Persecution mania (in one word, paranoia, scientifically correctly called persecutory delusion of persecution) is an acute mental disorder in which the patient experiences the conviction that a certain person or group of people wants to harm his health or take his life.
Most often, most paranoid people consider their relatives, neighbors, work colleagues, secret organizations, and aliens to be pests.
A person with persecution mania becomes withdrawn, suspicious, overly anxious, and unable to adequately assess himself and the environment.
Patients with this type of mental disorder can contact law enforcement agencies in order to warn about their fears, concerns, anxieties and save their lives. Most often, anxiety is excessive and not supported by objective data.
However, there are cases when a person was actually monitored. One striking example is the American writer Ernest Hemingway, who was actually monitored by American intelligence agencies. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully verify all reports of surveillance.
Persecutory delusions are one of the most common forms of mental disorders. Psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev diagnosed Joseph Stalin with a severe form of paranoia, talking about the spread of persecution mania among people in power.
Free yourself from the desire for constant control
You may not realize that constant calls and SMS messages to your partner themselves imply mistrust. Try to get rid of the desire to control your chosen one using simple psychological methods. Take a deep breath, put your phone down and focus on the things that matter. Meet with friends, play sports or watch a football match.
Don't spend your minutes waiting alone
If you are at home all alone, the minutes before your chosen one returns will seem like real torture. Left alone with your thoughts, you will become a slave to them and develop even more paranoia. To take your mind off things, plan a meeting with friends. Talk to them about anything, even about your fears. This will give you the opportunity to understand how exaggerated your fears are. A casual conversation will save your mental energy and leave your anxiety unfed.
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Be open if repairing the relationship is your goal.
In the event that your partner has indeed had an affair and you both want to save the relationship, an open heart and an open mind are two necessary ingredients for success. Don't be afraid to seek help from a professional psychologist. Specialists have many years of experience in counseling people who find themselves in difficult life situations; they successfully help partners change their attitude towards each other (especially in the area of thoughts and feelings). Choosing reconciliation after the discovery of infidelity can be difficult, but with the help of a professional expert, you can look at the situation with new eyes.
Put your worries on paper
Here is a technique that people use in therapeutic courses. Write down problems and possible fears in a negative thinking journal. Allow yourself just 20 minutes of pure time a day to worry about your spouse's infidelity. Negative journal entries like these can help reduce your anxiety. Remember to balance these 20 minutes with positive actions, such as positive affirmations.
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Release your guard
Paranoid people prefer to keep their ears open; they believe that other people are constantly trying to humiliate them, hurt them, harm them in some way, or threaten them. As a rule, they have unfounded beliefs and habits. However, feelings of guilt or mistrust interfere with the ability to form close relationships. Try not to look for only flaws in other people, try not to think about worst-case scenarios every second. Notice the positive traits in others.
Symptoms of Paranoid Personality Disorder
Paranoid personality disorder is characterized by a pervasive mistrust and suspicion of others, such that their motives are interpreted as malicious. It usually begins in early adulthood and occurs in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:
- Suspects without reasonable grounds that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving him
- Preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or reliability of friends or associates
- Does not want to trust others due to unjustified fear that the information will be used against him maliciously
- Reads hidden derogatory or threatening meanings in kind remarks or events
- Constantly feels dissatisfied (i.e., does not forgive insults, injuries, or slights)
- Perceives attacks on his or her character or reputation that are not obvious to others, and reacts quickly to anger or counterattack
- Has repeated suspicions, without justification, about the fidelity of a spouse or sexual partner
Paranoid personality disorder is usually not diagnosed when a person has already been diagnosed with another psychotic disorder, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, or a depressive disorder with psychotic features.
Because personality disorders describe long-standing and persistent patterns of behavior, they are most often diagnosed in adults. They are rarely diagnosed during childhood or adolescence because the child or adolescent is in constant development, personality changes, and maturation. However, if diagnosed in a child or adolescent, signs must be present for at least 1 year.
According to the American Psychiatric Association (2013), paranoid personality disorder is more common in men than women, occurring somewhere between 2.3 and 4.4 percent in the general population.
Like most personality disorders, paranoid personality disorder tends to decrease with age, and many people experience only some of the most extreme symptoms by the time they are in their 40s or 50s.
