Does anyone else get paranoid?

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its not paranoia if they are polotting against you

So true.

I used to be VERY paranoid. Now, I'm more balanced. I can say my paranoia is somewhat justified because I have had people plot behind my back to hurt me (barring me from employment, getting me fired). I balanced out more when I came to understand that imagining threats everywhere was not healthy for me, and it kept me from even trying to connect with other people.

The technique I used was when I started to obsess over paranoid thoughts, I'd force myself to look at the situation rationally and identify specific issues that were real threats (versus what was running around only in my mind). This helped me put the situation into better perspective and gain some control over the paranoia...rather than the paranoia controlling me.

I sometimes get paranoid but that doesn't mean I actually believe my thoughts. I do not enjoy getting paranoid and I hate it. I try and not worry about it and I brush it off.

I just brush off paranoid thoughts too. Some of them are just ridiculous and some of them can make me really scared if I let them.

My parents say I am but personaly I do not think I am paranoid enough. I'd rather be paranoid than unaware.

I know i have autism, but i have been diagnosed with paranoia along side of my borderline personality disorder and psychosis. When im paranoid I am fearing people are out to get me, that there against me all the time, dont believe me, out to hurt me so on.

Thanks for all your replies. I think that with me, being paranoid is partly due to past experiences, partly because I can't tell sometimes what other people are thinking/feeling towards me, and partly because of lack of contact during the easter holidays.

I have a variant of the statement "It's not paranoia if they really are out to get me." It's: "The good thing about paranoia is that when people do turn against me, I'll know about it." Again, I am not implying that these paranoid feelings are anything serious enough to warrant a mental illness diagnosis. They're just a pain in the backside, to be honest. I'm going to find out about ways to change my thinking when I get back to school as it's annoying me a little bit. I still don't think I'll go in for therapy as there are so many people who need it more than me, plus it's never helped me in the past.

Rosimaphone, I totally know what you mean. Wow...

I get paranoid frequently - this is quite typical of Autism at times.

Remember - humans think so so many thoughts during the day, and Autistic people think thoughts possibly even more, and with more focus on the thought, then this can create a downward spiral of fear, negativity and such and such.

Try meditation perhaps, or other good techniques for mental well being. It's good to catch yourself analyzing and stop doing so - meditation boosts moods very much so, and is good to do daily if you can, and you can always rely on the backing of all of us here and perhaps some self helf books, inspiritational quotes etc. Paranoia is a highly unpleasant emotion and in a non pressurized way, try to avoid it with pleasant activities.

Normal people scare me.

I'm always paranoid. I thought maybe it had to do with coming from a big city but.....maybe it is Aspergers?

If I hear a sound outside (I now live on 4 acres of land in the woods) I grab a knife and head to the window and I always expect to see a bunch of gangbangers sneaking up on the house or something. At work I always think theres a camera in a hidden away spot. And I'm always wondering whether people at work are attempting a coup to get me out.

I would offer advice for making it go away (if only temporary) but that would just lead to other problems...... Theres no off switch, unfortunately.

My paranoia surrounds work and certain people. I have been gotten after in the past at work for things that are questionable, like supposedly visiting with co-workers that causes their productivity to go down. I am afraid that I am doing something wrong.

My paranoia with certain people, usually has to do with people that have rebuffed me and I don't know why. I am paranoid how these people think about me since I don't like people thinking ill of me.

It usually surrounds situations where I don't know if I did something wrong, or upset somebody.

I used to be much more paranoid than I am, though with the help of therapy + a NT ex-boyfriend I've gotten better. I still have my moments, but I'm not quite as socially crippled as I used to be...

My biggest paranoia revolved around new people, or people I don't know. I assumed that people right off the bat didn't like me, and I had to prove myself to them. I was terrified of people because I thought they hated me (many years of bullying + a rather intense abusive relationship probably caused all this).
I'm still jumpy around strangers who I don't know and will never get a chance to meet (aka show that I'm not a horrible person), like my peers sitting next to me during a lecture hahaha.
But for the most part I've improved

My boyfriend is incredibly paranoid about police/government surveillance, but he has reason to be as his phone of all people's has been tapped in the past, and is probably still watched to some extent, because he was raided by the ATF for making explosives (nothing bad, he's also an aspie who happens to love chemistry lol). He didn't end up going to jail, but he was unbelievably close to being a convicted felon with a 30-90 year prison sentence for making explosives and detonating them in empty fields in the middle of no where and hurting no one and damaging nothing.
It's too bad that all of society is paranoid too.

I'm paranoid right now. I think I've ruined all my (few) relationships. There's no reason for it that I can think of, I'm just crazy.

with me it's like this:

when 'neurotypicals' are emotive towards me in a way that is irrational my brain trys to work out what's going on,
but because they are irrational it doesn't know what's going to happen
so it dreams up all kinds of krazy things that could happen, irrational things that irrational people may do.
I'm not paranoid, they make me paranoid because they are irrational.

I think living with a condition where you constantly miss the facial expressions and body languages can make you paranoid. Another thing I get paranoid about is when I think someone has misunderstood me, I find it really upsetting and try to correct it which usually just digs me into a deeper hole.

As far as the mental process you are describing I am really trying to force myself to accept that my brain is obsessional and it is going to obsess no matter what I do. To put it this way, a drug addict would probably prefer some really good coke straight out of Bolivia or something. But if all they have is crack, they are going to smoke the crack. This is how my brain is. It's default setting is obsession. So if I am not feeding my brain some high quality obsession material, like theoretical physics or linguistics trivia or whatever, it is going to get hung up on some trifling crap about what my brother-in-law said to my mother or whatever, and absolutely run it into the ground. This is really hard to come to terms with for me, because it's embarrassing, but it is very very true, it's been proven to me time and again. I have to keep the monster occupied or it will find something, anything, to feast on, and it can really make me miserable.

As far as your basic cultural paranoia I am paranoid. I believe a lot of conspiracy theories. I am super-paranoid about the internet and how this technology can be used in an exploitative or invasive way when it gets in the wrong hands. I don't believe in 'odds' to the extent that there are odds you get struck by lightening because if you are the one in a million that gets hit then the other 999,999 people who don't get struck are irrelevant and no help whatsoever.