Extreme paranoia

[easterncappy]

I posted yesterday about my parents' warped sense of justice... "Don't you care that you might ruin that man's life if you call the police on him for beating his girlfriend?", "if she got beaten, she must have done something to deserve it", "what were you (three year old girl) doing to find yourself in that situation (getting molested)?", etc. Very warped perception of who the bad guy is in any given situation, the idea that people "deserve" for traumatic and abusive things to happen to them, not really understanding that the police are there for you to call when there is an illegal abuse situation happening, etc. This is at the very least a distortion of reality.

That being said, it went further with mine. I know that PPD is a thing, but I'm neither able to diagnose them nor convinced that this is something they have more symptoms of than the other personality disorders. Schizophrenia runs in my mom's family (if it's even genetic, I'm not really sure) so maybe in her case, it's a mild form of that. I genuinely have no idea, that's why I'm asking. Again, I don't have the right to diagnose anyone based on my suspicions.

My parents both always thought that their political beliefs were so revolutionary that we couldn't have our cell phones in the room when they were talking about them.

My parents both expressed sentiments that I'd get "bad karma" if I called the police on a legitimately bad person. Not that I was trigger happy with those kinds of phone calls but I did grow up seeing a lot of actual DV. I didn't want to get into it in the other posts I made because this one is just... really bonkers, but "if you call the police on him, someone will call the police on you, and you'll go to jail too, it's bad karma". We are not from a culture that believes in karma, for the record... as if that was how karma even worked.

Many have told me "your parents were just making up something to get you to behave" with this one, but they certainly were not seeing as they still hold these opinions and speak of them often when I am 25 years old... when I was in elementary school, I got into an argument with another child in the neighborhood. The child belonged to an ethnicity that my parents think is all-powerful in this country. For the rest of the day, my mom was legitimately terrified that the police would show up to our house and arrest everyone in our family because I hurt this child's feelings, she thought the child's mother would call the police on us for racism. Not too long ago, my mom repeated a similar sentiment: "Always behave around (ethnicity) people... they can have you arrested for racism if they don't like you". My mom's beliefs would sometimes fluctuate to being an anti-racist warrior specifically on the behalf of this ethnicity... sometimes to look good on social media. She was very inconsistent.

If they got flat tires, it was never just that they accidentally drove over a nail or screw that fell off of someone's work truck. It was "that mechanic from 8 years ago holding a grudge because we don't go to him anymore". This mechanic, who I don't even think remembers them anymore, was also the sole cause of my mom deciding one night that we have to park her car in a way where it's not able to be hooked up to towing equipment because "he's going to come tonight to try to steal my car". They hadn't talked in years at this point.

I remember feeling really weirded out by most of this even when I was a clueless kid. There's a lot more that I haven't posted about... it'll come back to me, lol. Was anyone else's PD always convinced of really weird paranoid stuff?

[square]

My husband fits PPD, though he has a different subtype. Yours seems to fit the persecutary type. Mine is not nearly as bad but when he is not well (also some schizophrenia perhaps in the family) it can be pretty weird. Like the mechanic holding a grudge and sabotaging something for 8 years down the road, I can relate to that one.

A possible piece in the mechanics of paranoia may be ideas of reference, where unrelated events are tied together or cause and effect are reversed. Or in general that things feels somehow more *significant* than they really are, fated or planned.

And the paranoid person I think feels powerless while certain people have god-like powers.

Sorry you had to go through that, it sounds awful. My stomach turned reading that.

[Cat of the Canals]

MIL is a hermit-type BPD and thus very paranoid. I think I've mentioned this story here before, but last summer, she found feces on her front steps. She immediately leaped to the conclusion that someone left it there on purpose. Like... picked up poop (dog? human?) and left it in front of her door. Her exact comment was, "I'm not sure what message they were trying to send!" A few weeks later, she was excited to see a fox running through her yard. When she mentioned it to a neighbor, they said, "Oh yeah, he's been hanging around for a while now and pooping on people's doorsteps to mark his territory." You'd think this would teach her not to jump to the same old conclusions, but it won't.

