Paranoia: definition and signs of this delusional thinking

Paranoia is one of the concepts associated with mental disorders that have to do with delusions, that is, crazy ideas that are believed in with an intensity that goes beyond reason.

Due to its striking and enigmatic nature, paranoia, as a phenomenon, has piqued the interest of many people who have gone on to use the term as one more component of their vocabulary, applicable to day-to-day situations experienced with friends, family and known. However, it must be borne in mind that it is a concept from the clinical field of psychology and psychiatry, and is used only in very specific cases. Let's see what it really consists of.

• Related article: "The 16 most common mental disorders"

What is paranoia?

Paranoia is a thinking style associated with mental disorders that characterized by shaping self-referential delusions. This means that someone who expresses paranoid behavior has a tendency to believe that everything that happens and of what he is aware is given to cause of the same fact, a truth that normally tries to be hidden by mysterious entities (supernatural or not) but that oneself is capable of to see.

For example, the belief that someone is inserting encrypted messages into television commercials to brainwash us is a delusion very typical of this class of mental states. Other examples: there is someone listening to us through the plugs, a pigeon follows us with a microphone hidden between the feathers, etc.

Persecution delusions are typical of paranoia, since, by recognizing all kinds of clues in the details of what surrounds us, the conclusion is reached that there is someone very interested in following our steps in a discreet way, camouflaging their trail.

It should be noted that although the use of the term "paranoia" is relatively lax and refers to a type of thought and behavior, in practice it usually refers to delusional disorder, or paranoid psychosis, a type of disorder related to the group of disorders close to schizophrenia.

• Related article: "Delusional Disorder (Paranoid Psychosis): Causes, Symptoms and Treatment"

Operation of this delusional thinking

The basic characteristics of paranoia are as follows.

1. Hostility, defensive attitude, and persecution mania

People who express paranoia they constantly see reasons not to trust almost anyone, since anyone could be a potential attacker or spy. This, in addition, makes it very difficult to attend to these people from the clinical field in the most serious cases.

• Related article: "The 12 most curious and shocking types of delusions"

2. Adoption of protection routines

Although it does not occur in all cases of paranoia, it is very common for the person to adopt certain habits and characteristic routines whose purpose is solely defense against external threats. For example, wrapping your head in aluminum foil is a popular choice among those who believe that their thoughts can be "read" or "stolen" by someone.

3. Cognitive rigidity

Another of the main differences between paranoia and other types of mental states not related to disorders is that the first is based on a clear cognitive rigidity, or inability to self-correct.

When the predictions based on delusions do not come true, simply look for another explanation, whose only requirement has to be that it does not go against the main idea that structures the paranoia.

That means that as long as this criterion is met, the new explanations can be just as convoluted and unreasonable as the others.

The causes of paranoia

Paranoia is one of the symptoms associated with psychosis, but this fact alone does not say much about its causes. Actually, as a symptom, paranoia can be due to different types of mental disorder or purely neurological problems. There are different theories that try to account for why this pattern of thought appears.

1. Appearance due to learning and contingencies

Environmental and social influence can cause thousands of people to express patterns of paranoia without becoming part of very severe clinical cases. Various conspiracy theories, for example, can be understood as explanatory schemes that resist all kinds of evidence to the contrary and that, on the other hand, are based on a entity (physical or organizational), which has its own political and economic interests, as well as the power to manipulate at will what happens in the planet.

Thus, indoctrination and integration into some social circles can, by themselves, get people used to thinking through paranoia or something very close to it.

2. By disorder and complications of a clinical nature

Normally, our ability to think and create abstract concepts is conceived as a ability that makes us intelligent beings, highly prepared to adapt to new challenges. The flexibility of our cognition allows us to usually find innovative solutions no matter how changing the environment.

How do we manage to cope so well with these variable and to some extent unpredictable situations? To do this, we automatically use one of the capacities in which we are most skillful thanks to the fact of having a highly developed brain: the ability to recognize patterns and regularities in all kinds of stimuli. Thanks to her we put order in what would otherwise be a chaos of perceptions and memories.

In addition, this reorganization of information is carried out both in the most concrete aspects of perception and with the most abstract concepts, the ideas through which we interpret reality through what is known as cognitive schemas. For example, it is very easy, and even automatic, to detect musicality patterns in certain sounds, or recognize faces where there are only spots, but it is also common to recognize intentions in the actions of others.

Paranoia is what happens when this ability that we show when it comes to recognizing underlying ideas and perceptions that backbone all the rest becomes somewhat pathological, a sign that we impose a very forced account to explain reality, instead of assuming that we cannot anticipate everything and limit ourselves to experiencing our experiences assuming that there will always be doubts by sort out.

A) Yes, certain mental disorders can alter the functioning of cognitive processes that already exist in every human being can "go overboard", although it is not known how this happens.

3. Due to brain failure

Some brain injuries they may be related to specific types of paranoid thinking. The Capgras syndrome, for example, it consists of a tendency to believe that friends and family have been replaced by other physically identical to the former, and is believed to be caused by damage to the connections between the limbic system and areas of the cerebral cortex.