Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms - Paranoia

Welcome back! Today's symptom is paranoia, something I've experienced for a long time as a symptom of my borderline personality disorder.

Paranoia
Someone who has paranoia has unreasonable false beliefs as a part of another mental illness

For me, paranoia is something that creeps into my thoughts daily, my main triggers and paranoia's are;

• believing my partner doesn't love me and will leave me
• believing people are talking about me including my close friends
• checking people's messages for proof they're talking about me
• that people are pretending to like me
• that people are laughing at me behind my back
• that strangers are out to hurt me or are talking about me
• that strangers have entered my room or home 

These are just a few of the million things that run through my mind daily, but for me my paranoia comes in bouts of severity. A really bad day will include my not talking to my friends because I'm convinced they all hate me and are pretending to like me, that they are talking about me behind my back and laughing at me. It means I spend my day crying, convinced I have no friends and that they hate me , something I have no proof or reason to believe but something I can't get out of my head no matter what. 

This is something I struggle to talk about with my friends, it's hard to tell people you love that you're convinced they hate you, and I can't imagine it's the best of things to hear either. 

When it comes to my relationship, my paranoia means I am constantly asking for reassurance, and can come off incredibly needy. I'm constantly asking my boyfriend "do you love me?", waiting for that answer to be the "no" I hear in my head everyday. In old relationships and something I've thankfully cut out of my life, I used to check their messages, convinced they were talking about me to people, everytime a message would pop up I'd want to know who it was from, the unknown sending me into a paranoid spiral of sadness. I don't check people's messages anymore but this used to extend as far as family, checking their phones to see if they're talking about me convinced they were. There's no reason for this belief, but paranoia doesn't ask for reasons, it does what it wants and makes you believe whatever it wants to. 

At times, my paranoia has morphed into night terrors, where I'm awoken by a bad dream, and I'm convinced there is someone in my room, I've had this my entire life for as long as I remember. As a kid I would be convinced there was someone lurking in the darkness of my room and have to sleep in my parents bed, even at 22 I've jumped in bed with my mum due to a bad night terror, and frequently wake up screaming. Just the other day my boyfriend was joking about clowns, and the moment he turned off the light and left the bedroom I spiralled, I could see the clowns in my intrusive thoughts, and I was having a severe paranoia episode that they were around me, I ran into the living room screaming, not able to settle constantly looking around for the clowns I was convinced were there. As soon as I laid down I could see them behind me, convinced they were there. 

In reality I know my paranoid thoughts aren't true, I know my friends aren't laughing at me, I know my boyfriend loves me, I know my family only mean well when they discuss me privately and I know there's no one that could enter the flat and hurt me, but in the moment, it's so real and raw it's terrifying. 

Ever wondered what it feels like to constantly think people are against you? That you're fighting a constant battle against loved ones and strangers that they don't even know exists, an imaginary wall you have to break down everyday just to talk to people, it's exhausting and it's scary and it's sad. It fills me with so much sadness that I spend most evenings overwhelmed by all my paranoid thoughts that it all comes bubbling out and I can't cope with it anymore. 

The only way out of it for me is to talk it through with someone, especially my boyfriend, telling him what's on my mind and having him reason with me to find out what's triggered it and what's upsetting me, I also like to use the STOPP method, which you can read all about here in this post, and sit and do the following;

• what has triggered me
• what evidence I have to believe it
• Stop, and think about it rationally, what's really going on?
• talk about it with someone
• think it over and be rational and logical

It's hard, but the best thing you can do is put your rational head on and get into wise mind (my fellow DBT people will know what I mean), and think about what's really happening and what you can do to combat it. 

Meg x