Symptoms of paranoia can range from severe (i.e., the feeling that the guy sitting next to you is popping his gum to annoy you) to severe (i.e., the feeling that there is an alien in your head that is controlling your thoughts). People who experience paranoia may exhibit the following symptoms:
- Inability to trust others
- Being easily offended
- It's difficult to forgive others
- Intense fear of being used
- Inability to cope with criticism
- Hostile or aggressive behavior
- Not willing to compromise
- Excessive suspicion
- The world is a dangerous place in which they are under constant threat
- Belief in "conspiracy theories" that lack evidence or support
- Feeling persecuted
Take a breath before you react
The key to managing paranoia is learning coping strategies, or behaviors to cope with stressful situations. It turns out that you can learn not to react to the emotional state of the mind by synchronizing your reason and intuition. However, difficulties arise if a person is not able to understand the differences between intuitive instinct and paranoia. You have to reinterpret the meaning of what is happening inside your head or what is happening outside of yourself. A story that is not based entirely on facts cannot be interpreted unambiguously. Reduce fear by analyzing and calmly assessing the situation, pass it through an intuitive sense of your own awareness. This will be beneficial for your relationship, so you will have to learn how to slow down your impulse response reactions.
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[edit] Symptoms
| @lsd: Here one friend asked an interesting question: 'Talking to a cat is paranoia or not quite yet?'. @masai: This is not paranoia. Paranoia is when you are afraid to blurt out too much in front of the cat. |
| — |
SUDDENLY, there are a lot of thoughts in your head, thousands of them, forming an overvalued/delusional idea. All events are perceived by the patient as directed towards him, filled with deep meaning and interpreted in confirmation of a highly valuable idea, while those that contradict it are ignored. Actually, distrust and suspicion, as well as determination and pathological confidence in one’s rightness.
If paranoia acts as a symptom of schizophrenia, then the patient may begin to shoot at his imaginary enemies, which could be you, anon.
Social media fuels paranoia
The Internet and social media further fuel paranoia as they allow you to secretly monitor situations or suspicious activities. Any controversial post will easily lower your self-esteem and sow a seed of doubt in your soul. This innocent, friendly photo paints a picture of cheating in your mind. It affects how you feel and how you behave with your significant other. To avoid feeding paranoid thoughts, stop spending time on social media and pretending to be a private detective. This way, you stop coming up with non-existent scenarios, and ask who is this girl who constantly leaves enthusiastic comments under your chosen one’s posts.
Paranoid and family
Author - A.P. Egides. The book “How to understand people, or Psychological drawing of personality”
A paranoid person is, in principle, sexual and even voluptuous, but, as already mentioned, he is capable of sacrificing his desires. He can refuse a love date, refuse sexual temptation, even if it comes from a beautiful woman, when a report on his achievements hangs in the balance. And his love, although not entirely on the side, is still on the side.
In the novel “Penguin Island” by Anatole France, there is one deputy who was chosen as a future husband by a certain strong-willed lady. One day she received him at her home and courted him in every possible way, and he had some important meeting ahead; he jumped up several times, but she held him back again and again with caresses and coquetry. Still, when time was running out, he jumped up and rushed off, and the lady, appreciating his efficiency, strengthened her intentions to make him become her husband. (For those who have read the novel, let me explain: this lady is hysterical, but self-controlled, and her behavior can be called manipulative.)
Even such a serious thing as marriage gives way to the paranoid before efficiency. Let us remember O'Henry's wonderful story "The Broker Gets Married." Oh, O'Henry! The luxury of gentle humanistic humor. The hero forgot that he had already married his secretary, and again offers her his hand and heart.
In sexual relationships, a paranoid person does not pursue beauty, although when he reaches heights, he can show off like a hysteroid: look, I have the best women. In his opinion, it is women who should appreciate him and chase him. But this comes later, and when he is still on the rise, he prefers a sexual relationship with a woman who will also be a typist for him or who will arrange his life so that he himself can create in peace.
I had a very paranoid acquaintance. He rented a room under the stairs, like Raskolnikov, though not in St. Petersburg, but in the center of Brezhnev’s Moscow, and slept there on a sagging sofa, resting his head on a sagging cushion (no pillows for you). I wrote a dissertation on physiology, which was supposed to revolutionize all medicine with its new approach... To pay for the room, I worked part-time as a local psychiatrist in my (I worked there for many years) psychoneurological dispensary, and part-time as a watchman in a nearby store. Our paths diverged, and five years later I meet him, dressed to the nines, almost with a diamond clip on his tie. “Hau ar yu?” - I ask. “Great, old man.” - “What, got married, I see? — I pointed to his wedding ring. - Well, who is she? So he answered me: “He types with ten fingers touch-touch, translates into three languages!”
