Paranoid Depressive Thinking

The key factor in paranoid thinking is that the person with the disorder is convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that their problems are not of their making.  Once they have concluded that they are the ‘victim’  they are now ‘entitled’ to ‘identify’, often arbitrarily, what it is that is causing them to suffer.
Paranoid thinking can follow from genetics or brain trauma.  The person suffers and lacks insight into their causing the suffering of themselves and others.  If this was the only time paranoid thinking showed it’s ugly head it would be a limited condition. The percentage of such cases is relatively rare.
What is common though is alcoholism and addiction.  These are commonly associated with paranoid thinking.  It’s seen in the statements ‘you make me drink’.  “if you had my wife, you’d drink too”.  “With my job stress I need to smoke crack”.  “With my pain, I need heroin”.
It’s also seen in simple depression.  “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen’.  Indeed if you were a powerless peasant, an Irish man during the potato famine, sold into slavery or a black slave working in the cotton fields or a modern day teen age sex slave, then you would truly be a ‘victim’ and being ‘paranoid’ about your ‘owner’ or ‘pimp’ might well justify your paranoid thinking.
The trouble is, that today, people ‘justify’ their ‘depression’ because they don’t have ‘helicopters’ or ‘yachts’ and that’s ‘somebody else’s fault’.
Everyone has paranoid thinking at some times.  The issue is how sustained is it and how it responds to or doesn’t respond to ‘facts’.
When I feel I’m a ‘victim’ and become ‘paranoid’ ,thanks to the media, I don’t tend to think that I’m strategically misinformed by them for the sake of them selling communication, but rather I think the enemy is ‘government’.  Government is my first go to.  When you’re paranoid whatever the country or era the best object of your fear and entitlement to victimship is to blame your own ‘government’.
In times of war, government actually ‘externalizes’ the paranoia and the enemy, and source of all suffering is the ‘hun’, the ‘commie’, the ‘french’, al Quaida, Boco Harem,  the Americans, the Brits, the Chinks, the Japs, the Prods, the Jews, whatever is convenient.
Without a major war then naturally government wants to deflect frustrations from the rapacious taxation and create a ‘war on drugs’ which was actually a war mostly on ‘drug dealers’ or now a ‘war on terrorists’ which is indeed a war on terrorists only Terrorists are a bit like bed bugs, always laying eggs and hard to kill.
I like to think that the politicians who I can at least elect aren’t at fault in the government but rather some ‘faction’.  These are usually ‘eurocrats.’  I imagine some ‘in house’ group, a conspiracy by say the ‘appointed’ Supreme Court, or senior bureaucrats but that the elected members don’t know about it.  That’s the old idea that the King is good but the advisors are bad.  Melanie Klein showed that the paranoid didn’t want to believe mother was all bad so coined the term the ‘bad breast’.  The good breast gave milk when the child wanted it but the ‘bad breast’ didn’t respond with alacrity.  Black and white thinking, all good all bad is classic paranoia.
In democracies this factionalism comes out with partisan ship. The Republics are evil or the Democrats are evil.  Paranoids aren’t consistent.  They  switch camps too because they think they’re rational but they are indeed classic ‘emotional thinkers’.  Their allegiances are frequently affected by their feeling like the drunk who loves you in the cups and forgets you sober.
With an election there’s demonization of the other party too. Paranoids are like soccer fans only their home team is their own narcissism.  It’s really all about them.  You are their friend as long as you reward their insatiable need.
I have paranoid thinking when I become afraid for my future.  I fear aging vulnerability and can see the with the declining safety and likelihood of a respectable place for an old person ‘physician assisted suicide’ is going to look good.
Sometimes paranoids think it’s aliens that are messing with the world and with them.
Recently it’s been a war on the miners and fossil fuels industry.  Sometimes its a war on the lawyers.  Sometimes its doctors.  Corporations are a real easy target for the paranoid.  Feminists blame white men.  There’s a real hard on in the media for the religious.  Scientists are commonly the target  Indians blame the Residential School but not the laws and leaders and judges and prime ministers and their parties who created them. I’m a white man so I get paranoid about radical feminists at times.
I sometimes catch myself when I have these brief moments by thinking that the chance that it’s aliens is equally like to it being the prime minister or president.  Unfortunately aliens are more likely to be friendly than hostile and clearly if I’m having a touch of paranoia it’s because I’m feeling threatened.
If I was an american I would know it was the IRA.  Everyone knows the IRA are controlled by the CIA who in turn are controlled by corporate aliens.
My friend who is definitely paranoid considers corporations are poisoning her food.
The environmentalists collectively are my favourite paranoids because they’re sure that man is killing the planet.  They ignore the resilience of the shark, birds and cockroaches.  Maybe dinosaurs were walking ‘too heavy on Gaia’ so she extinguished them.
The United Nations Agenda 21 is paranoid about people and wants to extinguish 7 billion.
To the paranoid somebody else is always the problem.  What’s worse if if a paranoid is depressed then there’s a good chance the paranoid might want to suicide and take you with them.  They’ve got nothing to live with because the planet is going to die because of the Alberta Tar Sands or the Chinese are en mass converting to moslem and forcing atheist americans to accept sharia law or die.
It’s always perfectly reasonable whatever one thinks from inside the paranoid psychosis.
There’s no successful psychotherapy for paranoids .  While everyone has paranoid thinking at times paranoids live in their fear and resentment and suck that time like there was no tomorrow.  Terrorists are always fairly paranoid. Suicide bombers are definitely depressive paranoids.
Medications, anti psychotics have been highly effective in reducing the extreme edges of the paranoia.  A paranoid who spits on Jews for instance on medication is likely to maintain the idea that the reason for starvation in the world is the jews, they will likely stop spitting on jews. The behavioural expression of paranoia is best managed with medication but take the medication away and not uncommonly the particular paranoid delusional system will return.  With depressive paranoid thinking treating the depression with antidepressants and antipsychotics might in fact restore the person to normal where they look at their ideas that Napoleon is today  reincarnated as  Chinese general whose also a transexual might suddenly seem odd to the person. They say, I think I had some odd thoughts. They don’t seem to be bothering me .  In time with further enjoyment and good living they might let go of the paranoid ideation unless its trigger. The pure paranoid doesn’t get better.
The drug addicts paranoia doesn’t suddenly stop with the drug stopping.  it’ often takes a year or two for a person whose had paranoia as a result of their alcoholism , stimulant or mariuana using to actually have clear thoughts.  Mostly their thinking will remain impaired as long as they are around other drug addicts with crazy thinking. It’s always easy to relapse to paranoid depressive thinking.
In this regard paranoid depressive thinking has some elements of the dissociations that are associated with post traumatic stress disorder. When the latter as war vets see war on television they suddenly being to act and behave like they’re back in the battlefield.  All the paranoid depressive thinking person needs is a new story about Rothwell to get the paranoid juices flowing.
I m fairly reasonable right now but financial insecurity can quickly have me thinking the billionaires are out to destroy us. I helps to have insight. Humour helps even more Good friends and loving family are the best buffer.