Here's my opinion, allow me to give my two cents. When I log into the site, more times than not, there are many people that experience a certain problem demanding that they will be a different person or to alter their mind. There are a lot of different thoughts that people experience:
Someone spiking their drink.
Someone out to get them (Paranoia).
Developing Schizophrenia.
One could sit on this site all day and debate with that person otherwise, but they always come back with the same delusional fears with some slightly different questions. I went to my therapist and discussed some things with him; most of my session was based on how I fear, or rather feared, of hurting people in my sleep or just hurting people in general. I thought I was losing compassion for people and it was driving me to become a serial killer. Then he brought up that people tend to look on the possibility, but tend to not look at the probability.
For instance, and I'll use people experiencing derealization/depersonalization for this one, people tend to look on the possibility side because they wish to make sure they cannot reach that point. In other words, they are preparing for the worst of things; which makes sense considering it's just human nature to protect ourselves from the worst possible scenario. I have noticed that some people with depersonalization/derealization have these thought processes: they get something in their head, ruminate and think of it constantly because they want to prepare themselves for the worst of things - or protect themselves. I'm not saying that if you exhibit a symptom of, let's say, meningitis; that you should just shove it away and not let it affect you. If there are likely symptoms and you are worried, then you can take steps to better your body and stop it from happening. I'm more talking about delusional thoughts right now - the "What if someone spiked my drink?" type ideas.
It's no debating that it's borderline obsessive, though, but the reason that it's so obsessive is because we're not seeing both sides of things - or the side where it shows how likely it is to happen. I could walk outside right now and be fearful of getting struck by lightning during a thunderstorm, but what would be the point? I could force myself inside and stay away from thunder-storms as much as possible - but if I take a look at the probability: there is a 1 in 700,000 chance of me getting hit by lightning. Even if I do, the probability of me dying is nearly one out of every five people that get struck by lightning. In other words: It's nearly impossible.
With that being said, we can put this to use within our thoughts. So, for something a little more prominent on this site in particular, I will use the "Will I turn into a Schizophrenic?". You can sit there and understand that there is apossibility that you could go crazy and start to hallucinate things - or you could discover the probability of it actually happening. The prevalence of Schizophrenia itself is 1.1% in any given year, but that's all forms of Schizophrenia. Getting Schizophrenia's earliest of symptoms and correlating them to derealization/depersonalization is a near 00.01% - it's the worst case scenario and extremely improbable within the users of this site. If you're worried of getting Schizophrenia at this current time; put yourself at ease because it won't happen to you.
People who look at the probability will look at those statistics and say to themselves; "These statistics are so damn low; there's no possible way I'd get Schizophrenia. I haven't had any of the serious symptoms, nor have I had any of the earlier symptoms. I won't get this." - they push it out of their brains and do not worry about it. They realize that the probability of developing Schizophrenia is entirely too low to even worry about. To put it into better perspective:
Have any of you worried about getting a plane smashed into your home? Most likely not. The reason for this being that your mind understands that "The probability of this actually happening is so exponentially low that there is absolutely no reason to worry about it." - so, although having a plane crash into your home is possible, you're not ruminating over the thought because it's so outlandish that you'd be worrying about absolutely nothing. ...and, yes, thinking you'll get Schizophrenia by a simple dissociation from reality is outlandish.
My main opinion of this post is that you should start thinking of the probability of something happening. A lot of things are possible, but if you look at the probability of that possibility - it's so low that the word "possibility" should not even come into the equation. Just like the example I used of getting struck by lightning - the fear of getting hit by it is forcing me to live my life a different way, a way that I dislike living. Sure, it's slightly possible that during the next thunderstorm, I could get hit by lightning, but it's so low that it shouldn't enter my mind. Being fearful of that thought is something that inhibits my well-being.
So, for all of the people that are having delusional thoughts in your head - thinking of the probability instead of the possibility. It's what has helped me with my delusions.
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