Where is the line between anxiety & paranoia?

I have spent a lot of time working very closely with ‘normal’ individuals who have been experiencing high levels of anxiety, whether they call it GAD or OCD or some form of phobia – to me, it is still a form of anxious response that elicits fearful emotional reactions and a cacophony of scaring internal dialogue that hugely disrupts the life of the sufferer.

Now, in a few individuals, the normal symptoms of anxiety get expanded to include various forms of paranoia and that is what I would like to discuss on this page.

Caveat: I am not a medical Doctor and I am not discussing complex medical conditions, such as, schizophrenia or paranoid psychosis, I am exploring the mental, delusional and logical traps that many anxiety sufferers find themselves experiencing.

What might a paranoid ‘moment’ feel like?

I heard that when John Nash was interviewed (John was the inspiration for the film “A Beautiful Mind”) about how real the character played by Russell Crowe was – he said, that it was very real except for two factors, firstly, he was older than Crowe when his condition started and secondly, he said that his schizophrenia did not have any pictures in his mind (as depicted in the film) his paranoid encounters were all verbal through sounds and voices in his mind.

This got me thinking about how wide the spectrum of paranoia can be – for example; I have a voice in my head that says “you fool” when I do something silly, or says “Don’t do that because if it fails you will look silly” and stuff like that. Does that mean that I am paranoid because I have voices in my mind? No, I don’t think so, it’s just my internal dialogue – a chat between my conscious and unconscious mind. Then at the other end of the spectrum we have individuals who see (and hear) dragons crawling out of the television set and it freaks them out – because the edges where reality meet ‘mental fiction’ have become blurred, and the fear that they are going mad even further exaggerates their fears.

So, I am going to explore the low end of the spectrum of what forms paranoia might take;

•  A fear that there is no way out of their problem and they are going mad (fear of the fear)

• Believing that other people know something about them

• Hearing snippets of other peoples conversations and believing they are the subject

• Believing that unless a certain ritual is adhered to something bad will happen

• Not feeling totally in control of a situation – like awake & dreaming at the same time

• Becoming totally engrossed in one point of view i.e. I am evil / bad / jinxed

I could write a list as long as my arm – however, the ‘what’ is not so important, to me, the ‘why’ is where we need to focus, and then, the ‘how’ to detach from these paranoid episodes and take back emotional control.

I think we can accept paranoid behaviour if there is some logic to it, for example; a person might be fanatical about cleanliness and they can argue their case using logic about germs and bacteria and illness – and even if they spend 10 hours a day cleaning – they have a raft of logical excuses they can use to defend their ego ‘s position.

But, when a person believes that people are ‘out to get them’ or ‘are conspiring against them’ all logic goes out of the window, it gets confused, because the individual says “I know this is stupid, BUT, IT’S REAL!”

How can I reframe what paranoid thoughts are?

There has been some wonderful work done by a chap called Joe Griffin on how and why we dream and I’d like to give you a recap of his work (buy his books, they are very good) You might be thinking what have dreams got to to do with paranoia? Well, as you will see, quite a lot.

Joe has years of experience working with REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, which is where we do much of our dreaming and he proposes that there are two reasons why we dream.

One: So, whilst we dream our old animal instincts get a chance to be played out, through, fighting, chasing, escaping, sex and all the non-verbal animal like behaviours that we (as an animal) would have used in the past to stay alive. This happens on a nightly basis because during the day we suppress these behaviours to ‘fit in’ with society, if we kept on suppressing and suppressing we would lose the very survival abilities we gained over the last 100,000 years. Makes complete sense to me.

Two: Now the second reason we dream is to dissipate any ‘unfinished’ emotion from the day before, emotional residue from arguments, work, relationships and anything that happens to us. For example; last week I woke up from a dream where I had been running across roof tops of an African town, jumping from roof to roof (with a few other people) and I was being chased by the buildings, they were trying to close in on me and squash me. Once I was awake I wondered what it meant and how/what unfinished emotions were being processed.

I spent 15 minutes going through the day before and I couldn’t think of any drama I had had the previous day – and it wasn’t until I wash brushing my teeth that I realised what it was – the previous night before I went to bed I had watched a report on the TV about many Egyptian football fans dying in a stadium where many of them had been crushed. Obviously that incident had emotionally affected me more than I thought. Personally, I have been able to link each of my dreams each morning (in some way) to some event from the previous day.

The reason this is important is because – it seems in some people who have been living with a lot of anxiety and stress for a long time, some elements of this REM sleep may become activated whilst you are awake, this creates a weird amalgamation of reality and dream where the edges of reality become a little blurred.

The paranoid delusions feel real

Yes, of course they do! Dreams feel real whilst you are dreaming and the ‘real’ world feels real whist you are awake, therefore both feel real when you are experiencing some form of psychotic episode. Recognising this pattern and moving to a mental attitude of acceptance rather than fear (or obsessive investigation / avoidance) will assist in giving you the capacity to remain more detached and observer like of the weird dream/life overlap.

For many this understanding is the doorway to moving forward for many reasons;

•  Avoidant behaviour can be reduced

• Hours of ruminating about why? Can be eliminated

• The energy wasted through becoming so anxious is reduced (a big part of overcoming anxiety)

• Being able to observe rather than experience the paranoia allows you to continue to function

• The ‘belief’ that you are broken/mad lessens its hold

• If that belief lessens – what other beliefs that hold you back can also lessen?

 Overcoming anxiety is about leaning into the fear, whilst challenging existing beliefs, and not believing all the ruminating voices in your mind.

Do you need help overcoming paranoid anxiety?

I help people to understand what anxiety is and how to face it with new tools and from a completely new mind-set. If this interests you give me a call on 01280 823059 and we can talk about what is possible – it’s not easy and you will have to do a lot of work, however, life is for living not for avoiding.

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