You understand: not with three fingers under vision control, but with “ten” and “blind”, and not with three languages, but “with three”! Then somehow I saw her. And I thought that it was better to learn five languages myself in order to translate into them from Russian on my own, and type my articles with one finger, than to marry such a person.
So, as mentioned above, a paranoid person’s wife is usually a typist, children are couriers, and his mother-in-law is a housekeeper. However, the wife may also be given a more honorable position: translator, editor, impresario. Children may be tasked with editing his books on the computer. And the mother-in-law receives honored guests. Well, if his wife doesn’t want to be the editor of his manuscripts, then it’s time for him to read a fragment from the Pretender’s monologue:
You won't be my friend
You cannot share your fate with me;
But maybe you'll regret
About the fate you rejected.
Children, if they do not want to be helpers, will be subject to parental curse. Paranoid is more of a leader than a parent. Well, if the mother-in-law does not want to be a housekeeper or even the owner of his home salon, then she is “a stupid, stupid bourgeois, what can you talk about with such a person.”
Family is not the most important thing for a paranoid person. He may or may not have a family. If a family is needed now to advance his business, he can create one, or at least simply allow himself to get married. But he is not a support for the family. He is unreliable, sometimes even irresponsible. Strangers may be more important and interesting to him than his wife and children, and even more so than distant relatives.
If the wife holds different points of view, then conflicts are likely that can be avoided: let both master the psychotechnics of communication and balance the relationship. However, the paranoid usually marries someone who supports his views and way of life, who can effectively help, playing the role, as we have already said, of an impresario, housekeeper, typist, editor. And these roles are more akin to an epileptoid, a hysterical woman, or, in extreme cases, a hyperthymic woman. And yet, no matter how the wife plays her assigned roles, he constantly finds reasons for dissatisfaction, and the family often collapses. Having divorced, he rushes into a new relationship, the new wife begins to play these roles better at first, from his point of view, and he completely forgets his former wife and children. He communicates little with them, unless children are considered something particularly important in his paranoid value system. Then he fights for his paternal rights and takes care of the child, despite the divorce. The new wife most often resists this, but he more or less successfully fights her.
Let us repeat again: the beauty of a wife is important for the paranoid, but her business qualities are much more important. So, women who have not succeeded in the field of fashion models, do not despair, look for your paranoid one, assure him of your devotion, help, and you are practically guaranteed a husband with all the pros and cons of a paranoid figure.
A paranoid husband may cheat on his wife if it does not greatly hinder or even help his case. He forgives himself for his betrayals, believing that he has moral grounds to be happier, since he serves all of humanity. And if his wife cheats, then he worries, does not forgive, considers her a traitor, is inclined to abruptly break off the relationship, and if she leaves on her own, then he takes revenge on her, reviles her in the circles of mutual acquaintances, despises her, and regards her act as mercantile.
However, a paranoid person is not mortally jealous, his main thing is work, and the collapse of a relationship is not as terrible for him as for an epileptoid.
The paranoid, like the epileptoid, in principle prefers beautiful, plastic hysterical women. He loves beauty, loves to own beauty and admire a beautiful wife, he is proud of her, boasts of her in front of society. There are more hysterical women among women than other psychotypes, so the combination of “paranoid plus hysterical” is not uncommon.
And now the husband is busy with work, he’s tired, he has no time to care for his wife, and he has no strength, but she needs violets, perfume, sighs, compliments. Flowers are an expensive pleasure, and you must always remember that you should buy them. And he spends money on photocopying and international telephone calls. She needs going out and receiving guests, but he is not interested, and he has no time. It’s fine if he lets his wife and children go on Sunday, but he works. And so it begins: “you don’t love me” and “look how others like me,” tears, whims, betrayals. He is decisive and breaks off relationships - just as he would rather pull out a bad tooth than treat it. The chubby, sensitive girl seems to be easier to communicate with. But the hysterical woman is a more active assistant, a sign for the family, an impresario. It would seem that the best option is an epileptoid wife. But she, despite her law-abiding nature, may not agree to his adventures, and this will become a stumbling block in their relationship. (“For you, stupid prejudices and immoral laws are more important, and not a husband who fights against God.”)
In general, paranoid people are not only difficult for employees, but also for families. The paranoid person will have conflicts in any case. And the task is to minimize them.