If someone misspells her last name (a common thing) when sending something in the mail, it's with malicious intent. The concept that "correlation does not equal causation" does not exist in her mind. Everything is linked. If she doesn't get a Christmas card from her ex-husband's sister, it's not because the woman is 85 and in a care home and no longer able to send Xmas cards. Nope. She's holding a grudge because of something MIL said to her ex a year ago. If a wealthy family member compliments her outfit and asks where she got it, it's not because they're being polite or (god forbid) genuine. It's because they're trying to goad MIL into admitting she got it on sale or at a thrift store, thus embarrassing her for not wearing fancy, expensive clothes like the family member can afford.

[Rosa Rugosa]

I suspect my Sister and Mother are uNPD. They both have a tendency to think people are plotting against them. I wonder if it's because they plot against others, if they think this way, others must think like this too?

When one of their cars got bumped in a parking lot - it must have been X or Y who lives close by and is mad/jealous/crazy/swear words. They couldn't see that it was likely an accident and not a vendetta. Kinda sounds like Cat of the Canals fox story, instant accusations.

Also, both have the ability to hold grudges for years - so if someone doesn't respond as fast as they'd like or doesn't send a greeting card/any spoken or unspoken demand - they think their tactics are being used against them. But if people respond too soon or contact out of the blue/drop by their house unannounced - they're needy/desperate/harassing/want something they have. Loose/loose.

My Mother was opposite on the police topic. She used them as a threat in my childhood. 'If you do anything illegal, I will get evidence and take you to the police myself'.

She did use karma - 'what did I do in my last lives to deserve you/this?' Like I was punishment for an unknown evil her previous self committed. Obviously she wasn't guilty in this life. Karma isn't a part of my family's culture either, she just picked it up to use as a stick.

[Call Me Cordelia]

I suspect my Sister and Mother are uNPD. They both have a tendency to think people are plotting against them. I wonder if it's because they plot against others, if they think this way, others must think like this too?

This. It's projection. And I think it's a big red flag. They think their way of viewing the world is the norm.

And yes, my uPD father too.

I also have a knee-jerk fear reaction on seeing a police car. I think it's pretty normal to fear punishment, though you've done nothing wrong, when punishment in your experience has been arbitrary and usually triggered by just being there when mom or dad felt like blowing off some steam.

[Cat of the Canals]

 

pdMIL is constantly judging everyone and everything, so she naturally assumes that everyone is doing the same to/about her.

[Poison Ivy]

I think this behavior can also be an indication of someone believing they are the center of the universe. Random things might happen to other people, but not to these folks.

[easterncappy]

Thanks for the responses everyone.

I didn't know about the different subtypes of PPD. Some of them seem more aligned with what I've experienced with my family than others. Either way, reading the material about the different personality disorders and how to deal with them helps even if I'm squeamish about armchair diagnoses. There's a little bit of overlap between all of them, after all... especially if you're on the receiving end, it all feels like the same abuse if you have to live with them.

My mom also thinks she's a mind reader. Even looong before I was familiar with any talk about child abuse or personality disorders, I remember I tried to talk her out of a lot of her weird judgments of others because there was no way in hell they could be true. I didn't know what to do with her a lot of the time when she was just going on and on about a certain person's real intentions or what they meant by how hard they put a mug down onto a table or whatever nonsense. Lots of scheming about how to make people jealous or get under their skin, and they obviously had to have been plotting against her to begin with.

I wonder how many of her non-PD friends who "stopped talking to her for no reason" actually stopped for this reason. She was always really... negative, when speaking to people. Sort of like she thought that everyone had the same kind of thoughts that she did, just that she was the only person who was honest about it. She had a lot of "everyone does X, but it's only a problem when I do it " moments. It was a flea I had for a long time, too, I believed people had worse intentions than they really did and I would be overly negative in social situations... except, I realized how off-putting this was around non-PD people, so I stopped.

I wonder if thinking you have actual magical powers is a part of this whole thing.

She was always worried about there being legal consequences to things. I had to keep a lot of secrets, most of which actually had nothing to do with the abuse at home, but for example: she just sort of thought that if any American ever got mad at us, they'd pay immigration good money to have us deported (not possible, not how anything works, not how normal people react to minor misunderstandings with others).

