Paranoia, Shame and Judgment Sensitivity
My wife has recently been really paranoid that the local moms don’t like her. She thinks that since they will sometimes not let their children come over to our house and play with my son that it means that they don’t trust her. OK, to be totally frank, my wife has been investigated by CPS twice. Once because of a DUI and once because she was over-medicated and went over to a judgmental woman’s house to pick up our children. The woman thought my wife was acting weird and reported her to CPS.
I think that many BP’s get paranoid about their self-image with other people. The combo of fear of judgment – which they perceive as judgment of their emotions and therefore judgment of their SELF mixes with the shame they feel about their self. Am I off-base here?
My wife has told me she has felt shameful about “the way she is” for years. Does that lead to personalization and thus to paranoia?
What do you think?
One Comment
iwanttoheal
Hello, this may be a really late reply. If it is I hope you still read it. I am a person who has been suffering from toxic shame all my life. As for paranoid thinking whether people do not like me or not, I believe my paranoia level is the worst. Not sometimes, but all the time, whenever someone talks to me in a strong tone OR do not smile at me for some reason, I immediately get into this paranoid thinking mode, thinking that person does not like me some how. Some how, my looks, my personality, what I did in my past, how I am unemployed now and because all of these, that person thinks i am a pathetic loser. But those people Do not know me at ALL!
Yes, to answer your question, shame causes extreme paranoia.