Paranoid children have little to do with children; mostly children are brought up by their own example. The father sits rigidly over the texts or is immersed in organizational work, and the son gets involved in this. In between there is a discussion of business, and the son gets involved in it. But specially checking diaries, going to parent-teacher meetings, solving arithmetic problems with your child - that’s a shame.
The paranoid person does not restrict the freedom of movement of the child and teenager too much, does not overprotect him, and the children of the paranoid person are more independent. He balances the epileptoid or hysterical mother in her zeal for restrictions on the freedom of the sexual life of her son and daughter. He believes: let the child learn from his own mistakes; for one beaten, they give two unbeaten ones. In childhood conflicts, he teaches his friend to fight back, not to give in to enemies, to resist, sometimes even trains him in martial arts for the purpose of self-defense and for future class and national wars.
In sex, a paranoid person is, as a rule, not a prude. True, he is also somewhat dependent on generally accepted morality, which limits sexuality, but his boundaries are wider, and he tries to push them, unlike the epileptoid, who accepts the boundaries imposed by society. The paranoid, like hyperthymic and hysterical, usually accepts erotic art and is prone to “sexual experiments.” It promotes reform of sexual morality in the spirit of lifting taboos. But this is now in contrast to today’s totalitarianism of other paranoiacs, and, for example, at the beginning of our era, the paranoid could preach sexual enslavement.
The profound and sophisticated Anatole France brilliantly showed the contradictory sexual experiences of a paranoid religious ascetic in those distant times in his novel Thais. The monk Paphnutius (the story takes place at the dawn of Christianity in sexually liberated Alexandria) decides to save and convert the famous and wealthy courtesan Thais to Christ. Through his prayers she turns to God and dies enlightened. But Paphnutius realized that he loved her with carnal love, no matter how much he mortified his flesh, and cursed God for taking Thais to himself and taking her away from him.
If we talk about the “masochism - sadism” system, then the paranoid is more likely to be prone to sadism. He subjugates his sexual partner. This can paradoxically manifest itself in his social activities: the prohibitions that he introduces into social institutions are sadistic in nature, and he derives pleasure from the fact that he forcibly prohibits others from enjoying. During the Stalinist regime, almost all sexual manifestations that were quite innocent by today's standards were banned.
Like an epileptoid, a paranoid man is prone to normal (not forced) voyeurism. He wants to see a naked woman in very revealing poses. And this can harmoniously combine with the exhibitionist tendencies of a hysterical woman. The paranoid would prefer colorful sexuality, but he has no time to do this.
House
If for an epileptoid “my home is my fortress,” then for a paranoid person, the home is a workshop. And he is the Master. And “Margarita” in this workshop is assigned only a broom, for which there is not even an angle, so “Margarita” can only soar on a broom in the fifth dimension. And God forbid someone moves anything, even for the good purpose of wiping off dust. Thunder and lightning on the head of the blasphemer!
The first thing a paranoid husband will do is arrange a place to work, and he needs to be constantly reminded to take out the trash can. While the epileptoid does not need to talk about purely male work: he will immediately cut the lock and install the electrical wiring himself.
Paranoid people often move to a new place of residence - due to a zigzag career or to conquer more and more social space.
A paranoid person is generally not a homely person. First of all, because he often does not have an apartment at all, he moves to a larger city from a smaller one, from a large city to another, larger one, and then to the capital. And, of course, he’s not doing well with apartments. He either rents a house or wanders around among fellow adepts. Like the poet Martynov: “I slept on shabby sofas with friends, with my head bowed on family albums.” But even if an apartment appears to a paranoid person, it is a headquarters, a workshop, and not a house. There are no soups made with chicken, only instant bouillon cubes. The apartment is a bit dirty, there are patches of dust under the sofas, and there may be, if not lumps of street dirt, then fallen matches and cigarette ash on the carpets.
With such an unorganized way of life, what is striking is the way he eats: fits and starts, dry food, often “behind a pillar” and not at the table. He is unpretentious when it comes to food; hot food is not so important to him. He swallows what his wife has prepared on the go, without saying thank you or complaining, unlike the epileptoid, about the lack of good home cooking.
The paranoid person practically never has any rest as such, but he can go to some conferences or gatherings in a country boarding house or on the seashore, and there, on the days while the conference is going on, he can swim in the sea or in the pool. He often doesn’t take another vacation - he doesn’t know how to spend it. On vacation, organized at the behest of his wife, he works - writes, calls “headquarters” intercity.
