Anonymous-EmpathyAI/Distortion-Analysis-PACLIC39 huggingface dataset:
Patient question: Hi, I am forty years old and currently single. My problem is a bit difficult to describe, but more or less it is the following: Even though I have no problem talking to women – or people in general – I somehow feel very strange when a communication with a girl/woman seems to be heading to flirting. It’s like something inside of me trying to hold me back and I feel like the need to get out of the situation. This may not be 100% of the times, but definitely a 90-95% for sure. This was not always the case. When I was younger, around 20, I remember myself wanting to be with women, to flirt and trying to find these things in life. Unfortunately for many years now this is not the case. I tend to believe that this was due to a very hard break up that I had when I was around 21. From discussions I had with a therapist she insists that this cannot be the case and that the cause should be in earlier years in life (when I was a child). Maybe it is important to explain, that I had relationships during the last 20 years though in almost all cases only when I was feeling wanted I moved on. I think there are a lot more that may explain my situation better, but I maybe these are enough as an initial approach. (From Greece)

Distorted part: Unfortunately for many years now this is not the case. I tend to believe that this was due to a very hard break up that I had when I was around 21.
Dominant distortion: Overgeneralization
Patient question: I like to pretend to be a character from a movie or book. It’s really hard for me to be honest to myself that I’ve been pretending. Recently I imitate a character from a movie with depression, social anxiety, and hallucination and I become really depressed that I cut myself, taking analgesic pills, and talked to my friend like I’m really a depressed person. I always confessed myself that I’m not pretending but I think I can’t do this forever. I’m scared I can’t control it anymore. I once became a person with bipolar disorder and I actually felt like I have extreme mood swings but if I thought about it honestly I was more like trying to have those mood swings. I like to read about psychological problems and that’s why I know the symptoms. I feel like there’s something wrong with me but I can’t stop it, it’s like I automatically imitate the character even if I don’t realize it. It’s really hard to explain because I can’t really distinguish my real self or if I’m just pretending. I’ve read about munchausen syndrome but I’m not really sure if I did it because I want attention. I rarely tell people if I’m mentally ill or anything. I even act like everything’s okay when people start to question me. This is also happen when I’m in a relationship. Unconsciously, I’ll act out as a really jealous girlfriend(even if I’m not that jealous type) or a bossy person or basically someone I’m not and I like to create some scenarios in my head and I’ll lead my relationship to that scenario and I think that’s why I don’t have any long-lasting relationship. And honestly, I somehow want to be mentally ill. I’m scared I’ll lose myself. What should I do?

Distorted part: I’m scared I can’t control it anymore.
Dominant distortion: Emotional Reasoning
Patient question: I’ve always been a pretty anxious person. But recently I started seeing things; shadows, faces, demons, and a lot of house cats that aren’t there when I go near them. I occasionally hear voices, mostly people yelling at me, but the hallucinations are more common. I’m so paranoid most of the time. I feel like I’m being watched or followed. I feel like there is someone outside of my bedroom door right now. I have a small TV in my room and I can see my refection in it from where I’m sitting. Something is telling me that’s not my reflection and it’s a supernatural creature watching me. I refuse to eat food that wasn’t made by myself because someone could’ve poisoned or spit in it. I tried to lay next to my mom earlier (she realized I was having an anxiety attack and wanted to hold me), and she had her arm around me. Something in my head, not a voice but a feeling, told me she was going to dig her nails into my back and rip out my heart. I got up and ran into my room without saying anything. Also, whenever I’m outside or in public, when I hear someone laughing or talking I feel like they are making fun of me. I don’t trust anything. I put paper over all cameras on my all my devices. I feel like the government is watching me. I thought I could have schizophrenia (my great-great grandma had it), but all the stories I read, people which schizophrenia seem to not be aware that something is wrong with them, although I am very aware something’s not right with me. Pretty much everyone in my family has anxiety and depression. My brother and cousin have struggled with anorexia and my mom is bipolar. Should I get help? My mom thinks I’m clairvoyant. Even just the thought of sending this to a real person is making me nervous.

