I do not think that most people understand what paranoia is. I have been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder (schizophrenia and bipolar I) and PTSD.
I am currently on 5 medications and take 11 pills each day to stay somewhat normalized. I say "somewhat" because there are points in which they do not stop my paranoia., The only way I have found to getting rid of the paranoia (if not severe) is to do rrality checks, although people do not really enjoy me aksing all these questions just to gain back my sanity. For most, they just say "think positively," "get over it", or "thats nothing." Some even laugh at me or get angry at me.
Let me allow you into the world of a parnanoid person.
I walk around campus in graduate school. I have only been living here for a few months. I'm on the phone with my brother saying I think it is time to go back to the hospital. So I go. I am met with a ton of people starying at me in the hospital entrance. Do they know what I'm going through? How do they know about me? Can they see my illness? At this point, the whole university knows.The government is still after me.
Another hospitalization, I thought I was in the Holocaust ansd that the doctors were killing al of the patients. I was running around trying to save evefybody, trying to figure out the puzzle of freeing everyone.
During one of my other hospital visits during my graduate school career, I saw a list of things ona table and I thought the list that I found was a list to free me from an FBI interrogation (I still have paraonoia about the government but not as severe). I kept tying to figure out this list and I finally got to the bottom of the list and I don't remember why, but I kept taking my hospial gown off., They yelled to the other patients to go in their room.
At another hospital, I became entirely catatonic and I did not tak, eat or slep for 3 days. That was in the midst of one of the most terrifying parnoia/psychoti period. Tehy finally gave me a strong medication and it lessened. But I still remember all of what happened.
The littlest thing can set me off on a crazy rant or adventure.
I was hospitalized 3 times in gtaduate school and I sitll received my Masters degreee.
Now my parania is not as bad as it's been while in the hospital. THe majority of my paranoia/anciety is contained by the endless sea of medications that have been prescribed to me. Some may believe that watching people go through psychosis and paranoia, but it's not funny at all. It is one of the most terrifying things I go through. Sometimes I still believe that I am still being watched by the FBI, which are inproportioate to my reason why they would be after me. I have learned that it is possible to overcome the paranoia by talking to myself about the relaity of what's going on.
