How can I tell anxious paranoia from real paranoia?

Okay, so last week I had this strange thing happen to me. I was driving home in the evening when all of a sudden I got this scary feeling that I was being followed. I took a different route back and when I got home, I bolted all the doors and hid in my room away from the windows, terrified someone was going to break in. I managed to sleep it off and I felt better the following morning, but that scared the heck out of me.

My therapist said this was just anxiety, but I'm not sure given the nature of it.

I don’t have an answer for you. I can’t tell when I’m having anxiety for a reason and when it’s just wildly out of control for no reason. I’m sorry that you went through that, it sounds like it was really scary.

It sounds like paranoia to me.

I think all paranoia is "real paranoia," yet this is just my own opinion.

Google paranoia and check the definition. See if it fits in with your experience.


WC

I looked into the same thing myself a month or so ago when I was feeling paranoid but it wasn’t interfering with my functioning. Dr google said that since it WASN’T interfering with functioning it was just intense anxiety. One article suggested that someone with anxiety might worry about being in a car accident but someone with paranoia might worry that someone would intentionally cause and accident.

That being said, where is the line? I started out by worrying about being pulled over, which then morphed into worrying about the police pulling me over and then falsely claiming I was high or drunk and arresting me. Did I go from anxiety to paranoia? I’m still not sure. All I know is an increase and eventual change in my AP completely eliminated the police paranoia, along with the food poisoning thoughts and the general sense of unease that someone was going to hurt me.

If it’s nit bothering you anymore then I think it may have been intense anxiety. But if it continues to happen it could be paranoia.

I’m sorry if this wasn’t much help :-/

My pdoc once explained to me:

If it's personalized, as in someone is targeting you, it's paranoia.

Yet,


WC

It sounded scary and I’m sorry you went through that

My counselor says it's paranoia if it's not likely happening/going to happen and not based on previous events, and anxiety/fear if something similar has happened to you or is widely happening to other people. The example we talked about was being abused by someone. I was afraid it was going to happen again, and that was anxiety, not paranoia. Paranoia, however, was believing doctors were intentionally injecting me with deadly bacteria every time I got my blood drawn.

Sometimes the line is hard to define. People get followed, but I don't think it's very common especially with malicious intent of breaking into your house to harm you. Have you ever had something like that happen to you, or have you heard about it happening to someone else close to you or maybe it was in the local news recently? If that's affirmative, I'd say it was definitely more of an anxiety thing. Otherwise or without any other reason to believe such a thing was happening I'd say it's more accurate to call it paranoia.

Nothing to my knowledge has ever happened to me that would make me think that way, though I'm still hesitant to call it paranoia given that I was stable when it happened.

Motor oil is motor oil.
The strategy is to keep subdividing. In every aspect.
Machiavelli at work...... they have conquered.

I wish I had an answer for you, but I often experience the same feeling and question.

Regardless of what it was, frankly, I'm glad you followed your instinct - especially because your feeling of being followed was not accompanied by any other symptoms at the time.