Distorted part: Something in my head, not a voice but a feeling, told me she was going to dig her nails into my back and rip out my heart.
Dominant distortion: Fortune-telling
Patient question: Recently I feel like I have been acting odd and people are starting to notice. I randomly zone out and have visual hallucinations like tall silhouettes and people following me. There’s also a voice in my head that will whisper to me during the day, but becomes extremely more vocal at night. Sometimes they’ll tell me to do odd things like hide under a desk or confess my undying love or hate to a stranger. Sometimes it’s worse, they just whisper my name over and over, sometimes tell me to kill or hurt people that I wouldn’t want to. They also seem to control my thoughts and feelings, because sometimes they say I need help and I believe them. Other times they say I don’t and I believe them. They generally control how I feel about people. I’m also convinced that other people can read my thoughts, maybe not everyone, but definitely most people. Nobody else believes me and I really do want an answer. Thank you very much.

Distorted part: I’m also convinced that other people can read my thoughts, maybe not everyone, but definitely most people.
Dominant distortion: Mind Reading
Patient question: From a teen in the UK: Okay so I was bullied during primary school by kids younger then me which made it so embarrassing that I never told anyone. They used to make fun of my weight and that’s where I think my issues began but I never acted on them. When I went to secondary school at about 12, although I wasn’t being bullied anymore, I went on a diet. Gradually I began restricting further and further until I became dangerously thin, by the time I was 13 I was in a dangerous state, believing that a banana would make me gain a ton of weight,

Dominant distortion: No Distortion
Patient question: I think I may have DP. My world feels very surreal. I feel “detached” from my body. I want people to see me as my mind and not my body. It’s almost as if my body is a puppet and my mind is the puppet master. Everyone sees and love the puppet but no one truly knows the one controlling it. And my body feels “fake” to me, as if it’s not truly my own body. I hardly even can recognize myself in the mirror and will sometimes avoid mirrors for this reason. I will have moments where I’m dragged out of my surreal state. Some are random, some have a cause. The times that are random if feels as if I have been flying my whole life and for but a moment I touch my feet to the earth and feel trapped. The light seems new, the people I thought I new seem like strangers. I have kind of “hypersensitivity” to the world and all motions feel strange. The things I had just been doing feel like a distant memory. This happens randomly. Sometimes I can be forcefully dragged out of my surreal state, usually by comments about my body or actions. I feel like a stranger to myself with a sudden awareness that people only see my body and my actions but they don’t truly see me, they never can see who I really am. The things I do and say seem foreign to me when I get a moment to think about it. It’s like I don’t even truly know who I am. I’m known to think I have various disorders when I don’t really so this makes me hesitate to say I have DP, though unlike times when I thought I had something like schizoid and I’d create the symptoms after learning about it, I had the symptoms previous to knowing what DP was and in fact was how I found out about DP. I don’t fit every symptom but some I do match up with. The feelings are rather mild and are more of an afterthought most of the time.

Dominant distortion: No Distortion
Patient question: My little stepdaughter started calling me mommy out of her own about 8 months ago. My husband and I didn’t correct her, although we did teach her how to say my name. We figured that this is what she’s comfortable with and therefore if this makes her happy then it shouldn’t be an issue. She knows her bio-mom, loves her, lives with her half the time & is a very content, confident & well adjusted little girl. She is very happy in both of her homes with both sets of parents & step-parents.

Dominant distortion: No Distortion
Patient question: I know I have OCD, GAD, depression, and an eating disorder and I am on 30mg of prozac which has helped a bit. However, I noticed a few changes in my behavior and im not quite sure what to make of them and i had to stop seeing my therapist, Im seeing a new one soon, but im supposed to discuss gender identity problems so i dont think that is the right place to discuss this. Basically im very paranoid and at first it seemed to all be related to social anxiety like i would convince myself they all hated me and would delete all my social media and hate them for supposedly hating me (for something as silly as not answering a text) but i got in trouble so im fairly isolated now and only have myself to talk to. But when im driving im always looking to see whos behind me and what they might be thinking and if theyre following me and ill go 40 in a 25 just to get away from someone and im overly suspicious something is up and theyre followng me or thinking bad things of me somehow.I also have depersonalization and derealization issues and when it gets bad i convince myself that the reality im trapped in doesnt matter anyways and that i should just focus on the reality i create for myself in my head. Im also more religious lately? Ive always been agnostic but now I love Jesus a lot and bought a crucifix to hang on my wall from a thrift shop which isnt an issue but im just worried because my grandpa and uncle were both schizophrenic and im 17 and these are supposed to be early warning signs but i dont want to jump to conclusions of course. I dont know. I just feel really weird and life seems very strange to me.

