How to tell someone they are paranoid... but of course.. are they indeed paranoid?

Hi all.

I'm slightly worried about a friend of mine, he seems to believe a shadowy criminal group is out to get him. And I say Him, because he his not ordinarily a conspiracy theorist, he is normally one to balk at conspiracy theories.
He keeps refering to 'them', saying 'they sent him a message'. When you enquire, and pry the 'evidence' from him, it turns out to be his own meaning given to some ambiguous gesture or uttering of someone.

He thinks people are going to kill him. When I ask him what for, he just goes quiet, and mutters something about all the bad things hes done. He says he cant tell me whats going on because it would put me in danger. But every little bit of information you pry from him, it seems to be more and more like paranoia.

It has been going on for a while now (a few months). I just worry that there may be a grain of truth, like all things, reality and fiction often clash sometimes. Where do you draw the line with bull #? It is seriously affecting his life, I was at the pub with him a month or so ago, and he receently asked me if I remembered that day.

I said what about it?

He said don't you remember the people listening to us? - as if there were spies planted in the pub.

I don't want to listen any more as I feel like I'm encouraging it. Of course he gets quite defensive when you suggest it sounds like he may be mis interpretting events..

omg. Anyone had any similiar scenarios? I'm seriously 95% sure that 95% of what he is saying is completely imaginary.

I just want to be clear, he doesn't read NWO conspiracies or anything, he thinks his employer is a mafia godfather. There is no evidence to support this belief except his interpretations of things people have said which would not to a reasonable person induce such a belief.

Am I judging him too much? I really just call BS now, it seems so outrageous, but there is a tiny little bit of doubt that he may absolutely correct, but only like a very small doubt :/ ..

Any thoughts appreciated.




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Hi,

Introduce him to ATS, he will fit into this crowd perfectly

No, seriously: If he is mentally ill, he will have no way to understand that he is ill. It is simply impossible for a normal person to persuade a psychoid of his illness.
If you found a way to get him to voluntary accept treatment or even the possibility to think about that he himself IS ill, you might post that here, there are some people on this board who have similar serious mental problems - maybe they could be persuaded, too..

reply to post by aceshark1234


Welcome to ATS.....I don't know about your friend. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

If your friend is having mental issues, he'll need to accept that he needs to see someone to figure things out....you can't force him to do that. Just be the friend that you can be, until he becomes too difficult to be around. Maybe he has family you could talk with about his problem. What if he's right about everything...you never know.

This is a subject often seen here...you'll find plenty of good advice...

Des

Haha yeah.. I've been tryign to get him to read other things, to put his mind to something else, but he just thinks about this constantly, he hasn't spoken about anything else for months.

Theres an anecdote someone once told me, he reminds me of it:

A partient walks into a doctor's office

Patient: Doctor, I have a problem.
Doc: Whats that?
P: I'm Dead!
Doc: You don't look dead.. why do think you're dead?
P: I just know i'm dead.

The doctor thinks to himself, that he can use logic to cure the patient.

Doc: do you agree that dead men don't bleed?
P: Why yes, of course!

The doc then takes the patient's finger and pricks it with a pin. Sure enough it bleeds.

D: You see, you can't be dead, for if dead men don't bleed and you are bleeding, you cannot be dead!
P: Wrong! It simply shows that dead men do bleed!


Turns the argument upside down..

Come right out and tell them. It will probably make them angry but it will get them thinking about it.

Sounds very much like full blown paranoia. I do wonder if your friend is on any kind of drugs?

This because of personal confrontation with smoking to much weed really makes me suspect every one and every thing, but am unable to explain this feeling to anyone because i cant wrap my brain around it. That gets frustrating to the point that i get angry when people try to figure out why i am acting so strange. In time i learned the weed plays a big role in the hole paranoia feeling and learned to just ignore it completely.

If no drugs are used i suggest you encourage him to find some help, have a feeling that if he tries and hold on to his believes he will soon isolate himself from everyone and life will go downhill fast.

aaaiii


posted on 5-7-2012 @ 08:04 AM this post Come right out and tell them. It will probably make them angry but it will get them thinking about it.



Dimens


posted on 5-7-2012 @ 08:06 AM this post Sounds very much like full blown paranoia. I do wonder if your friend is on any kind of drugs?

This because of personal confrontation with smoking to much weed really makes me suspect every one and every thing, but am unable to explain this feeling to anyone because i cant wrap my brain around it. That gets frustrating to the point that i get angry when people try to figure out why i am acting so strange. In time i learned the weed plays a big role in the hole paranoia feeling and learned to just ignore it completely.

If no drugs are used i suggest you encourage him to find some help, have a feeling that if he tries and hold on to his believes he will soon isolate himself from everyone and life will go downhill fast.
_______________________

@aaaiii: Yeah I think its a good idea on one hand, but on the other I feel that it will crush him, to the point of something very drastic.

I sort of feel that he has built this delusion up to such a point that it almost gives him his identity... To question the delusions is to... kill him in a hegelian sense.

@Dimens: Ya he used to smoke a fair bit of weed but has given that up for sometime. In a way the paranoia seemed to begin when he stopped smoking weed now you mention it..

