Paranoid Perceptions - Day 31 of "100 Symptoms"
Channel: nednednerB the Schizophrenic
Date: 03/05/2019

Where do delusions come from for a schizophrenic? 
Before strange beliefs form, a strange sensory event or series of events likely occurred.

People don't believe things absolutely out of a vacuum. A psychotic person may end up in a state where they are quick to act and make believe some false vision of reality. I think though, in the sometimes gradual turn to psychosis, strange event are more subtle. I think the mind potentially churns on a belief, slowly reinforcing the falsity until it is incredibly self-convincing: until a delusion has made itself from pieces of paranoid perception and contorted reasoning.

Paranoia can be one of the most disruptive symptoms of schizophrenia and psychosis. It leads to isolation, fear, anxiety, strange behaviour, and judgmental regard from others. It is totally distracting and hard to shift the mind from it.

Medication has an effect on its severity. However, I find paranoia comes and goes over the years, but it is always present in some degree. I think what changes most between times of relative stability and the times of intermittent distress is not the fact of paranoid tendency, but the fact of what the mind happens to do with that energy.

Specifically, if someone feels paranoid, and then concludes something delusional and imagined about the target of the thoughts, they are likely to potentially make other decisions based on that.

Those are paranoid delusions. However, paranoid perception lies at the base, and I would argue is at least more common than the delusions.

For example, I might recognize that I saw a stranger twice in a period shorter than 1 day, and think "are they following me?" I might glance around a busy transit vehicle and catch eye contact repeatedly and think "what do they know about me? Why are they watching me".

Sometimes, I walk in a busy area and I have the random apprehension that others know about me. What they might know might come to mind, or there might be random anxiety and fear when I see a stranger who looks angry or potentially violent.

However, I emphasise again that this is not actually or strongly delusional, because I'm saying there is no lasting belief. I look at delusions as fixed beliefs, and in these paranoid experiences my thoughts are still flexible and I can avoid the beliefs that would cause me to stress out even more.

Thanks for watching.

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I have schizophrenia every day. Even though I was diagnosed in early 2000s, I experience and manage symptoms daily. So here are "100 Symptoms!"

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