Distorted part: Basically im very paranoid and at first it seemed to all be related to social anxiety like i would convince myself they all hated me and would delete all my social media and hate them for supposedly hating me (for something as silly as not answering a text) but i got in trouble so im fairly isolated now and only have myself to talk to.
Dominant distortion: Mind Reading
Patient question: From the U.S.: I recently moved 2300 miles away from home to go to graduate school. During undergrad I lived at home, so I also moved out of my parent’s home for the first time. My parents helped me move and are helping me buy groceries while I go to grad school. They seemed very supportive.

Dominant distortion: No Distortion
Patient question: Hello, so i have been diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorder, but bi polar also runs in our family and ive been feeling sypmtoms, like i will be crazy one day but in the dumps the next.also i was sexually assulted when i was 11 years old by a 13 year old boy and i havent really healed since then i used to self harm and was forced to go to therapy sessions but i stopped because i beilieve i dont need sessions any more. i constantly feel like someone is watching me, even on the toilet. i hate bugs because i believe they are really hidden cameras, the window nearest our front door is a two way mirror and people are watching me on the other side, theres a blow up toy swan in our bathroom that’s a camera too. i always feel suspicous of people because they may be fake people. My father says i am unhealthly obssesed with horror movies , serial killers, and i explore the deep web quite a bit, i have had alot of thoughts about killing people, not anyone who has angered me, that would be stupid because there would be a motive i plan and think of different ways i could kidnapp and kill diffrent people. i dont know whats going on, i will also add that at night i believe the trees hide spies, and the people in the house across the road are stalking me and are up to something sinister. i dont know if these are delusions or real life but i really want to know.

Dominant distortion: No Distortion
Patient question: How can one approach a situation where most staff on the floor go out at the end of the week for Friday night drinks but not everyone is included. It feels horrible to hear them talk about their drinks the following week. As a solution I thought of organizing drinks that included everyone on the floor. This would be held on a different Friday or other night at a different location to avoid a clash.

Dominant distortion: No Distortion
Patient question: I am a co-facilitator (pro bono, unlicensed) for a men’s DV group (court-mandated) at a non-profit. The leader is a therapist who also has a private practice. In group one of the men mentioned fear of losing his probation for something he didn’t do and being imprisoned for years at an upcoming hearing. He didn’t return to the group after the hearing. She discovered he indeed had been jailed with another hearing soon to determine whether he will be imprisoned. He’s made enormous progress, despite a terrible childhood and adverse family dynamics, he has a good heart and reaches out to other group members, attends a drug-tested substance abusers group three times a week, and has focused on becoming a father again to his children (they were not the recipients of his abuse). But he’s also expressed suicidal thoughts in the past in the context of never wanting to go back to prison, and he’s become worn out and depressed in dealing with The System (frequent court hearings, probation officers, in-laws, etc. – you can imagine), and we’re deeply concerned about his mental health. He’s received no visitors. LA County is under a DOJ consent agreement to improve its mental health resources, but there have been numerous suicides nonetheless. The therapist is considering visiting the client in jail to check on his health and give him moral support, to let him know someone cares. But she and the non-profit center are conflicted about ethics and boundaries and dual relationships – she says this issue was never discussed in school or workshops, and the non-profit doesn’t even have a policy because this issue has never arisen before. I think it’s because the people setting boundaries aren’t the kind of people who go to jail very often. A large proportion of the country’s 2 million prisoners have some degree of mental illness and get almost no care. He hasn’t called — he’s expressed a sense of unworthiness that might keep him from calling. I don’t think this is the usual ethics and boundaries issue, and I think in these circumstances the benefit for man’s mental health and maybe even his life far outweighs the boundary risk. What do you think? It seems a Catch-22, but shouldn’t be, given the problem of mental illness in prisons.

Dominant distortion: No Distortion
Patient question: Hello all, I have been asking this question my all life. I have a lot of feelings toward pet like my puppy but nearly none towards humans. I tend to do things to manipulate to make them think of me as a good person who cares about them so they would come in handy when I need them. The thing is I am totally unaware of my doings when I do it but only after when I start to analyze my actions later. I realize that my actions become something natural, like it’s common sense for me to pretend that I care about someone. And when I come to sense later, I would feel odd about myself but no guilt or distress.

Distorted part: I tend to do things to manipulate to make them think of me as a good person who cares about them so they would come in handy when I need them
Dominant distortion: Fortune-telling
Patient question: From the U.S.: I was wondering if it were possible for people to have a strength called ‘grit’ while also having low self-esteem, and if that is considered rare, or what researchers would identify as an outlier in some studies. If it isn’t rare, then how is this possible?

