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The guy who broke up that he was Napoleon, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, the song Maanamu – such associations evoked in me the word paranoia. Until I met Karolina – a rational assistant to the director of the clinic. It seems that delusions breed not only in the minds of stereotypical madmen.
Year of tracking her fiancee on his way to work. Half a year on Sympatia.pl and Tinder. Overdraft on two credit cards (payment for detectives). Scuffle in the shop (suspicion that a woman is trying to lure Tom to the fitting room). It is a balance of losses of time, money and nerves. Carolina’s balance sheet. For six months, she thought her fiancé was cheating on her. She still seems to her when she forgets the psychotropics.
– And please don’t read the leaflet. As the patient reads, all symptoms match! – the psychiatrist laughs. – Please call me if you feel unwell – Karolina hears during the first visit. – I read the leaflet right after I left the pharmacy. It was a medicine for those who hear… voices! Plus weight gain, bad blood results, liver diseases, but it also seemed funny to me. I cried, I realized that I am mental, that I am a total freak.
Symptoms of delusional disorders
Diagnosis: paranoia, delusional syndrome. – We also say psychosis, psychotic disorder, psychotic crisis. The delusion of betrayal may be a symptom of a more serious psychotic crisis, explains Katarzyna Kucewicz, psychologist and psychotherapist from the Kucewicz & Piotrowicz Psychotherapy Center in Warsaw. Thanks to the drugs, Karolina keeps the disease under control. She is lucky to be diagnosed quickly. – Usually, psychosis escalates and the person affected develops it. For example, it starts with the feeling that others are reading his texts and ends with the certainty that they are reading his thoughts.
Even if, like Karolina, you do not have schizophrenia, you do not hear voices, or you are not intellectually retarded, paranoia can completely disrupt your life. Because you are convinced of the truth of your delusions. And that all those who try to correct you are colluding to make you sick. This was the case, of course, with Karolina. The loved ones had been worried about her relationship with her fiancé for months. They sympathized, advised. They disbelieved. – Once my brother believed that the guy was cheating on me, he started to despise me for not breaking my toxic relationship – recalls Karolina.
“Either you go to a psychiatrist or it’s over,” he hears from Tom. That’s after she attacked a foreign woman in the fitting room in Zara. – I was shocked that there is so much aggression in me, a few days earlier I read an interview with boxer Joanna Jędrzejczyk and I was surprised why so much aggression in a woman – recalls Karolina. Today he thinks quite reasonably about his relationship with Tomek. He owes his objectivity to the pills. – I was the enemy of drugs, about my friend who used to take “nurophen” for headache, stomach ache, sore throat, I thought with contempt that she was a drug addict. And now? I know that I will be on drugs all my life. And I am grateful to whoever invented psychotropics (smile)
Where does paranoia come from?
– Unfortunately, we may have a genetic predisposition to disturb the functioning of neurotransmitters in the brain. And that can make you delusional. Also stimulants, certain medications, severe chronic stress. I met a dozen employees of multinational corporations who got so nervous at work that they began to think that they were being harassed, harassed and even followed! They were sure that everyone was laughing at them, that they were watching them, and over time that cameras were installed in their apartments! – says Katarzyna Kucewicz.
If you find yourself in Carolina’s story, check if your delusions are in one area of life. It’s typical. Just like with Karolina. Her problem is love. Except that just love is customarily typed jealousy. It can be seen, for example, in literature, Othello’s art is a woman, and in real life, not only on the stage at the opera.
Maybe you happen to be paranoid and don’t think something is wrong for a long time. Neither the boss, nor the doctors, nurses or patients of the clinic where Karolina works, also never thought that she was disturbed. – At first, the stories of a delusional person usually seem plausible, do not arouse suspicion. Many people, for example, experience mobbing or partner infidelity and complain about it. While working at the Department of Psychosis Prevention at the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, I met many patients who did not show any psychotic symptoms when talking about art or literature, but when the topic of the conversation turned to their individual delusional area (e.g. sex, relations with family, or mobbing at work), in their statements, statements about thinking disorders began to appear – says the psychologist. Katarzyna Kucewicz is remembered in particular by one of the patients suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. – How he talked about Bergman’s films! I have never heard anyone speak with such passion and insight about the works of this Swedish director! If this patient were invited to a lecture on Bergman, no one would think that this person has a problem with thinking – says the psychologist.
How to persuade a sick person to treatment?
It’s easy to diagnose paranoia. The problem is that the patient has to see a psychiatrist. – Persuading a sick person to see a doctor can be overwhelming. And when it’s the first episode, neither the family nor the sick person knows that telling uncreated stories is a serious disease. Unless there have already been cases of psychosis in the family and your relatives know what to do. They lead the patient to the emergency room – says the psychologist. In Poland, it is only when someone wants to commit suicide or poses a threat to the health and life of others, that he can be “forced” to undergo treatment. – An ambulance is called, which, unfortunately sometimes assisted by the police, if the patient puts up a strong resistance, takes him to the nearest hospital emergency room with a psychiatric ward – says Katarzyna Kucewicz. Usually, the sick have a great deal of resentment towards their family afterwards for letting someone so humiliate them, leading them in a “straitjacket”. – For a family it is a considerable stress. So we often work on it later in therapy so that our relatives explain it to each other – says the psychologist. In psychosis, the patient believes what he says, it is important that after the first episode he and his relatives learn to recognize warning symptoms. To be able to annihilate another. – Families sometimes trick such a person to the emergency room. The wives say to their sick husbands: “Come, come with me, because I have to go get some pills”, “Come and see the doctor with me.” The husband goes and the doctor already sees that it is not the wife but the husband who is sick – says the psychologist.
Can Paranoia Be Cured?
Unfortunately, these disorders are characterized by a long-term and recurrent nature. Name: Persistent Delusional Disorder, it is not accidental. – If we have a tendency to psychosis and additionally to stimulants, then without pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy there is no chance for health. Not only that, there is no chance for a normal life, because drugs are the worst enemy of our neurons, says Katarzyna Kucewicz. – Therapy helps, for example, to become aware of what is and how the disease is going. In learning how to avoid stress to prevent a relapse. How to deal with stress by solving everyday problems and learning to express emotions (and these are often the main deficits of psychotic people). During therapy, we develop lists of individual warning symptoms, we learn what to do when they come back. how to open up to people, because the patient is often ashamed of what he said in illness, so he isolates himself, breaks off contacts – explains Katarzyna Kucewicz. So seek the help of a psychologist or psychiatrist if you have suspicions that no one shares, not to mention “voices” that only you hear. Perhaps every now and then it is worth asking a friend you’ve trusted, “Listen, do you think I’m paranoid?”