Paranoia, the feeling that you are being watched through the bushes by your house, that the world is waiting for you to slip up, that your neighbor is sneaking photos of you through your cracked blinds, that your mind can't distinguish these thoughts that race across your mind from reality, and that fear that you have going outside because you could look at someone two more degrees left than normal and end up dead on the sidewalk. This paranoia is a feeling that resides in minds around the world. Thinking that everything that could go wrong will go wrong in almost every possible scenario, keyword almost. We as humans cannot know everything that will happen in every fraction of time at any given moment. Life is subject to change, it’s a path with many twists and turns that sadly ends in death. Although death is yet another thing paranoia feeds upon. This paranoia stems from anxiety which stems from something deeper down. It is like an old oak tree withering away. It is like a monster stomping around in their heads, it bombards them with thoughts that they try to slam the door upon but there it is bursting through. This monster -- well this monster twists the minds of people, including mine.
We face a daily battle with our minds, fighting the urge to check every nook and cranny for cameras before we leave for school or work in the morning and yet again at night before we close our eyes to sleep. Yet we don’t get to sleep; for we are contemplating every little thing we did wrong that day and hoping -- just hoping -- that the people we call our friends and family don’t hate us. We remember all the ridicule we have faced through the years for our fears and the words float through our minds like white water river rafts trying to survive. I cannot assure you that our fears are fake because for me and many others they are real. It is not a funny Snapchat story; it is the compulsion that we cannot control and that we are forced to succumb to. Although for someone who doesn’t struggle with the fears that this monster brings I can see and understand how what we say can be so irrational, but try to view it from our perspective.
Our perspective is the morning wakeup and feeling off, feeling the compulsory urge to scour your room for the hidden camera you know just know is in there. We sadly cannot find a thing and discouragedly go to brush our teeth but then the mirror, it's off. You need, you need, I repeat you need to check it to sure it's not double-sided and you aren’t being watched. You check and it’s not, you feel upset and stupid for falling into this trap of irrational ideas, but you cannot help it. These ideas are evolutions of what has happened before, evolutions of being watched at your job by the owners who nitpick every move, evolutions of the feeling of never being able to do anything without your mother stomping through the halls and breathing down your neck. These irrational thoughts are stemming from something deeper down, and although it is so hard to frame just why these irrational thoughts are rational they are. This paranoia is a monster that feeds on us, it takes root and creates anxiety about every little thing. It makes you feel like every word you speak is being analyzed and twisted to hit you with later like a hand-carved whip. I advocate for myself and many others like me that our fears are rational, that we are rational. I know they seem silly and crazy but for us this is normal. It is going to school after choosing an outfit yet scrapping it because the monster in your mind says that outfit is why you get catcalled and will later evolve into someone stalking you for your body, It is the fear of someone breaking into your home yet again, it is the fear that you will be pushed into the busy street because this drug addict threatened to do so just months before. The fears are rational because they stem from something deeper down, and the paranoia stems from anxiety from that something deeper down “that experience of trauma would have its effect on paranoia” (Freeman and Fowler National Center for Biotechnology Information Para 3). So yes I know it is hard to understand why we are the way we are but I hope that you now understand that we don’t say what we say and do what we do to be the “center of attention” we do it because we cannot help what we are scared of. I hope you see it from our perspective.
We face a daily battle with our minds, fighting the urge to check every nook and cranny for cameras before we leave for school or work in the morning and yet again at night before we close our eyes to sleep. Yet we don’t get to sleep; for we are contemplating every little thing we did wrong that day and hoping -- just hoping -- that the people we call our friends and family don’t hate us. We remember all the ridicule we have faced through the years for our fears and the words float through our minds like white water river rafts trying to survive. I cannot assure you that our fears are fake because for me and many others they are real. It is not a funny Snapchat story; it is the compulsion that we cannot control and that we are forced to succumb to. Although for someone who doesn’t struggle with the fears that this monster brings I can see and understand how what we say can be so irrational, but try to view it from our perspective.
Our perspective is the morning wakeup and feeling off, feeling the compulsory urge to scour your room for the hidden camera you know just know is in there. We sadly cannot find a thing and discouragedly go to brush our teeth but then the mirror, it's off. You need, you need, I repeat you need to check it to sure it's not double-sided and you aren’t being watched. You check and it’s not, you feel upset and stupid for falling into this trap of irrational ideas, but you cannot help it. These ideas are evolutions of what has happened before, evolutions of being watched at your job by the owners who nitpick every move, evolutions of the feeling of never being able to do anything without your mother stomping through the halls and breathing down your neck. These irrational thoughts are stemming from something deeper down, and although it is so hard to frame just why these irrational thoughts are rational they are. This paranoia is a monster that feeds on us, it takes root and creates anxiety about every little thing. It makes you feel like every word you speak is being analyzed and twisted to hit you with later like a hand-carved whip. I advocate for myself and many others like me that our fears are rational, that we are rational. I know they seem silly and crazy but for us this is normal. It is going to school after choosing an outfit yet scrapping it because the monster in your mind says that outfit is why you get catcalled and will later evolve into someone stalking you for your body, It is the fear of someone breaking into your home yet again, it is the fear that you will be pushed into the busy street because this drug addict threatened to do so just months before. The fears are rational because they stem from something deeper down, and the paranoia stems from anxiety from that something deeper down “that experience of trauma would have its effect on paranoia” (Freeman and Fowler National Center for Biotechnology Information Para 3). So yes I know it is hard to understand why we are the way we are but I hope that you now understand that we don’t say what we say and do what we do to be the “center of attention” we do it because we cannot help what we are scared of. I hope you see it from our perspective.
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