loss of control and paranoia

Interesting turn that my thought processes have taken since first publishing my previous post.

While I acknowledge that I have control issues, the bigger problem I have come to feel is that I have deeper issues with loss of control which lead to paranoid negative thoughts.

I'm not sure what I can do with this as I am basically marking time until my next therapy appointment, but my therapist asked me to consider the problems and try and work through the issues to process them in a detached way. This is incredibly difficult for me to be honest. I would like to think I am intelligent enough to compartmentalise my emotions and look at them abstractly under a microscope, but it's difficult to separate the very raw negative emotions and view them from an objective standpoint. I can of course recognise when I am having these thoughts, but I'm not able to detach from them.

Thbere have been times when I have thought seriously about quitting my work here at the university and looking at other avenues of work. It does feel that most of my issues have come from work to be honest.

Sometimes I think that the level of paranoia that I experience can't possibly be justified by psychological problems alone and occasionally, the paranoia wins a small victory in the overall war of attrition for my sanity by performing a sneak attack and getting one of their own under the radar where it acts perfectly reasonably until it sticks its needle in and starts working at that point, I start to feel that surely it can't ALL be in my head can it?

Can it?

I don't know... Having seen the way in which other colleagues have been treated in the past and having them leave employment as a result of it, I can see correlations in what I am experiencing. Sometimes it's a look or a roll of the eyes that is noticed from the corner of my eye. sometimes that's all it takes to make me spiral and let the soldiers of paranoia a loophole to climb in and start making trenches.

Control and the psyche

I only have a few minutes to write his as I will be teaching in about 20 minutes so it might have grammatical and spelling mistakes.

But that's kind of the point of today's post. I had a brilliant session today with my therapist and if I don't get it down on digital paper, I'll forget.

Basically my therapist asked me about embarrassment as I had an episode of anxiety and paranoia last week when colleagues appeared to be laughing at me due to my relative lack of academic credentials. I won't go into what happened, but it lead to a revelation (and it's only my second session)

One of my earliest (if not THE earliest) memory that I have is one where I had to relinquish control to a higher authority. Admittedly, I was little more than a toddler, but the issue with control is still there. I was not in control of myself so I felt helpless and inadequate as a result. This has gone through most of my recollections that have coloured life choices and times when I have had decisions to make. It's difficult for me to ask for help as I need to control myself.

When I was young, my mum told me that I have two ears and one mouth. This has lead me to listen more than speak. I am an overanalyser to a large degree. The control issue is central to my raison d'etre 😄. Why have I such a need to control myself and remain restrained in everything I do?

I need to process this information over the next week or so. I have a lot to think about, is it a case of relinquishing control occasionally? Is it a case of managing control issues? Is it a case of acknowledging that I can't do some things and other things are out of my control? I dunno yet, but I am determined to think about it.

When we were talking about it today, my therapist asked me why I had started smiling while answering a difficult question. It was definitely a case of the penny dropping and realising an issue when previously I hadn't connected those two neurons together.

To be continued. This might take a different turn yet again and the blog might become my virtual sounding board... A sort of dear diary if you will. If you want to continue reading, feel free. Full disclosure of everything is healthy. I want others to know who I am and hopefully neurons might start firing and connecting with them.