Also he took some E over the new years this year and had never taken it before, fear it may have 'enlightened' hiim a little too much. .

ta for all replies.

Oh my god, are you conspiring against me now too? I thought you were the only one I could trust.

Naw, I'm not your friend. Sounds like he has a little problem. It's not that there aren't a lot of real conspiracies, lies, deceptions, and downright greedy people out there in the world, it's that we shouldn't let this stuff make our lives miserable. We can't change most of it anyway. Tell him to focus on what he can change.

reply to post by aceshark1234

You may be right.

There are diplomatic ways to tell him. Just choose your words carefully.

If you say it the right way it won't sting as much.

I choose not to hurt. A little compassion is all that is needed.

You care about him. Tell him so.

reply to post by rickymouse



I guess the thing is, He really thinks people are out to kill him. I'm not allowed to have a mobile phone on near him sometimes in case its bugged.

This isn't just social paranoia, where one thinks people might be talking about them, he has invented an entire alternate reality.

As a very paranoid person, in my opinion, your friend's beliefs go quite a bit beyond your generic paranoia. Do I sometimes think people are watching me? Absolutely. It is never out of an unrealistic fear though, being involved recently in a custody battle there very well could be a PI watching me. Before this reason to believe so, I never felt that way.

I might approach him as "You seem very anxious, maybe you should see someone about your anxiety to help you cope with all this" and a professional will be able to pick up on the severity of his condition.

ETA-

Don't question his fears. Don't question his reasons. This will only lead him to not trust you, and he does trust you enough to tell you about this which is good. You may very well be the ONLY person who knows about this and can help him.

How is the rest of his thought processes when on different topics? Have you come across any contradictions with his paranoia or is it just unable to be verified in any way? What is the rest of his family like?

Trying to say what the actual problem is hard without a lot more information. But as for ideas, heavy metal or other toxic poisoning, chemical imbalances or stress are a few common ones. Saying how he done something bad that is being used against him is also one process of trauma based mind control. He does not subscribe to any conspiracies so may be it is working in some ways, but is acting out with paranoia to handle the confusion and contradictions.

It is good you want to help your friend with what ever is troubling him, these sorts of things do take a bit of time and can get quite deep with a lot of uncertainty involved. Starting by pulling him up on any errors or contradictions that you do find.

reading this
itb.biologie.hu-berlin.de...

very interesting, talking about delusions being an evolutionary trait rather than an illness per se.

reply to post by aceshark1234


He is right though, we're talking about him right now. As for everyone out there trying to kill him, that's crazy. The Doctors and Pharmaceutical companies are trying to make you stay sick, not trying to kill you. The Government wants you weak so we can't challenge them but strong enough to work and pay taxes. The banks just want our indebtedness so we can give them all our future money. Most people want our money, not our lives. The only ones who profit by our deaths are undertakers and they are too busy most times lately to even want more business.

reply to post by kwakakev




-I guess his though process is logical in relation to other things, albeit very pessimistic.
-The claims which he make simply cannot be verified in any other way except by believing inferences he has drawn from seemingly (to me) small innocent gestures and comments


It is very interesting what you say about 'trauma based mind control'. I almost see some similarity in what he describes and a counter intelligence interrogation technique expained below.

-this all began when he started a new job, at he started telling me that he could finally 'hear' and that he had been missing a lot of what people had said in the past, and that now suddenly he got it.
He would take people quoting the bible, and quoting Shakespeare and other famous literary works as being a kind of 'coded communication' to him.

this is the technique described in the KUBARK CIA counter intelligence interrogation manual. Is this what you refer to as 'trauma based mind control' ?




"Alice in Wonderland

The aim of the Alice in Wonderland or confusion technique is to confound the expectations and conditioned reactions of the interrogatee. He is accustomed to a world that makes some sense, at least to him: a world of continuity and logic, a predictable world. He clings to this world to reinforce his identity and powers of resistance.

The confusion technique is designed not only to obliterate the familiar but to replace it with the weird. Although this method can be employed by a single interrogator, it is better adapted to use by two or three. When the subject enters the room, the first interrogator asks a doubletalk question -- one which seems straightforward but is essentially nonsensical. Whether the interrogatee tries to answer or not, the second interrogator follows up (interrupting any attempted response) with a wholly unrelated and equally illogical query. Sometimes two or more questions are asked simultaneously. Pitch, tone, and volume of the interrogators' voices are unrelated to the import of the questions. No pattern of questions and answers is permitted to develop, nor do the questions themselves relate logically to each other. In this strange atmosphere the subject finds that the pattern of speech and thought which he has learned to consider normal have been replaced by an eerie meaninglessness. The interrogatee may start laughing or refuse to take the situation seriously. But as the process continues, day after day if necessary, the subject begins to try to make sense of the situation, which becomes mentally intolerable. Now he is likely to make significant admissions, or even to pour out his story, just to stop the flow of babble which assails him. This technique may be especially effective with the orderly, obstinate type."

To expand on the above post, I think the 'alice in wonder land confusion method' is intended to bombard an interrogatee with gibberish and let their mind try and make sense of it. The human mind will naturally try to make sense of it and will come up with some, any explanation to give reason to the madness.

Perhaps he was subject to a cruel management technique at a new office, or indeed something more sinister?

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