupid I was, these symptoms are very different from how I feel! (Imagine, I was even laughing when I read some paranoid thoughts, thinking "Ah, only a really crazy person can ever think this crap!")
Phase 5: What if I'm going to have these thoughts and this is only the beginning of the illness?
Phase 6: I must not think these thoughts, I must not think these thoughts..."What if people is out to get me?"...damn I thought it!!!
Phase 7: "What if people is out to get me?"..."Why that person looked at me?"..."How could this person know I've been to the disco yesterday evening?" (And of course, also sadistically trying to make myself believe the thoughts in order to know if I can become psychotic...which is also part of the obsession).
Scary, uh? And the worst part is: they become automatic after a while. Just like a learned behaviour.
3-Listen to what Janine says, she knows these "thought processes" very well from what I've read...and even if she doesn't know me, she has said some things that I've never considered before and that are helping a lot!

Hope I've been of help!
Take care.

Tau

 

[kenc127]

I have those thoughts to from time to time as well. Just as long as you don't start living your life based on this paranoia, you can probably just giggle it off with a little bit of reasoning. What-if thoughts are classic anxiety symptoms. In fact, I'm looking at the GAD pamphlet right now, and it says, "Do you have what-if thoughts? You may need Paxil."
Don't worry about it.

 

[Beth]

I don't normally, but in really stressful situations, like after a bad argument, I have been really convinced I was going schizophrenic because I was stuck with loads of these thoughts, mostly about everyone wanting me to feel the way I did, wanting to make me go insane. I've once been in a state where I started actually hallucinating along with paranoia and was desperate to go to a hospital, but I eventually came down enough to sleep, and coped with pretty severe dr for the few days after, and it's never happened again. Has anyone else had just one-off episodes of something really intensely weird or scary? Or am I going to develop schizophrenia? (Last bit a joke, mostly).

 

[Guest]

ive had all sorts of thoughts, existential ( not as much anymore), suicidal ( these occur more often) and even thoughts about hurting other people which probably bother me the most because im not really a violent person at all. Its ironic because i always say that i have respect for human life & life on earth, like i don't even like to kill insects, yet i feel at times that i don't have any respect or care for my own life.

i dunno

 

[Guest]

I have those thoughts to from time to time as well. Just as long as you don't start living your life based on this paranoia, you can probably just giggle it off with a little bit of reasoning. What-if thoughts are classic anxiety symptoms. In fact, I'm looking at the GAD pamphlet right now, and it says, "Do you have what-if thoughts? You may need Paxil."
Don't worry about it.

kenc127, I do have pseudo-paranoid and pseudo-delusional thoughts ("pseudo" because I know they're crap and I know they're generated by myself in order to torture myself with what I fear the most), I would ask you...in order for a thought to be obsessional, must it be a "what if" thought? Because I've what-ifs but also "all this world is unreal", " all people are aliens conspiring against me" etc. ...of course, all these are stupid thoughts, but I'm worried that they're not what-ifs hence they may be delusional and I'll go crazy

 

[Guest]

Listen up Obsessional Ones:

I used to believe I had created this entire world.

I believed I was it, all, everything....sort of like the embryo/infant in 2001 A Space Odyssey - One Child, One Thought, ONE BEING...and it was me, and everthing you see and hear and taste and touch was nothing except stuff my brain had invented - the universe was nothing but the contents of a bizarre and sick night dream that had been dreamed up by me.

I was the earth and the wind and the fire. I was the creator and the devil. NOTHING existed beyond my own imagination and nothing had ever existed. Reality was a concoction of my delusions.

If you had hooked me up to a lie detector and asked me if I truly believed that, it would have shown you "yes"

However, I knew not to TELL this kind of thing because I also knew (at the same time) that it sounded crazy. I knew AT THE SAME TIME that my delusions were absurd. And....I still believed them.

That's what dissociation is - a dichotomy between aspects of consciousness. I knew and didn't know at the exact same time.

I KNEW I was insane.
And I knew I only feared it.

