Overcoming paranoia

The following piece is drawn from personal experience. I'm interested in how our thoughts generate our feelings and how we respond to these things. I have used the mantra on many occasions to stop my mind from making judgements based on minimal evidence. I hope this helps others...

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It is said that cannabis causes paranoia. What is paranoia? It would be easy to refer to it as a 'belief'. That would then lead us to consider what a belief is...

A guy is walking along the road and he sees someone with a camera pointing in his direction then they turn away from him. He says to himself in his mind "That guy was taking pics of me! He's spying on me!"

From this we could deduce the person is being paranoid. He has a 'belief' that states "person pointing camera at me means they are taking pics of me which in turn means I'm being spied on". This is in the form of A means B. A simple example of this could be "having lots of money means you are lucky" or "having lots of money means you have worked hard". What is the correct belief? There will be a mixture of responses and I don't know which one is true. Whatever you believe it is reality to you. So reality is different for everyone. This guy now thinks he is being spied on. His reaction to this could be anything based on his own reality. If he freaks out then we could say this is not useful. So what is useful when someone is having these thoughts and freaking out?

Repeating a simple mantra has been found to be very effective in changing the person from panic to calm confidence. Whenever a thought in the form of A means B crops up that starts a negative response in the person, arm them with the magic words "SHUT THE FUCK UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP!..." repeat until chilled.

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I wrote this in another thread but I think it fits nicely for this subject

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From my own experience pot used to exacerbate any negative feelings I had. Negative thoughts such as paranoid thoughts would be more easily believed without reasoning out. Schizophrenia can be very scary to some but fear is just an emotion brought on by either real or imagined events. It is a strong emotion and can be amplified by cannabis. Fear can get out of control and panic could set in. Then people blame cannabis as the cause but cannabis is like putting more oxygen on a fire for some. If someone kept poking you saying "play the game" over and over like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest you could freak out like the guy in the movie or you could break the guys arm. People who get over schizophrenia have more choices in their behaviour. They learn to be strong in certain effective ways. They sometimes see the funny side of their ailment or they just stop taking shit from their brain. You are a lion. You control your world. You can do it now...

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first of all dont base your knowledge on schizophrenia from a movie of all things. schizophrenia and fear have nothing to do with each other.
that second quote i think you wrote when u were high, because you are all over the place and i dont even know where to start

hate to be rash with you but the way you write is so convoluted and nonsensical that it's got me flustered lol

to be honest id love to talk more with u because if i had to hypothetically diagnose u from what u just wrote i'd say youre kinda schizophrenic. you are all over the place, you write in a stream-of-consciousness style that shows how nonlinear your mind is. and another thing schizophrenics often do is talk to themselves in a third person, objective way.

for example:

nonschizophrenic thinks: "man, i really need to wear more red shirts"
(some) schizos think: "you need to wear more red shirts"

the reason im telling you this is because you say you have a mantra: "shut the fuck up" it's peculiar that you would say that to yourself in a 3rd person fashion.

i cant tell if youre saying that you tell someone else to shut the fuck up because that's not a mantra. but if that's so, then i'd diagnose you with 1st degree asshole who needs to take 2 tablets of his own advice every 12 hours.

Pixel... thank you for your comments. As I said I'm speaking from my own experience. I've spent a few months locked up in a hospital with my illness. All these ramblings are from MY understanding of MY schizophrenia. If that wasn't clear then I hope it is now. I know that a lot of different people with unique symptoms are all collected together and put in the schiz category. I was paranoid delusional. I'm now 'don't give a fuck'. You claim to know a lot about my thinking from a few sentences on a forum. I have a life time of experiences to consider and understand. So let me make judgements on YOUR ramblings. You are a critic. You find fault. This is not a bad thing as a critic is needed to guide the dreamer. A critic who states things in the negative is a 'spoiler'. A critic who finds the positive intention and asks "how can we make this work" is an 'advisor'. These are just my thoughts. Feel free to find fault. I'll still love you in the end:thumbsup:

so you had a few months in a clinic to ask an actual physician your question, and instead you get out and you decide to bring your question to a bunch of potheads like us on a weed forum? do you really expect a better answer here?