He doesn’t wash himself too often in the shower, bath, or sauna—there’s no time. A paranoid person goes to take a bath if his wife says five times that the bath is ready. Although, in general, he is not averse to taking a steam bath and having fun, especially when he has reached “higher power.”
A paranoid person sometimes engages in physical education or even sports, but usually not for self-affirmation, but in order to keep himself in shape or eliminate defects. He can even take up bodybuilding for the sake of success with women. Paranoid people can take up professional sports.
The paranoid doesn't have much fun. He considers the entertainment of his wife and children a whim, distracting from business. He has frequent conflicts with his family over this matter.
Focus on the present moment
Spending more time focusing on the present (both emotionally and physically) will reduce the symptoms of self-blame. Think about what are the thoughts that cause destructive emotions? Learn to recognize these sensations; in the future, this will give you the opportunity to act more consciously. Without awareness that focuses your attention on the present moment, the ability to respond appropriately will be lost. A prerequisite for behavior change is identifying the causes of paranoia. These behaviors in romantic relationships may be better understood within the framework of attachment theory. When you know your love style, you will work from that knowledge.
Treatment
Paranoia is characterized as a disease of the human psyche. It can manifest itself in various forms and stages: initial and severe.
With a mild form of the disorder, a person has difficulty communicating with other people, and a mild form of mistrust and isolation appears.
Treatment has its own difficulties:
- The patient may show distrust, and it becomes more difficult to establish contact.
- Refuses to admit that he is sick. In this case, what the doctor must initially do is establish contact with the person. This is not easy and may take a lot of time, but it is necessary to begin effective treatment.
It is important to diagnose the disease in time. With timely assistance, the patient learns to control his emotions, and all other symptoms, and can suppress attacks of aggression
For paranoia, different types of therapy are carried out. One of the most effective is cognitive behavioral. It works as follows - a person will be able to change his behavior pattern at the right time in order to prevent relapse.
If contacting a doctor is late, you should act more quickly.
Learn to love yourself
“Love yourself, and those around you will love you,” as popular wisdom says. This factor is also key in the ability to trust other people. If you are insecure, have low self-esteem, or believe that you don't deserve to be treated well, those insecurities will carry over into the relationship. However, one should not confuse adequate love for one’s own person and selfishness. In order to learn to treat yourself correctly, repeat positive mantras every time self-flagellation appears.
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Treatment
The main condition for proper treatment of paranoia is taking medications.
In medicine, paranoia is not classified as psychosis, but a patient with paranoia has certain difficulties interacting with other people, which can cause a lot of inconvenience to both those around him and the patient himself. If a patient is diagnosed with paranoia, doctors prescribe him treatment, which consists of undergoing a course of psychological correction.
A complicating factor in the treatment of paranoia is that the patient may experience distrust of everyone around him, including doctors. Or, due to criticality towards the entire world around him, the patient may refuse to admit the fact that he has a disease such as paranoia.
Therefore, the main task for a doctor is to establish good and trusting contact with the patient. As a rule, this is difficult to do, and it may take a lot of time for the doctor to win over the patient and begin to effectively fight the disease.
Thanks to psychotherapy, the patient begins to control the symptoms of the disease, feels the approach of an exacerbation and takes certain actions to alleviate or prevent it. There are several types of therapy that can help cope with paranoia. For example, thanks to cognitive behavioral therapy, the patient will be able to change his behavior pattern at the right time in order to prevent relapse.
As for the question - “how is paranoia treated?”, then everything is quite twofold - some patients who have just begun to show some symptoms of paranoia cope with this problem forever. But there are also a large number of patients in whom attacks of paranoia alternate with a certain remission. As already mentioned, a lot depends on at what stage of development of paranoia this disease was discovered. Due to an overly critical perception of the surrounding world, the patient himself may not notice the manifestations of paranoia, even with its strong development. For this reason, many patients end up seeing a doctor at a time when the disease has already reached a strong stage of development, and in this case it will be much more difficult to help the patient. In addition, the doctor knows well how paranoia differs from schizophrenia, and is able to help the patient detect this more dangerous disease at an early stage.
As a rule, the doctor draws up a complex that includes the following treatment methods:
- Taking neuroleptics, antipsychotropic drugs;
- Taking sedatives;
- Family psychotherapy;
- Tranquilizers;
- Individual psychotherapy;
- Antidepressants;
- Psychotherapy, which includes the use of cognitive behavioral methods.
