Paranoia

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Anybody have Paranoia is it common with people AS/OCD ?

Got paranoia (or so sayeth the psychiatrist), so I'm guessing it's to a clinical amount.

Mine is due to being unable to read people; their nonverbal cues and also their emotional state (how can I tell if someone is a friend or foe then like most people automatically do?), and also from life events.

Nothing to do with the OCD.

I'm very paranoid

It would be interesting to know some percentages of comorbids with AS. I think most of us have a few. My comorbids are depression and inability to recognize faces. My daughter has bi-polar with her autism.
I'm glad that paranoia is not one of mine. Larry Nivins in his Man/Kzin wars books posits that having paranoia could be a useful job skill in helping humans survive in a hostile universe.

I don't have paranoia, but do find I take time to learn who I can trust or rely on.

I suspect paranoia is underdiagnosed/under-reported among Aspies for the same reason psychiatrists suspect Paranoid Personality Disorder is under-reported. Those who have it are not likely to come forward and reveal their paranoia. The books I've read on AS rarely mention clinically significant paranoia, though routinely mention trust issues as important for Aspies to deal with.

I also suspect, from personal experience, that Aspies can more easily develop problems with trust and even paranoia due to lousy life experiences. I was stalked for a while, for instance, and that did little to help me trust people, and for a time made me a bit paranoid.

That totally resonates with me. Moreover, it makes me kinda wonder if some paranoia may not actually be pathological paranoia, but a normal response to missing communication that other people get.
If it seems like everyone is rejecting you, and you have no idea why, you might think that you're being talked about, plotted against, etc. It wouldn't be the result of paranoid thought processes, but of normal thought processes reacting to confusing circumstances. If you treat a normal reaction as though it were a psychotic paranoia, it would be like taking painkillers to get rid of pain that warns you of a problem: you wouldn't recognize the warning, and would do things that would make the underlying issue worse.

Yes, I am very paranoid. This might have to do with my past and the countless amount of times I have been rejected, talked about, and ignored. Right now, this is leading to more disappointments in my life. Because I can't interpret people's nonverbal cues well, the only information I can get about them is from what they say. Since I don't know what to expect from people anymore based on my past experiences, I ask them as many questions as I can to get to know them better. Either this, or I become very quiet and withdrawn (it's a protective mechanism). As a result, people get the impression that I have an annoying personality.

In reality, though, this effect is caused by me being confused and unsure of how to approach people correctly.

So.. what would be an appropriate way to deal with this kind of stuff? It's an issue that I'm thinking an awful lot of us have, or have had at some point. Is there a way to approach it by which we can deal with the confusion and paranoia, while still being able to analyze things that lead to them? A way to not go insane from that why-can't-they-stand-me and what-was-it-that-I-did, without compounding the offense by brushing it off? The advice I've gotten from therapists in the past to dismiss it always made it worse, because then anybody who I'd offended got even angrier that I didn't seem to care. Is this something that ASD therapists are actually able to help with?

I used to be the idiot who trusted everyone. I'd pick up hitchhikers. And my ex-boyfriend collection. Oh my god. Let's see...two sociopaths (or antisocial personality disorder or whatever the DSM calls it now), lots of manic depressives, plenty of the generic moody bad boys, and some guys that seemed fine on the surface, but scratch a little deeper, and they were just more sophisticated versions of the users and losers. I also dated at least one Aspie, interestingly enough, though not diagnosed. He memorized train schedules. I suspect a second boyfriend also has it. He's a coffee guzzling Linux geek. But the two of us together was urm...well, not really so great. We could talk at each other, and that's about it.

Anyway, derailed myself.

Point is, it's not like I could read anyone well enough to know if they were 'good' people or bad. Everyone, from the elderly librarian to the psycho biker, scared me equally. People are people.

So anyway, after enough fun experiences, I went from trusting everyone to trusting no one.

I guess that makes me paranoid.

Oh well.

I have slightly paranoid ideas whenI'm stressed, but they tend to pass quickly.

Not actively. It is very easy to become confused about peoples intentions and start going down the path of paranoia (do these people hang out with me just because I have money? etc).

Not being able to understand peoples true intentions, it is easy to get caught up in the conflict between trusting and fearing people.

I had a friend who had true clinical paranoia and suffered a great deal. She was really frightened for her life. I get paranoid socially but that is a whole other thing.