Paranoia is one of the concepts associated with mental disorders that have to do with delusions, that is, crazy ideas in which one believes with an intensity that goes beyond what is reasonable.

Due to its striking and enigmatic nature, paranoia, as a phenomenon, has aroused the interest of many people who have come to use the term as another component of their vocabulary, applicable to everyday situations lived with friends, family and acquaintances. However, it should 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.

What is paranoia?

Paranoia is a style of thinking associated with mental disorders that is characterized by self-referential delusions . This means that the person who expresses paranoid behaviour has a tendency to believe that everything that happens and that he is aware of is due to the same fact, a truth that normally tries to be hidden by mysterious entities (supernatural or not) but that one is capable of seeing for oneself.

For example, the belief that someone is inserting encrypted messages into television commercials to brainwash us is a delusion very much like this kind of state of mind.Other examples: there is someone listening to us through the plugs, a pigeon with a microphone hidden between the feathers, etc.

The delusions of persecution are typical of paranoia , since, by recognizing all sorts of signs in the details of what surrounds us, one comes to the conclusion that there is someone very interested in following our steps in a discreet way, camouflaging their trail very well.

It should be noted that although the use of the term “paranoia” is relatively loose and refers to a type of thinking 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.

How this delusional thinking works

The basic characteristics of paranoia are as follows.

1. Hostility, defensiveness, and persecution mania

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

2. Adoption of protective routines

Although it does not occur in all cases of paranoia, it is very frequent that the person adopts certain characteristic habits and routines whose purpose is only the defence of external threats . For example, wrapping the head with aluminium foil is a popular option 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 former is based on a clear cognitive rigidity, or inability to self-correct .

When predictions based on delusions are not fulfilled, another explanation is simply sought, whose only requirement has to be that it does not go against the main idea that structures paranoia.

That means that, as long as this criterion is met, new explanations can be as convoluted and unreasonable as 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. In fact, as a symptom paranoia can be due to different types of mental disturbance or to purely neurological problems. There are different theories that try to account for why this pattern of thinking appears.

1. Appearance by learning and contingencies

Environmental and social influences 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 types of evidence to the contrary and that, on the other hand, are based on an entity (physical or organizational), that has its own political and economic interests, as well as the power to manipulate at its will what happens on the planet.

Thus, indoctrination and integration in some social circles can, by itself, cause people to become accustomed to thinking through paranoia or something very close to it.

2. For clinical disorder and complications

Normally, our ability to think and create abstract concepts is conceived as a skill 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 is.

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

Moreover, this reorganization of information is carried out both in the more concrete aspects of perception and with the more abstract concepts, the ideas through which we interpret reality by means of what are known as cognitive schemes. For example, it is very easy, and even automatic, to detect patterns of musicality in certain sounds, or to 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 ideas and underlying perceptions that vertebrates all the others becomes somewhat pathological, a sign that we impose a very forced story 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 to be resolved.

Thus, certain mental disorders can alter the functioning of the cognitive processes that already exist in every human being can be “overdone”, although it is not known how this happens.

3. For brain failure

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