Let's all get paranoid

It depends on the likelihood of the other thing happening. If you are a member of the mafia, I expect you should sit with your back to the wall, but if you are not, that's probably just an active imagination at work. Sanity requires a grasp of the per centages. But I maintain that thinking that all the negative things that happen to us is a result of other people out to get us is a case of spotlight syndrome. Most people don't even know we exist much less want to 'get us'. It's just wishful thinking that we are that important.

 

Sarita, you left out staying away from hotel rooms. There's a bed bug infestation. So if you have to travel for work or pleasure, you're going to bring bed bugs home. Don't even get me started on whether or not you should touch the TV remote control in your hotel room

 

OK, now you have freaked me out. I just don't feel up to bed bugs now and I am traveling this week. Then again, in the 19th century travelers had to share beds with other travelers at the same time. I bet that was freaky.

 

As a germ-a- phobic I could go on and on about this particular post.

 

You are mistaken but thank you. I will soon be eligible for social security. No military, I don't take direction well, I doubt that would have worked out well for anyone.

No, it isn't easier to walk in fear, it is exhausting and it robs you of what you could be and what you could contribute to the world. You have God-given talents you were meant to use and if you are always afraid they will just languish. Go live life. We are all going to die anyway. We just don't know when. You cannot protect yourself from eventual death or for that matter sadness, loss and all those things. Your forebears had all the same things to be afraid of - actually much more - you don't worry much about small pox do you? How about polio? Are you concerned about dying of infection? Wolves? Your grandparents and ancestors had to worry about all these things and much more.

If it is really a big problem for you as opposed to a minor inconvenience, you might want to talk to a counselor about CBT therapy. THis is cognitive based therapy. My personal opinion about examining the past ad nauseum about 'what made me this way' gives more power to the obsessiveness and that's not where we want to go. GOod luck, you can and will get free of a lot of it. I do believe outdoor exercise daily cures more things that about anything.

 

Hear, hear!!!!

 

i probably need therapy- i am a germophobe in the winter i hate getting sick cuz i spend most of my year sick from this crap.

 

Ok, so call me paranoid, but I ALWAYS sit with my back against a wall. My husband knows I have to face the door in a restaraunt. I want to know who is coming in the place and if it's someone I've put in jail.

 

Tell me about it. I travel all the time for work, and I always get a little anxious about how clean the room actually is. Needless to say, one of the first things I do is take the damned comforter off the bed. Who knows what evil lurks in that thing?

 

Wino and Seadog. Do you know one of the current theories about the prevalence of asthma is that we are too clean? Not enough exposure to germs and whatnot in our youth to build up a robust immune system? Try reframing hotel stays as immunotherapy.

 

So you want your husband to stop the bullet before it gets to you? Or do you think you can yell duck and you'll both dodge it?

 

I do too, always have. I think its because of my hearing.

As a rule I do avoid them it is one of the primary reason I bought a vacation home.

But I can tell you this.

In the recent past, I never could get off of an airplane with out catching something, cold, flue, stomach virus, etc. until I started to clean the area I am sitting in. Yep once I get settled I wipe down everything I may touch with a disinfectant wipe and I have not been sick since do to a flight.


I am also the guy you see wiping down the push carts at the grocery store and I never touch anything in a doctors office or hospital.

 

To be forewarned is to be forarmed. And I've always thought of him as my superman, lol.

 

I don't call it paranoid, I call it being aware! If it works for you, great And how are you to know unless someone writes about their experiences?

I am NOT a germ freak. I grew up on a farm and there was dirt outside to play in and work in. And, I don't get to travel (wishful thinking and that is for my next life!)

I have become paranoid about driving, but that is a different topic.

 

Agree about the planes. You got dozens of people in your lap for 5 hours, what would happen? I also have the same problem when I visit the young people in my extended family though. Little germ factories they are. But I wouldn't miss seeing them for the world.

 

I wonder if its paranoia or progress? My mother told me that when she was young her parents used to put her to sleep with candy in her mouth... no wonder that generation lost all their teeth, after all it was not common sense that sweets cause teeth to decay. Not to mention that barely 90 years ago a flu pandemic killed ~100 million which was 6% of the world population at that time, today we joke about new strains of the flu.

So maybe its no so bad to keep updated on modern progress and knowledge? Maybe taking some Vitamin D can reduce your chance of getting cancer by 75% and 20 years from now they will joke about people who did not take Vitamin D just like we joke about our parents not brushing their teeth or about people dying from the flu?

After all, all truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident

 

technically, paranoia has do do with reference more than fear--thinking things refer or apply to you that actually don't--like watching TV and thinking the person on the screen is speaking directly to you rather than the other 1.8 million viewers--that is the potentially delusional aspect to it--fear might be a natural corollary to that kind of thinking--who knows whether it means you're paranoid if you think that if a med has 3% adverse side effects, you're going to be the one who gets the worst possible one of them--if you think like that too much, I believe it makes you impractical and a bit weird, but paranoid? maybe

that's all I have to say except only you can decide whether you are being paranoid or "condignly" skeptical
(had to make sure I used Henry's favorite word) (actually, if you are too strange, a doctor might decide for you, but that doesn't likely apply here)

 

So in your esteemed, professional opinion, Jim, is it paranoia if they really are out to get you?

 

Who is they ?

 

They are out side my office,, right this moment.