[easterncappy]

https://medium.com/narcissism-and-abusive-relationships/trauma-of-children-of-addicts-alcoholics-e7982e34a2f5

"Because an addict's behavior is erratic and unpredictable, vulnerability and authenticity required for intimate relationships are considered too risky. Children live in continuous fear and learn to be on guard for signs of danger, creating constant anxiety well into adulthood. Many become hypervigilant and distrustful and learn to contain and deny their emotions, which are generally shamed or denied by parents. In the extreme, they may be so detached that they're numb to their feelings. The environment and these effects are how codependency is passed on — even by children of addicts who aren't addicts themselves."

This explains my mom a lot. Her dad was even worse than mine. She married something familiar, but not quite as bad, so she thinks she did me a huge favor and/or that the problem doesn't exist, but man does she have tons of untreated trauma from it. Her life revolves around the untreated trauma that she denies exists or is even possible. And the paranoia can easily be explained by... this.

[square]

For my H, the paranoia seems to be rooted in a combination of nature (father and grandmother) and nurture (repeated betrayals and abandonments as a child naturally cause major trust issues and a fixation on sussing out motivations in others).

His needs and emotions were denied and ridiculed as well, and his father was unpredictable, going from a warm and nurturing man to a violent monster.

[pianissimo]

I think things about the bad karma and mind reading are also examples of magical thinking.

I posted yesterday about my parents' warped sense of justice... "Don't you care that you might ruin that man's life if you call the police on him for beating his girlfriend?", "if she got beaten, she must have done something to deserve it", "what were you (three year old girl) doing to find yourself in that situation (getting molested)?", etc. Very warped perception of who the bad guy is in any given situation, the idea that people "deserve" for traumatic and abusive things to happen to them, not really understanding that the police are there for you to call when there is an illegal abuse situation happening, etc. This is at the very least a distortion of reality.

Here, to me, it sounds like they aren't able to cope with what's going on, so they have defense mechanisms like blaming the victim.

Many have told me "your parents were just making up something to get you to behave" with this one, but they certainly were not seeing as they still hold these opinions and speak of them often when I am 25 years old... when I was in elementary school, I got into an argument with another child in the neighborhood. The child belonged to an ethnicity that my parents think is all-powerful in this country. For the rest of the day, my mom was legitimately terrified that the police would show up to our house and arrest everyone in our family because I hurt this child's feelings, she thought the child's mother would call the police on us for racism. Not too long ago, my mom repeated a similar sentiment: "Always behave around (ethnicity) people... they can have you arrested for racism if they don't like you". My mom's beliefs would sometimes fluctuate to being an anti-racist warrior specifically on the behalf of this ethnicity... sometimes to look good on social media. She was very inconsistent.

This sounds like "us against them" mindset. I have heard of this in relation to narcissistic family dynamics. This is also why abuse isn't reported and it's kept secret.

My mom also thinks she's a mind reader. Even looong before I was familiar with any talk about child abuse or personality disorders, I remember I tried to talk her out of a lot of her weird judgments of others because there was no way in hell they could be true. I didn't know what to do with her a lot of the time when she was just going on and on about a certain person's real intentions or what they meant by how hard they put a mug down onto a table or whatever nonsense. Lots of scheming about how to make people jealous or get under their skin, and they obviously had to have been plotting against her to begin with.

I think this is the kind of paranoia in people with PDs.

I wonder if thinking you have actual magical powers is a part of this whole thing.

As far as I know, it is.

What you describe sounds a little cult-like to me.

Apparently, the overlap with schizophrenia happens if PDed people have psychotic episodes.  I remember reading something about borderline personality disorder taking its name from patients being in the border of a full blown psychosis. People with schizophrenia can be aware of their symptoms and they can manage them through medication.

[easterncappy]

I think things about the bad karma and mind reading are also examples of magical thinking.

Here, to me, it sounds like they aren't able to cope with what's going on, so they have defense mechanisms like blaming the victim.

This sounds like "us against them" mindset. I have heard of this in relation to narcissistic family dynamics. This is also why abuse isn't reported and it's kept secret.

