I think I’ve always been a paranoid person. From as far back as I can
remember I’ve had a variety of fears, ranging from things like the dark
to nightmares I had that scared me for days, but instead of fading with
time like it typically did with othe...
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I think I’ve always been a paranoid person. From as far back as I can
remember I’ve had a variety of fears, ranging from things like the dark
to nightmares I had that scared me for days, but instead of fading with
time like it typically did with other kids, I feel feel like my paranoia
has gotten exponentially worse over the years.I think it all started to
go downhill back in 2015, I remember being home alone with a family
friend as my parents were out at a parent teacher interview with my
brother. I was watching a YouTube video ranking the worst boyfriends and
girlfriends, and I remember the announcer saying “theres very few things
that will get you into Hell.” I don’t know why, but for some reason,
after he said that I felt the urge to look up what will get you into
Hell, and I found a list on some religious website that said things like
saying the lords name in vain which, as a recent teenager, I did quite a
bit. Over the next few weeks I kept feeling the need to apologise to God
for every little thing I did wrong, from swearing to getting angry, to
the thoughts in my head, pretty soon I kept having intrusive thoughts,
saying that I hated God, that I wanted family member to rot in Hell,
that I wanted people and animals to die. I didn’t mean any of it, but I
kept apologising in my mind because I thought that if I didn’t something
bad would happen, or God would think that I really meant it.Then, in
2016, I started worrying about conspiracy theories. At first it was
creationism, and then this theory that dinosaurs never existed. This one
got to me because I love dinosaurs. I could’ve just ignored it and went
about my day, but I didn’t. I obsessed over everything these people
would say, I found myself to listen to every single last one of their
arguments, thinking I would be a closed minded idiot if I didn’t,
thinking that every time they would come at me with irrefutable proof of
their theories, but they never did.But then, at the end of 2019 and well
into 2020, I forced myself to get into politics. I had dabbled in things
during the “SJW” era, but this time was different. Over the last five
years I’ve subjected myself to some of the most horrible ******** I’ve
ever heard, first it was about women, then people of colour, then LGBT
people, then liberals and conservatives in general. I think what really
got to me about these debates is that they actually used scientific
sources, but because I wasn’t well versed in politics or psychology, I
felt like I had to believe them because I couldn’t rebut much of what
they said. Even then, there were also a variety of contradictory
sources, so most of the time I didn’t know what to believe.I just don’t
know what to do anymore. I can’t keep on living like this, but I force
myself to. I’ve never been in a relationship, I’ve struggled through
much of school, struggled through uni, struggled through finding a job,
I’m not anywhere near where I wanted to be in life by now, and I think
it’s at least partially due to these useless worries. I feel guilty on
the occasion that I choose not to engage in politics or conspiracies
after having seen a certain article or book or whatever, and part of me
is telling myself that I’m a coward who doesn’t want to face the real
world by coming here, but a bigger part of me is just sad, sad that I’ve
wasted so much of my life, sad that I spend hours worrying about things
that probably don’t matter, sad that I barely get joy out of things I
used to love, sad that I hardly have the energy to do anything.I just
really want some help, some advice, anything to stop me feeling the way
that I do.
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