Fear I will really become paranoid!

[Bluey_moon]

Hi guys, 

I'm having a really great day today, which is super,  but I wanted to ask you guys a question. 

As you know my latest fear, health wise, is scizophrenia. Now previous to my deal with my GP, psyciatrist and psycologist not to google health issues I had, I googled a lot, over and over. Truth be known I still cave and do it. (My doctor says I get no gold stars, when I see her weekly, if I've googled, lol). 

When I googled scizophrenia, I read a lot of personal accounts and also did lots of those quizzes, "do you have the early signs of  scizophrenia". Mostly I would score I didnt, once or twice I scored I might. Anyway, gettin off track, one of the symptoms I read about was paranoia, specifically the thought "they" or specific groups were watching them! 

I started to think about that a lot, as I do, the obsessive thinking coming out ! Then I would wonder what if someone put a tracker in my ring or lamp, ok, I have an active imagination! Now all along I knew it was just a paranoid thought, and attributed it to the stuff I'd read, as I'd done in the past with ms symptoms. 

Ocassionally the thoughts still pop into my head, what if..... Do I really believe this....

My question is, after this long winded explanation, is, can you think about something so much, get so anxious about the thought, that you actually start to beleive it, in essence make yourself delusional/paranoid? 

Thanks guys for listening to my constant questions.

skye

[Dwwmills]

Hi Skye.

I’m glad you’re having a good day.

Have your health professionals given you any strategies for
dealing with the urge for wanting to search the web? If they have try and
concentrate on putting those strategies into action rather than searching the
web.

You appear to be in a bit of an anxiety cycle. You get
anxious about something so you search the web to relieve the anxiety. Whilst
you are actively searching the web you feel better but in the long run the new
information gives you more to think about and increases your anxiety. You then
become more anxious so you search the web and on and on. Trying to break this cycle
can be difficult because part of the cycle relieves the anxiety. In reality
though, searching only ultimately increases your anxiety.

Google is not your friend. Next time you go to Google
something on the Internet try and think that it will be doing you no good in
the long run even though it may feel like it will help at the time.

The difficulty I had with tackling anxiety is it surfaces in
so many different disguises. If you were to tackle and solve your worry about
being paranoid you would just find something else to worry about. It’s the
underlying anxiety that you need to tackle. Keep your eye on the underlying
anxiety as this will help you in the long run.

All the best.

[Bluey_moon]

Thank you for your reply. 

 You give very good advice! 

They have given me some tactics and for the most part they work! 

Yes I agree with you, in that the underlying anxiety is the problem, I've switched between worries for a while now I almost forget how to not be anxious. But I'm working hard and it's getting there.

thank you for your ongoing support and replies! 

[Dwwmills]

Hi Skye.

It is hard to remember what it was like not to be anxious at
times and it can be a bit slow at the start.

Don’t worry if at first you find the tactics hard to stick
to. Your old thought patterns are very well entrenched and as soon as you relax
or get distracted you naturally fall back into using them. Everybody does this.
I couldn’t count the times that I’d be conscious of what I was thinking and
trying to change it and all of a sudden I’d be anxious and back using my old
way of thinking. Your old thought patterns feel comfortable and normal so there’s
no wonder you slip back into them.

I also found at times that the tactics and suggestions I was
given by my psychologist just didn’t work or work to start with but then
stopped working. There was nothing wrong with the particular tactics, but they
just didn’t fit me or I felt a bit of a fake doing them. I would go back to my
psychologist and explain what had happened and they would give me a new set of
tactics and another way of looking at things which I found quite helpful. It’s
more about persistence than any particular strategy.

I found when I got further down the track with the therapy
that I had slots of time where I was not be anxious. This was obviously great
but it also gave me a contrast to what it was like when I started feeling
anxious again. This did 2 things for me. One showed me I could at least beat
anxiety for blocks of time and 2, I started to really resent the anxiety and
worked even harder to try get it under control.

Another insight I had that help me was accepting that, at
this point in time, my view of the world was not correct. For the first time in
my life I had to accept my thinking was flawed and put my trust in the
psychologist’s assessment of the situation. I had known the psychologist for
years but I had never given her this power before. A VERY challenging thing to
do. I agreed to give my psychologist the last word when it came to anxiety and
how to treat it. When I became anxious then I would just say to myself “No.
This is just my flawed thinking. What did my psychologist say to do now.”

Keep at it. Keep asking questions.

You will get there in the long run.

[Bluey_moon]

Dwwmills, 

You are very wise, I will definitely very wise and I will take on board your advise! 

I know I can do it!