Overcoming paranoia

[bhouncy]

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...

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.

bhouncy Reviewed by bhouncy on 06-09-2007. 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... Rating: 5

[S.P.Q.R.]

Hahaha hail to that.