I knew nothing in this universe was real and that any second now, like in some sadistic Twilight Zone episode, I would be confronted with this fact in such a way that I would never again be able to forget it.

And I knew that sounded crazy, and I wanted to live in the Real World like a Normal Person....and AT THE SAME TIME I didn't think there was any such place as the real world.

That's what delusions do, my friends. We both know and don't know reality AT THE SAME TIME. And it is as sneaky and quick as mercury, our thoughts will slide and fly faster than any rationalization will EVER be able to protect us from. You cannot FIGURE it out, or outsmart yourself.

Turn away from the delusions. It is your only way out.

Peace,
Janine
the artist formerly known as Creator of the Universe at Large

 

[falling_free]

was the earth and the wind and the fire. I was the creator and the devil. NOTHING existed beyond my own imagination and nothing had ever existed. Reality was a concoction of my delusions.

I had sometimes still have this exact delusion, like sometimes I feel like theres a good and abad me and that I somehow created everything around me, its really annoying to think crazy stuff like that cos it leads to me the conclusion of how can I love myself so much that I actually believe I created everything? I preety much beleive that this delusion was creeated in my mind by drugs, because drugs kind of lift the veil on reality and open new doors in the mind, and some of the doors that you open are preety scary, and some are englighting and you learn about the deepest aspects of the self, though these things are hard to explain, its like having to confront my own mind and the vast winding and complex tunnels that exsist in my subcounious

This quote from howard marks dope stories preety much explains perfectly how I feel when im at the deepest level of this particular delusion

As I exhaled i became terribly afraid , my heart very rapid and strong, palms sweating. a terrible sense of dread and doom filled me- i knew what was happening, i knew i couldn't stop it, but it was so devastating , i was being destroyed - all that was familiar, all refrence points, all identity all viciously shattered in a few seconds. I couldn't even mourn the loss - there was no one left to do the mourning, up,up, out, eyes closed, i am at the speed of light, expanding,expanding,expanding, faster and faster until i become so large that i no longer exsist - my speed is so great that everything has come to a stop - here i gaze upon the entire universe

 

[JAG]

What are you trying to say? Are you saying I have paranoid thoughts!??! Is that what you're trying to tell me??!!

:lol:

 

[Guest]

What are you trying to say? Are you saying I have paranoid thougths!??! Is that what you're trying to tell me??!!

No, no... that was not at ALL what I was trying to say.

However, in light of your paranoid outburst above, it's become kind of moot anyway.

:twisted: :lol:

 

[JAG]

double post

 

[JAG]

I believed I was it, all, everything....sort of like the embryo/infant in 2001 A Space Odyssey - One Child, One Thought, ONE BEING...and it was me, and everthing you see and hear and taste and touch was nothing except stuff my brain had invented - the universe was nothing but the contents of a bizarre and sick night dream that had been dreamed up by me.

I was the earth and the wind and the fire. I was the creator and the devil. NOTHING existed beyond my own imagination and nothing had ever existed. Reality was a concoction of my delusions.

If you had hooked me up to a lie detector and asked me if I truly believed that, it would have shown you "yes"

However, I knew not to TELL this kind of thing because I also knew (at the same time) that it sounded crazy. I knew AT THE SAME TIME that my delusions were absurd. And....I still believed them.

How do you know you weren't right?? I have believed the same thing for many years so I'm not so sure it's not true.

 

[Guest]

Serious answer? How do I know? I don't.

However, I don't care anymore.

I work full time and go to school. I am a writer, authored two books and working on a third. I have finally found a psychoanalytic institute where I'm studying that is everything I have ever dreamed of. I adore my classes, love the people, and feel a "thrill" everytime I walk into the building.

We have a major conference coming up in December, and I'm so busy preparing for it, there's barely time to breathe.

I have a great life. A great real life (and I NEVER had a real life I could even stand, let alone adore).

The real world has become so interesting to me now that I have no desire to live inside my own mind anymore.

That's how I know.
Or ... that's why I no longer care.

Love,
J

 

[JAG]

That's a really good answer I don't know what to say