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Key points
- While paranoia does not often fit the stereotype of a tin-foil hat, fear of the government is common.
- Paranoia requires a sense of threat from the entity making powerful groups like the government likely fears.
- Psychotherapies including cognitive behavioral and compassion focused can help with paranoia.
I felt anxious, as most people do when they receive mail marked IRS. It was a simple, routine letter. Yet, my heart sped up and my mind filled with thoughts I could identify as irrational. I felt near tears. But I didn't spiral. I didn't act as my more than two-decade-old medical records from my first encounter with the mental health system commenting on my fear of a "government plot against her" might have suggested. I recognized the pattern, utilized my strategies for reality-checking, and made a plan. I practice the same skills I teach my clients as a therapist, and I am grateful for those.
Mental Illness and Fear of the Government
There is a nasty stereotype of serious mental illness that involves a person wearing a tin-foiled hat and rambling on about the government. TV shows and movies have poked fun at it creating a caricature of the experience. But is there any truth to it at all?
Paranoia is a common experience among some individuals living with mental health conditions such as schizophrenia. But it's not the sort of cutesy out-of-touch encounter that the media may lead one to view it as. It can be terrifying.
Why the Government?
While paranoia shapeshifts into all kinds of arenas causing individuals to fear their friends, their family, their workplace, and more, large-scale paranoia often does involve some fear of the government. Here's why.
Paranoia necessitates that a person believe that the entity of threat is a greater force than they are. Dr. Daniel Freeman, a psychologist and leading researcher on paranoia, has hypothesized that the phenomenon flourishes on low self-worth, poor self-efficacy, and a sense of powerlessness (2023). Few individuals feel more powerful than the government.
In addition, within cognitive behavioral therapy, a division has been drawn between "bad me" and "poor me" persecutory thinking. While "poor me" paranoia links to beliefs that one is being unjustly oppressed, usually by an individual group or smaller individual, "bad me" paranoia more closely relates to low self-esteem and a belief of deserving the perceived abuse. In "bad me" paranoia, rather than viewing a small group or individual as the tyrant, the fear is much more generalized, encompassing large and powerful groups such as the government. In its most severe manifestation, this can also include a sense of judgment from celestial forces like a belief that God 'hates' them (Melo and Bentall, 2013).
What's the Difference Between Mental Illness and a Conspiracy Theory?
It may also be asked where the line is drawn between paranoia that is rooted in mental illness and garden variety conspiracy theory. There are a few important distinctions. Most of these come from function and community.
While conspiracy theories are often shared, individuals with such beliefs may enjoy collaborating with fellow conspiracy theorists and feel a sense of community. Paranoia in mental illness is more often unshared and serves a function of isolation. Those around the person may withdraw or be skeptical when their loved one discusses their ideas. The person usually becomes more alone, and their functioning at work and in other environments is likely to suffer.
In schizophrenia, the alterations also reach deeper than thoughts into the brain. An fMRI study of 165 individuals with mental health conditions who had experienced paranoia found that even when the brain was at rest there appeared to be hyper-connectivity between neural regions associated with a threat response including a powerful functional connection between the hippocampus and the amygdala (Walther and colleagues, 2022).
In a sense, this study made visible through brain imaging the sense of danger many with mental illness and paranoia report.
Seeking Help
When fear of the government reaches a point of affecting your daily life, you are not alone and help is available. Cognitive behavioral therapy can help you to build strategies to reality check and investigate your thinking. In addition, compassion-focused therapy offers an approach to help you gain a greater sense of being safe, something paranoia can rob you of.
When paranoia is part of a mental health condition like psychosis or depression, psychiatric interventions may also help. There is hope.
References
Freeman, D., & Loe, B. S. (2023). Explaining paranoia: cognitive and social processes in the occurrence of extreme mistrust. BMJ Ment Health, 26(1).
Melo, S. S., & Bentall, R. P. (2013). ‘Poor me’versus ‘Bad me’paranoia: The association between self‐beliefs and the instability of persecutory ideation. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 86(2), 146-163.
Walther, S., Lefebvre, S., Conring, F., Gangl, N., Nadesalingam, N., Alexaki, D.. & Stegmayer, K. (2022). Limbic links to paranoia: increased resting-state functional connectivity between amygdala, hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex in schizophrenia patients with paranoia. European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience, 272(6), 1021-1032.
