PARANOIA #1

According to oxford advanced dictionary, paranoia is a mental illness in which a person wrongly believe that other people are trying to harm them. It went further to say that it is the fear or suspicion of other people when there is no evidence or reason to it.
Another dictionary defined it as the extreme irrational or unreasonable distrust of others.

Imagine a married woman whose husband goes to work and comes back and instead of welcome home dear, his wife accuse him of being not being faithful to their marriage or a man who is married to a beautiful wife but doesn’t let his wife socialize, all because he is not comfortable with her talking to another man or a man that is always worried that he would be robbed when there is no reason to. A lot of people go ahead to become “monitoring spirits”, monitoring their spouse phone, movements, what they do and search their bags.
Don't get me wrong, it is right to want to protect what is rightfully ours and to want to know what they do and be a part of it. Its okay to be jealous but not envious.
WHAT IS JEALOUSY AND WHAT IS ENVY?
JEALOUSY—This is a feeling of unhappiness when someone we love is interested in another person.
ENVY—This is the feeling of wanting what others have or to be in the same situation as somebody else. Resentful desire of something possessed by another or others. To feel displeasure or hatred towards someone for their good fortune or possession.
When you are jealous, it is to something or someone that is yours, but when you are envious, it is to something or someone that is not yours.
In a marriage or relationship, someone can be jealous and envious at the same time. A man can be jealous that his wife is giving more attention to another man than him, but he shouldn’t be envious of her because she is doing that to another man and he can’t. A lot of good marriage have been ruined by envy. A paranoid person would look for a way to revenge on his supposed infidel spouse instead of looking for a solution.

Anyone who always suspect you of being unfaithful every time you are away from him or her is mentally not okay but doesn’t know that yet. It is not until one starts tearing his cloths, have one mental issues or walks around naked that we would say the person is mentally sick but the moment a person is not mentally safe, always suspecting every person, moment, event or thing around, then the person is in need of a mental or psychological check up.
There is nothing more important than trust in a relationship. When your spouse tells you this is where he or she was, take their words and try not to doubt them. Trust is what a paranoid person can never afford, because they are busy suspecting their spouse instead of trying to find out what is wrong and the reason why their spouse is doing what they are doing.

SYMPTOMS OF PARANOIA
A paranoid person will possess at least three of these symptom or traits.

1. LACK OF TRUST—Every person who is paranoid will surely have this trait, since it is what paranoia is mostly about. The feeling that everyone is out there to harm you; will always linger in that person's mind, action etc. He believes that only himself can be trusted. At times, it could go further to becoming that he/she sees illusion or unrealistic things. These illusions could turn out to be real and end up hunting or hurting such persons.
2. VENGEFUL— Due to they know that they can only trust themselves, when anyone betray them, they have no room for forgiveness. This is their “ defense mechanism” or their only means of telling people “ you know I was right, trust no one but yourself”. When a man cheats on a paranoid wife, her only means of showing she is hurt is to not forgive but to revenge.
3. OVER COMPETITIVE—These set of people are always on the edge, thinking that they might loose their girlfriends, wife, money/business etc. So they are always trying to compete even with people that are not interested in any of these things. Imagine a girl who has a fiancé and a guy as her best friend. Her fiancé after being introduced to this best friend would always try to over impress or push the best friend out of the picture due to insecurity.
4. EAGER TO PROVE ATTITUDE—These set of people will always want to prove they are right, because they don’t believe in what anyone says. They would want to make you see they are right by force. In return, they might over do it and loose everything..
5. HIGH SELF ESTEEM AND EGOISTIC—The fact that no one is ever right and that there is no one to trust for these people makes them place themselves in a very high place and gives themselves more credit than they deserve. They also have this attitude and idea that no other person is right, whatever they say is suppose to be right.
6. INSECURITY—They only believe in themselves, so any other person is the enemy, due to this, they do not trust people and are always insecure. Always looking over their head and back to know if everything is safe. They can never trust anyone, other than themselves for the safety of their life and that of their loved ones life.

1. GOOD PRETENDERS—You can never get to know who thy really are. They can give out more than one personalities because they want to impress so much, they don’t trust others to understand them. So they result to giving multiple personality and pretense. This symptom or trait is not always present in all of them, but just a few case.
2. COWARDICE—On the outside they give the impression that nothing scares them, but inside, they are scared of everything; being lonely, not being loved, not being accepted etc. Almost everything scares them and when they eventually are proven right or their worst fear comes to past, they show their coward side. They are not good at facing their worst fear, so they cower away and run when they are face to face with their fear.
   Not all of these symptoms are possessed at he same time in one case. At least three of this traits would be show one the victim. There are although some of these traits that would surely be visible in all or most cases, like (1), (2), (5) and (6). When you want to know a paranoid person, one of these four symptoms, more or all of the symptom will be possessed by such person. The victim will surely have them while the rest are optional.

In the next post solution and how to aid and correct victims of paranoia follows.