The key defining feature of paranoia is not so much the existence of suspicions, but the absence of any objective or tangible grounds to justify them.

If you have a grievance that you’re having trouble articulating, it might have crossed your mind that it’s all in your head, and that you should put up with the thing you feel compelled to complain about, and even that you might be paranoid. You might even have had this word used to explain your dissatisfaction with your situation. You would not be the first sane person to have experienced this.

One possible reason you have these doubts about your perception: It feels as if someone has it in for you. You see it through subtle symptoms, but not directly. The only rational explanation is that someone who you thought was on your side is responsible. That thought seems outrageous, so you aren't sure whether to believe your observations. In the absence of palatable and logical explanations, you wonder if you’re paranoid.

The key defining feature of paranoia is not so much the existence of suspicions, but the absence of any objective or tangible grounds to justify them. If you think the world is out to get you, but your reasons for thinking it do not make sense at any level, you could be paranoid. Conversely, it follows that if you have evidence of grounds for suspicion, or at least a hypothesis that makes sense, you are not paranoid.

You might wonder if you’re paranoid when you discover your work is under unprecedented scrutiny, where the objective of the scrutiny appears to be to highlight errors. You may believe any error found will serve as a basis for disciplinary action. It is not unusual for employees to find themselves in this sort of situation, and it probably wouldn’t lead to thoughts of paranoia if the you knew your preceding performance warranted such monitoring. The thought of paranoia creeps in where there is no rational justification for it. Even so, if the monitoring is actually happening, the absence of reasonable grounds for it doesn’t justify writing yourself off as paranoid.

You might only have sketchy details of the situation and be unsure of many aspects; you might not know who to trust. Even with this low level of information you may find yourself, for example, fastidiously avoiding using your employer’s telecoms & network to discuss or research this topic. Far from being the product of paranoid delusions, this is a rational and logical reaction to the situation in which you find yourself. You are not being ‘paranoid’, but ‘vigilant’.

Vigilance is not a mental health matter, but the medical term ‘hypervigilance’ is listed alongside insomnia, difficulty concentrating, general irritability, and an extreme startle response, under the general term ‘hyperarousal’, which is among the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. A fundamental factor in a diagnosis of PTSD is a traumatic stressor - an external event to which a patient is exposed, which is outside the normal range of human experiences.

This is not to say that if you’re not paranoid, you must have PTSD - I really hope you have neither! The point is that if you are being vigilant about your personal security to an extent that you have never been, and it’s in response to a tangible threat and/or logical hypothesis, you’re not acting insanely, but very astutely. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

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snowleopard said:

Of course civilised people try to get along with co-workers on a human level; of course a job which involves caring, creativity, or anything else which is bound up with your own personality or values means that your emotions will be engaged. In the past, I've found it really hard to 'disengage' from feelings of hurt and injustice caused by management bullying in a company to which I've been committed for over a decade, but I became much more confident in handling the fallout from my recently-submitted grievance when my partner reminded me - 'It's only capitalism: they have bought your time, not your soul! ' The allegation that you're 'paranoid' for suspecting motives goes hand in hand with another undermining tactic: that of suggesting the bully's behaviour towards you 'isn't personal', and therefore your reaction to it is invalid and itself 'unprofessional'. Regarding the manager who is bullying me, I have recently found it can be a useful and confidence-building exercise to allow the bully (i.e. the person who really IS paranoid about the supposed 'threat' you pose to their authority) to unmask themselves. Making a conscious effort to keep everything ultra-professional has thrown his own behaviour and VERY 'personal' antipathy against me into sharp contrast with my own. To give a few recent e.g's........ 1. The 'Columbo' approach has proved one good trick...... I was recently one of only 3 people interviewed for a senior managerial role. The other internal candidate got the job and so has gone from being a colleague of equal status to being my line manager. He's taken the first opportunity to demote me to one of the department's most junior roles. Like the detective, I have innocently and humbly asked for it to be explained to me how my company could possibly have seen fit to shortlist and interview me for such an exalted promotion, if my true status and level is actually so lowly. 2. Bullies like to get your emotions involved to put you on the 'back foot' and render you incapable of coherent argument........ I have made it a policy to compile a dossier of cold, hard facts and written evidence only, and have consciously refrained from using all emotive language in my dealings with this man, instead using only the language of business and the law. The bully's anger at apparently not being able to rattle you makes him careless. In a recent meeting in which my moderately stated concern was that ensuring I have no opportunity to use my (demonstrable and provable) specialist skills does not provide 'best value' for the department. His response - out of the blue - was to blurt out, 'This is not a punishment'. I waited about 20 minutes before remarking on his 'interesting and surprising' use of that phrase... 3. Not friends, not even colleagues, but WITNESSES......... My bully used my giving of a supervised opportunity to a junior though competent member of staff I had trained (in order to develop them and consolidate their training) as a criticism against me and took away the opportunity from my young colleague. After my demotion, the staff member's new team leader (a very close friend of mine) was unequivocally told that she could, 'use X in any way you see fit,' and was promptly allowed to reinstate him on the very same project on which I had placed him! An innocently-worded e-mail sent to me, expressing surprise at how our identical actions were handled so very differently enables my friend and colleague to provide what is in effect a witness-statement to my bullying without having to put her own position in jeopardy. All of these are minor victories, and - like Avram Chaim's - my grievance may still be thrown out or ignored by a management and an HR department desperate to cover up the fact they keep hiring bullies to senior positions, but at least I feel that I have wrestled back a modicum of control by making the bully reveal his lack of it.........

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February 22, 2010
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Avram Chaim said:

I took advice from a mentor who suggested collecting support from colleagues who had worked with me and knew the quality of my work. I had no difficulty in doing this. I found many who realised what was happening and emailed their support for me. They included my previous line manager, colleagues in my own grade and others for whom I had been the line manager. When my grievance was heard, the "deciding officer" ignored them all and simply supported the bully whom he and the third person in the line management chain had appointed to the post. Many months later an "independent" appeal panel did the same.

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October 25, 2008
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battlingon said:

At a low point during my ongoing grievance, I sent an internal email which contained some choice language about an individual who worked for one of our contractors. This ended up on the desk of a strategic manager. I was called to his office and asked to explain the situation. I didn't ask the obvious question... this being "how did this come to your attention?". The message was sent to a colleague I trust and copied to my line manager, who I also trusted at the time. My line manager and I had a meeting after this and I expressed some concerns about potential monitoring of my activities. He agreed that this was possible and we discussed a potential response to all this. He offered a shoulder to lean on and we shared and expressed a mutual mistrust of 'the powers that be'. I worked myself up into a bit of a lather and at a later meeting with the Strategic Manager, asked whether my email account was being monitored and whether my phone was being tapped. He thought these queries were "bizarre" and I reckon he was probably right. Paranoia had been allowed to take hold - but this only happened because I trusted the 2 people who'd seen the email. Later, I found out that it was my line manager who'd taken the 'offending' email to the Strategic Manager and then, to my face, pretended to be supporting me.

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June 01, 2008
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anne_m123 said:

	Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you
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April 21, 2008
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anne_m123 said:

I did feel really vulnerable and "hypervigilant" but that word was never part of my vocabulary. I felt I had to double chec everything I did and was sure I was being watched. One day a colleague entered the area I was working in, she was a wormate i was very fond of , and informed me she had been asked to check something (wether a medicine cabinet was locked or not) She told me that the manager had sent her to check on everybodys. I believed her (at the time) but it un nerved me because I NEVER left them un,locked althought the majority of my colleagues did. I now wonder what other covert supervision was being done .

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April 19, 2008
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