What you describe sounds a little cult-like to me.

Apparently, the overlap with schizophrenia happens if PDed people have psychotic episodes.  I remember reading something about borderline personality disorder taking its name from patients being in the border of a full blown psychosis. People with schizophrenia can be aware of their symptoms and they can manage them through medication.

I have recently felt like I've escaped a cult. Apart from the qualifiers of "keeping you away from family members" or anything relating to religious scripture (although some of these people do make their families into a pseudo-religion ), a lot of these families seem like cults.

A random page I found on Google:

https://culteducation.com/warningsigns.html

Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financial statement.
Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
There are records, books, news articles, or television programs that document the abuses of the group/leader.
Followers feel they can never be "good enough".
The group/leader is always right.
The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.

Bolded are the ones that pretty easily fit most people's descriptions of their PD families... I'm only a little tongue-in-cheek here. The more I think about it, the more I think they're definitely cult-like. Not bolded are... well, if these were organizations with hundreds of members, they'd apply. But these are usually families of a couple of individuals, so obviously, no TV programs or audited financial statements. Still, their behaviors closely mirror people with similar personalities who do have those things.

[pianissimo]

Those apply to my family too.

I've heard psychologists talking about families with narcissistic dynamics behaving like a cult, so I think it is a thing.

It seems like these days they define cults in terms of group behaviour rather than their affiliation to religion. So families with NPD parents could be considered small cults I guess. We talk about flying monkeys in relation to narcissistic parents. That's something cult-like about them too.

For a time, I found listening to podcasts by victims of cult abuse healing.

[1footouttadefog]

Sounds like a monumentally bad case of feelings as fact. 

Many narcissists and other PDs operate on a plain where feelings are facts.  They make up or conflate details to fill in the gaps to explain what they are feeling.  Due to their narcissism they never self direct blame. 

I have actually seen this come and go in terms of intensity with my spouse as he has come on and off of various meds over the years. 

I think that people who have endured alot of abuse or drama/trauma as kids have some measure of altered brain chemistry.  Some actually have diagnosable PTSD or CPTSD and have extra adrenalin keeping them in a flight or fight frame of mind at nearly all times and this filter is not a pleasant one for day to day living.  Every arousal is scene as directed at them and all thinking is in terms of them against the world.

Sorry you are dealing with this.  Totally not fun.  Use the tools to protect yourself and stay strong. 

[moglow]

Many narcissists and other PDs operate on a plain where feelings are facts.  They make up or conflate details to fill in the gaps to explain what they are feeling.  Due to their narcissism they never self direct blame. 

I see what you're saying and I'll raise you one: THEIR feelings are facts. Yours/ours/other people's feelings are imaginary. Waved off. Pushed aside. Inconsequential.

My jaundiced thursday crap speaking up. But you get me. 

[olivegirl]

My Bpd mother and Npd father are very paranoid and feel that others are plotting to get them.

It's total projection.

Nothing brings my parents more glee than schadenfreude.

They literally delight at the news of someone in their circle's divorce, family rift, foreclosure, death.

They are both very suspicious and alarmingly private to the point that it is jarring.

I remember being coached as a young child "Don't say anything,  relatives will be pumping you for information!  Say everything is fine."

Their narcissism is so unhinged that my parents are now obsessed with this idea that my sister and I are joining forces to overthrow them bc we are jealous of our aging parents and want to tell others their secrets. 

Again, it's just projection bc my parents have smeared me all my life. 

I know my parents' greatest fear is being exposed for the frauds they are.  They have bragged that they are living comfortably but nothing could be further from the truth.  They have no savings, no assets and are totally unprepared for retirement.

I know they are scheming to try to trick me into letting them live with me so that I pay all their bills, give them free housing and do all of the caretaking.

So they need to orchestrate a smear campaign so that they can triangulate and create a false narrative that they gifted me money to buy my house with the intention that they live with me.  Ha! 

[Cat of the Canals]

Nothing brings my parents more glee than schadenfreude.

They literally delight at the news of someone in their circle's divorce, family rift, foreclosure, death.

My MIL's favorite topics! Don't forget: drug addiction, cancer/illness, suicide, job loss/unemployment.