Paranoid Personality Disorder

Sometimes we might be walking alone in the night, and it looks like there are scary looking figures in the distance, or we could swear that we heard footsteps behind us. But then you turn around, and theres no one there, and when you reach the figures theyre really just trees and bushes. Its normal to get paranoid or suspicious once in a while, especially when youre in a potentially scary or dangerous situation. Our bodies are wired to experience fear in dangerour sympathetic nervous system, the flight or fight mechanism, gets our heartbeat going, our blood pressure increasing, our pores sweating, our pupils dilating, prompts that feeling they refer to as the hairs standing on the back of your neck. This is a natural, biological fear response and it induces us to take action like running away, putting our guard up, or getting ready to fend off the threat. Who knows what could happen when its all dark and no ones around in sight.

Fear doesnt only arise from things that go bump in the night. Sometimes we get afraid even when people are around us. There have been times where we were self-conscious and felt like everyone was judging us, or suspecting others of talking behind our backs. These are also normal feelings because everyone has the need to be accepted. However, its not normal when this fear persists even in benign situations. Paranoid personality disorder is when individuals are constantly suspicious about others hurting or plotting against them. Some symptoms of paranoid personality disorder are persistent suspicion of others, hostility, oversensitivity, being self-centered, and interpreting normal situations with other people as threatening. Understandably, having paranoid personality disorder results in social isolation and in some cases a person can become violent towards others.

Its difficult for people with paranoid personality disorder to form relationships because they are unwilling to let their guard down, should other people use that vulnerability against them. This can affect how others treat them, which in turn validates their paranoid beliefs and reinforces them in a vicious cycle. A person with paranoid personality disorder is unlikely to seek help due to suspicion of it, but in the case that they do, the options consist of therapy and medication, as for other mental and personality disorders. The reluctance to seek help contributes to an under-diagnosis of the condition and allows people to continue suffering from it chronically.