Entry 0042

I have a bad cold today and am taking various cold medicines, so my brain is addled. I may not be explaining this well. In fact I'm not sure if I'm even explaining anything substantial here at all. But please bear with me, nonetheless.

20+ years of a paranoid mindset and I think I now understand why my paranoia aligns with reality sometimes, while other times (maybe most of the time?) it doesn't. I have a tendency to think something supernatural happened when it turns out to be true and I can't explain how I knew it. "You're not paranoid; it's true" and "it's not true; you're paranoid" do not help me discern reality, because there is nothing that anchors them to the truth in a way that I can't question.

It seems that being more attuned to certain things, paying more attention to certain things, is an advantage when those signals are actually emitted, and a disadvantage when they're not. When you're ruminating and obsessed with something, and it's at the forefront of your mind, you're more likely to see it where it isn't. You're also likely to spot the pattern more quickly when it's actually there. The thing with paranoia as part of a mental illness or trauma, I think, is that it can't be efficiently modulated or tempered. Subconsciously mistrusting and interpreting everything in terms of my fears is going to catch the true positives along with the false positives.

I've seen a similar explanation for so-called "depressive realism".

Post-script: I have this vague sense that I'm spewing nonsense here. I'm not thinking clearly at the moment.