Dominant distortion: No Distortion
Patient question: Our 25 year old daughter is suffering and we feel helpless. She has struggled for many years with alcohol abuse, drugs and relationships. Her reaction to stress has increased significantly over the last months; melt-downs, destroying property, threatening with knives, excessive drinking, DUI, and severe depression. She refuses to go to the hospital for treatment although she has seen a specialist before. She is more and more becoming a danger to her own safety and those around her. When stressed or emotional she finds people who are enablers but leave her stranded in the most dangerous of places within inner. She has current issues with violations of public drunkenness, DUI, and now assault. What are our options as parents to get her the medical treatment she needs and to protect her and others even though she refuses to recognize or accept the dangers.

Dominant distortion: No Distortion
Patient question: By all accounts, I should be highly successful. I know this because people who don’t know me that well are always impressed by me. I am fairly good looking, have a high IQ, am witty, charming, can strike a conversation with anyone on anything and can come up with solutions fast.

Distorted part: By all accounts, I should be highly successful.
Dominant distortion: Should statements
Patient question: I don’t know how to get past this quarter-life crisis; it has been over a year. It started with a look of desire from a stranger and then all of a sudden after a decade of content marriage I felt withdrawn from my husband and confused about everything. For 3 months I tortured myself analyzing and questioning my life. I concluded I was resentful of my husband, who is a good man, for two reasons: his drinking problem that monopolized my twenties, and the lack of sex in our marriage (less than once annually). Previously neither of these were an issue for me but after the “look” I started feeling that I had missed out on my best years.

Dominant distortion: No Distortion
Patient question: I’ve had a habit of desperately trying to find diagnoses or special labels to classify what’s going on in my head. It’s like an obsession, and I think that’s it’s because I’ve always had a hard time classifying my emotions, so I try to classify my thoughts instead. This has proven to be just as hard, but I have come up with a few things.

Distorted part: It’s like an obsession, and I think that’s it’s because I’ve always had a hard time classifying my emotions, so I try to classify my thoughts instead.
Dominant distortion: Mental filter
Patient question: it all began 2 years before. one of my family member is suffering with this problem since 2 years. one day she began talking strange asking all our family members to praise god. as she is a devotee we dint took that seriously. that night she began asking shall we all sleep together and the next night she began to shout vigorously with the name of god and started shouting. early morning we took her to doc and he prescribed some medications and suggested to take her away from home to any relatives house for some days after 2 weeks she began normal but using her medicines. at that time i asked whats wrong. why she behaved like that on dat day. she said i heard some voices to praise the god and that voice is commanding and controlling her and also she had some crawling sensation in spine , inside head, stomach. later on she is doing well. but after a year she stopped using medicines for a month again one day she behaved strangely. so went to doctor and got medicines and she is all fine doing her works , walking but she sometimes says i cant stop my thought process (like she met someone in morning and have a little conversation then later if she stays alone.. all that conversation repeats and repeats and she gets irritated by that) and says some thing moving inside her head just like a dot.our doctor very patiently listens and changes medicines based on the symptoms she says but again the problem begins. she stopped using medicines from 2 weeks as she is feeling more sleepy all the day coz of them and she seemed fine. from the beginning of this month she is not sleeping well. hardly 5 hours.on sept 6th we met doctor and said he stopped using as she is feling sedative. he said medicines and said by using these you may feel dull and lack of appetite.she dint take medicines yesterday and today morning her behaved strangely. i asked her so many times and even showed anger. later she came to my room and said yesterday night i again heared voice to praise lord. once i praised and controlled myself a lot and couldnt sleep.i suggested her to drink milk with honey and take medicine and now she is sleeping.

Dominant distortion: No Distortion
Patient question: From the U.S.: I am currently 17 and a junior in high school. I am in dire need of medicine to treat my mental illness. I’ve been diagnosed with severe OCD and it’s truly taking control of my life. The anxiety I get from it has changed me completely and I can’t do anything I used to. I have intense intrusive thoughts that keep me up every night (I haven’t slept yet, it’s 8am on the dot and I’m really unable to sleep) and sometimes the thoughts go as far that I think about harming myself or worse.

Distorted part: The anxiety I get from it has changed me completely and I can’t do anything I used to.
Dominant distortion: Overgeneralization