you would absolutely hate to hear this but ive read in more than 1 of my psych text books that schizophrenics find their condition amplified with marijuana. if you "don't give a fuck" chances point towards your condition getting much worse over a good long period of time. using that mantra continues a cycle of you

1. talking to yourself from an outside point of view, distancing yourself more from yourSELF, where reality comes from
2. being hostile towards yourself repeatedly
3. not thinking logically at all, instead spitting a phrase that really piles up to absolutely nothing. if you would tackle the problem mentally, you wouldnt need to tell yourself to shut the fuck up for the rest of your life.

when you see the world not from your mind but from the perspective of a harsh Judge of your mind, you dont take in your experiences the same. instead of feeling them, you are watching them, judging how your self reacts to the experience.

i dont think u need a psych ward, because u seem very harmless and sane to me. what i think is that u should see a psychologist (NOT A DAMN PSYCHIATRIST) to sort out how you absorb your life's experiences

i understand you dont know anything about me so why listen to me? but i study this material in graduate school and hopefully i'll have my PhD in psychology within 1-3 years. sure that might not mean anything to you, but just remember, i dont nkow you, but i'd like to help you!

OK. Just a few more points to clear up.

When I say 'shut the fuck up' I am saying it to myself... from myself. The internal dialogue that is constantly running on the edge of awareness is just old thinking that was useful at some point but may not be useful in the moment I find myself in. I say 'shut the fuck up' so I can put in place new thinking. I may use the old way if it has been useful in a similar situation or I may come up with another way. I may have to get creative. In the end the more choices I have the greater flexibility I will have.

Now to the way I say 'shut the fuck up'. I could easily say it in a way an angry husband shouts at his nagging wife. But I don't. I say it in a confident 'mob boss' way. Total control of 'my patch'. Tough love. I know with full confidence that the voice will stop. Then I can start thinking NEW ideas. I love new ideas. New thinking. I used to fight with myself. Now I'm a more congruent 'all for one... one for all' kind of guy. There is no conflict. Just understanding and love.

Yes I'm pretty sane now but I guess that comes from growing up. Just a guess. The map is not the territory. Hope you do well in your endeavours.

I just smoked a bowl and read this thread, wow.

bhouncy... good for you. It really appears to me that you have begun to seriously understand yourself and your condition. I have always tried to push people to really sit down and begin to understand the way they think and it is clear you have already completed quite a lot of this self-discovery...

in short keep up the good work...

So like.. if I say "dude, you need to change your flow of thought or you're going to induce a panic attack" to myself in my head.. that means i have a problem? I use a combination of ways to think.. I've always thought it's just creative like Shut the fuck up man lol when you see television shows and they show characters talking to themselves in their heads about situations.. i.e "Ok Charles... take it easy.. just move it to the left.. there we go... WTF?!" lmao i thinks its hilarious.. though I dont think like that.. I do sometimes when Im playin a game.. but I usually say it outloud when im tryin to focus more lol

I just "bounce" thoughts. If I see someone staring at me while I'm high and I start to get paranoid, I quickly deflect my train of thought or tell myself "Nonsense!" It works well for a lot of things - I've found it handy for depression.

Everyone thinks differently. Thoughts are made up of what we sense. So there may be sounds... pictures... feelings... smells... tastes. I find that my internal chatter generates feelings and those feelings depend on what is being said and how it is being said. I know my thinking is causing a problem if I start to feel negative. This is where I use my intervention. A lot of people have their own coping strategies. If they are effective then keep using them. I find that the more choices I have in a situation the more effectively I can respond. If something doesn't work then I have other options.

Brain: they think I'm weird
Me: shut the fuck up
Brain: ..................
Me: how can get my point across in a way they will understand?
Brain: how about trying x, y and z.
Me: "Sounds good to me!"