Lack of trust / paranoia

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Does anyone else have a problem trusting another human being?

I can never even do that trust exercise where you have to fall backwards and the other person catches you (because more often than not, the other person was stuck with me cos I didn't have a partner, so they dislike me and find it funny to let me fall, but that's beside the point).

If I leave my computer for a minute to go get a drink, I have to lock it first because else there's plenty enough time for my brother to sneak into my room and read my emails. (He has done this before, so that's not too paranoid either.)

I even mistrust the security on my laptop. I'm totally paranoid about people (ie. my mother) getting into my emails. True, she can barely use Microsoft Word, let alone hack emails, but her boyfriend is a computer technician and probably could. That is an irrational fear, but it still bugs me.

It sounds like you need to take a step back and look at the big picture. At your age, it is perfectly reasonable to be afraid of your brother or mother reading your emails. If you're always picked last for trust exercises and allowed to fall, then it is reasonable to have issues trusting people.

It sounds like you're already doing this.

Don't sweat the small stuff like minor paranoia. Neurotypical teenagers have issues with empathy due to the way the adolescent brain develops. For us, well, it's more so. Without empathy, it's difficult to trust.

It's not paranoia when it's a reasonable fear.
The trouble is that most people DO lie, all day, every day.
You'd have to be crazy to trust most of them.

I break it down, per individual.
I trust this one's motives, but I don't trust his judgment.
I trust that one's fashion sense, but wouldn't leave my pocketbook in the room.
Another one I would trust with my pocket book, but not with food...

I do the same, but maybe a bit too excessively.
I also delete my internet history every hour and have hidden partitions on my HDD and switched to Linux on my secondary computer for more security, and also because I was paranoid someone was watching me through my webcam, and I knew Linux wouldn't have the drivers(admittedly, I did get hacked once by Anon'[despite I support them in a lot of the things they do] and they were using my webcam, so, I guess it's justified). I also turn off my display so it looks like my laptops turned off because I don't think my password is enough.
Another time was when someone had robbed my Mum's car(well, they went in and were browsing the contents).
I went crazy. I refused to get in the car because they were browsing my Mum's works files and thus I insisted that the person who did this hated her and probably had rigged the car with a bomb or at the very least tampered with it so we'd be in a car crash(yeah... serious...). She made me get in but I was crying all the way home and for a few hours after. I didn't even feel comfortable with the car being near the house.
I also use to delete my internet history at school every time I logged in, until I discovered it was sent to another server and later deleted...(I spent a while figuring where it went). I also read an article about Computer Forensics and how to recover loss data, so this made me even more paranoid. Now I quite literally never delete anything on my school's user space, and whenever I do, I move it to my external HDD, then when I get home I move it to the private partition, or delete it fully.
I also don't like being in big groups, like school assemblies. It's just too big of an opportunity.
I think people would truly notice how paranoid I am in some of the stories I've wrote.
EMZ.

TBH, I doubt the President would use email, and if he did, it'd probably be only available on the local network on a local server and even then there'd be nothing confidential as such, as far as I know.
EMZ=]

I have a lot of issues with trust/paranoia.

When I had a car I wouldn't let anyone drive it.
Nobody touches my laptop without me present and even then I switch users so they can't see my stuff.
Forget group projects, I do all the work because I don't trust the other people to do what they are supposed to.
I can never fully rest if someone has access to my living area.
Once someone has broken the bond of trust I had with them I never fully trust them ever again.
When people call to talk I wonder what they want from me.
There is a lot more but I'm tired and it's after 3 am here.

Mentioning that one mistrusts a certain person is bad form in society. You'll immediately be blamed of being "paranoid" and all kinds of Psychiatrist-playing stupidity.

Í nowadays know better than show my distrust of someone openly. Most people are much more distrustful than you are and than what you think them to be, but they have the intuitive social knowledge that they'll be seen in a negative light if they admit it, so they'll give some silly excuse why they didn't leave their wallet with Johnny. "Oh, it didn't occur to me!", "Well, my cell-phone was in my bag and I was expecting a call, that's why I took my bag with me." etc.

People KNOW it's an excuse, but it's good form in society to give these little silly excuses rather than say you don't trust someone.

The reason why this is so in society? Ask me if you want to know, I don't want to blah blah too much if no one's interested.

I have trust issues all around.

I either trust no one at all, or I put way too much trust into a person for them to live up to anyway. I even catch myself being less trustworthy than the standards I place on others, which doesn't seem fair to them.

Generally, I wouldn't describe myself as paranoid, but in the heat of a moment, when I'm upset, paranoid might be what others see. I think it's just my black & white thinking. ie someone does something that breaks trust in a very minor way, I get upset and begin to see them (in the heat of it) as plotting, calculating and untrustworthy in general.

I try my best to focus more on myself and what I have to offer, than what others have to offer me, it helps in that when they 'break' trust, I try to look at them as naive, since they had no idea how I'd interpret it.

Society looks after itself. Meaning, normal, conventional people will try to make others look good and moral, as a way to make society look good and moral. Even if they wouldn't trust Johnny with a dime, they'll pay lip service to how dare you mistrust Johnny. I've fallen in this "trap" enough times that I know. I'd be pressured to trust someone with money / a secret / whatever, telling me I was "paranoid", etc. and then I'd find out (after having been burnt by that person) that those who pressured me to trust wouldn't be caught dead trusting that person.