Does anyone else get paranoid?

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damn i am one paranoid dude. Thank you for this post, ive been trying to figure out the wording and express it to someone, but I did not know paranoid meant all this.

Everythings a little clearer now. My job now is to not diagnose myself with anything more, leave that to the professionals and tell them how i feel, but i must say this helped clear up some things. i definately have irrational thoughts when talking to girls which keeps me away from them and large groups of people for sure...

I've had to wrestle with paranoid thoughts all my life. I once read that if you don't believe the thoughts then you're not psychotic but merely neurotic. I guess that makes me neuotic.

Example: I went to perform some music at a club the other night. I was bombarded with the notion that everybody in the place hated me. My performance felt like crap and I thought everybody else did better than I did. Also I felt that everybody knew how "out of it" I was feeling, as if they were watching me and scoring me for an exam in social prowess. I knew it was all nonsense at the time but it was still affecting me emotionally as if it were true. I even noticed myself doing NT-style social stuff, fairly competently, and I could see that from the outside, there was absolutely nothing wrong. Mostly I just ride over the daft ideas and often laugh at them, but when my confidence is low they can start getting to me. The following night I played at another similar place and the paranoid feelings were gone It's as if something inside noticed the problem and corrected it - for now.

I have some pretty bad episodes of paranoia every so often. It's awful.

I always feel people who are giving me a complement are lying to me. Any stranger who goes out of their way to be nice to me are trying to take advantage of me somehow.

i can relate to a lot of this. not sure what to add.

i didn't even read all the posts. it was a little traumatic.

this is how i understand it as it has happened to me:
i think if you can't make sense of something / someone (like someone else's behavior or intentions) all kinds of havok can be wreaked as your brain tries to categorize the experiences somehow. it's hard to accept you just can't read people. so instead you can arrive at black and white "solutions" to the problem of being confused because it's somehow more tolerable than plain not knowing how to interpret something, over and over again. so you might interpret people as all having bad intentions as a protective measure, or because that's in alignment with your self esteem. and then this gives you a "rule" to follow, which allows you to make sense of it. but unfortunately it's a harmful and probably inaccurate rule.

when it happens, think of it as a "bad brain trip" .. like a bad acid trip, but it is your brain, unable to grasp meaning in a situation, that's causing it. and maybe next time you can remember that and it won't be so bad.

it doesn't mean you're crazy. it just means you are missing some information and your logical mind has to fill the gap with something. maybe you could learn to fill the gap with something different, eventually. i don't know what - humor? goofiness? or something that turns the focus back onto you and what you like to do instead of on what other people might be thinking about you.

does this make any sense??? i don't know. it sometimes works for me.

YES! However, I'm not sure that it is paranoia (oops, maybe this means I'm truly paranoid ??? ) I always think people don't like me. However, they have valid reason not to, because my social skills suck. Also, I seem to get signs that people don't like me that are not too far off (e.g. they are talking to everyone else but me). And when a person doesn't like you, you're really vulnerable.....so I really don't know about this paranoia thing. In Aspergers, could it be something valid? I mean, without friends, isn't the world a scary place? Don't people pretty much cover people's butts if they are your friend, and if you're without friends you're at whim to the elements? Horrible things happen to people who don't have support. A few escape from the hellfire lucky, but having no allies means you are completely vulnerable. Gosh, is this paranoid thinking? BTW, I find it interesting that there appears to be no name for "paranoia about people not liking you, hating you and such."

There are "ideas of reference" and "delusions of persecution" but neither quite seem to fit if indeed it is true paranoia.

Yes. When I'm, say, working on something and lose my work and feel really bad, I think everyone around me has caught on to it and they're now talking about me and laughing about it. Things that were once familiar now seem harsh and unforgiving.

Once, when I moved my stuff into my new apartment in broad daylight and there was a man nearby who was standing and smoking his cigarette, I became suspicious that he meant to pressure me into sexual indiscretions, so I stayed as discreet as possible and avoided eye contact.

I'll sometimes mistake a cord or something for a person running at me, coming to get me.

I get very paranoid when I don't take my antidepressants. My mum is my best friend and has always been the person I am closest to since I was a baby, and when I get paranoia I am convinced that even she hates me and is trying to get away from me. I have nightmares that involve her and her boyfriend moving away and me coming hone to an empty house, not knowing where they have gone. I think a lot of that is down to the fact that her last boyfriend was horrible, but neither my mum, nor her current boyfriend, have ever done anything to hurt me, and when I am on my medication I know that they would never abandon me. I think it is a fear of losing the one person I am close with - combined with thinking she deserves better from me. Have you ever been on medication? It isn't the answer for everyone but it certainly was for me. I hope that somehow it gets easier for yoy.

NTs get paranoid about certain things, but I get paranoid of other things they may not so much. Like most NTs that I know seem to think that if they talk about somebody, they think that person is going to hear, even if the person they are talking about lives like a mile away or something. But they believe this irrational thought and start whispering, even if they are sitting in a house with all the windows shut. It annoys me. As if people have got super hearing and can listen to everything that is being said.

I don't get paranoid about that, unless the person I want to talk about is in sight and is within good hearing shot. I get paranoid with other things, but I think it all comes down to social phobia/anxiety with me.

Not being paranoid - they really are out to get you.

Old ones are best.