Episode 39: The "Reality Testing" Technique for Social Anxiety and Paranoia

In this episode,

Lizzie explains the social anxiety to paranoia continuum and how you can cope with both by testing reality and recognizing your insecurities.

Listen now

Listen on Spotify

Post-pod questions to consider

What are some negative thoughts you have that you could practice reality testing on? Is your negative view of yourself or insecurity real? Do other people share this reality with you or could you reframe more truthfully and be a little nicer to yourself?

Episode Transcript

Hey, you're listening to The Midnight Philosopher with Lizzie. Thanks for tuning in. 

Today, I'm going to talk about social anxiety and paranoia and friendships and relationships. Social anxiety is the feeling that others are judging you, the feeling that nothing you do is right and that others think you are not intelligent, or that others think you smell bad or are judging you in some harsh or severe way. 

Paranoia is a bit of a step further, and it's the feeling that people are out to get you. It's a deep-seated mistrust that can be linked to several diagnoses, including schizophrenia and PTSD. However, paranoia is a spectrum, and people can often feel paranoid without having a clinical diagnosis. 

At its core, paranoia is the brain's attempt to keep people safe. But people who are experiencing paranoia might end up pushing all their friends and other people away, similar to social anxiety. People who are experiencing social anxiety might isolate or not go to that party, for example, because they are afraid of being judged. 

Social anxiety and paranoia are on a similar spectrum. Social anxiety is the fear that people are judging you, whereas paranoia is the fear that people are out to get you, but they have a similar flavor. And unfortunately, I experience both. 

I've struggled a lot with paranoia and social anxiety in relationships and friendships. I started a job as a daycare teacher in September and have been working there for the past six months, but recently I've started to feel a lot of social anxiety about my coworkers. I worry that they're judging me and about how inept I am at the job, but then it goes into a bit of paranoia and I think they all dislike me. And this social anxiety and paranoia is directly linked to my own insecurities. I feel like I'm not as good at this job as I'd like to be, and I worry that my coworkers don't like me. 

These negative thoughts about myself, I'm projecting onto other people and I'm thinking other people are having those negative thoughts about me when in reality, those thoughts are my thoughts. I tried to check the facts the other day. I said to my co-teacher that if I ever did something that upset her, she could tell me. She asked me why I was even saying that and that I've done nothing wrong. But of course, she would tell me, and that was reassuring to me. It took me to acknowledge what she said and to trust it, and that was really helpful. 

Another time I've been paranoid and experiencing social anxiety was most relationships in improv. My friendships in improv are fairly newer in my eyes because none of them have lasted more than four years because I started improv four years ago, and many of them are a lot newer than that. With my other friendships outside of improv, they stood the test of time. But these newer friendships have left me a bit worried. I'm a little bit socially anxious that my friends are judging me for either being bad at improv or not being a good enough person. And I'm slightly paranoid because I'm worried how real my friendships with these friends are. 

There's the saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but for me, absence makes me grow more paranoid. If I don't see people for a while, instead of assuming they're busy or have other things going on in their lives, I kind of start to assume they hate me. 
And what's worse when I assume people hate me, I start to act like they hate me. I become more withdrawn. I stop smiling when I say hello. I look at my phone in a crowded room instead of making conversation with people. 

And by me acting like people hate me, people often feel confused and don't approach me. I'm usually a warm and friendly person, so they probably think I don't like them when I act like that. And then it's a feedback cycle. Assuming that people don't like me, makes me act like they don't like me, which in turn probably helps reinforce the fact that maybe they don't feel that fond of me. But I really need to assume the best intent in people and assume that people can't hang out because they're busy, because assuming that they're busy will ultimately lead me to treating them with kindness, which in turn will lead them to treating me with kindness, too. 

A third time that I've been a bit socially anxious, which turned into severe paranoia and relationships is when I had a psychotic episode in college. It started off with me just being anxious about friendships and feeling rejected and feeling like I didn't fit in. However, my social anxiety started to spiral, and it started to become very extreme where I started to worry that my friends and neighbors were filming me and staging things to be part of a reality TV show. I thought that they were all watching the show later and laughing at how stupid I was, and I felt humiliated and alone. 

I needed psychiatric medication and a hospitalization to realize that my paranoia was in fact in my head. My friends were definitely not filming me. They were my friends, and they were in college themselves and probably didn't even have time to film me. And so it started with social anxiety of feeling rejected, of feeling out of place, and that was the trigger that started my psychotic episode and my extreme paranoia. 

So to be honest, paranoia and social anxiety is often rooted in people's insecurities. And while I gave examples of social anxiety and paranoia, a lot of these things I talked about can be applied to any anxiety or worry of any interpersonal kind. So what can you do if you're feeling socially anxious or paranoid? 

In this case, sometimes you can do something called reality testing. In reality testing, you check the facts of a given situation and you see if they fit your thoughts in your head. You gather data just like a scientist, and you might, and you test these things out for more about reality testing, check out Episode 16, Telling your Preferred Story. 

But the fact for reality testing is, to give some examples would be, would my improv friends really reach out to me or hang out with me if they didn't like me? Probably not. People don't generally hang out with people they don't like. And would my coworkers make jokes with me if they didn't like me? No, probably not. They would probably feel disgusted and try to avoid me. 

And when my friends in college, for example, would they even had access to the kind of cameras I thought they had? Probably not. 
The kind of cameras I thought they had were high-tech film cameras. And first of all, those are wildly expensive. And second of all, where would they have even gotten them? And third of all, where would they have stored them? Because we had very small dorm rooms. And fourth of all, they were also studying at college at the same time. And when would they have had the time to follow me around? 

So reality testing is really gathering those thoughts and the data to disprove your own thoughts. And it's kind of scary because it brings up the question, what is reality? And you might have heard the saying that reality is just perspective, but there's definitely some perspectives that are rooted more in a communal truth than others. And there are some perspectives that are more singularly rooted in false pretense because reality is what you think it is...  sometimes. So when I was really paranoid, that was my reality. I truly, truly believed I was being filmed. And of course, that wasn't a commonly accepted reality, but it was my reality at the time. 

So it's really important to remember that reality can be a hard thing to describe and understand, and that it does always change and morph depending on your perspective and your thoughts about it. And I would say sometimes you just have to think about what your perspective is. I'm really grateful that my paranoia in some ways has helped me really examine what I believe and what my perspectives on things are. 

For example, if you're in a room and someone drops a pencil, it depends where in the room you are and how you perceive that pencil dropping. For example, if you're right next to the person dropping the pencil, you're going to have a different perspective or a different reality on the situation and issue than if you're in the corner of the room or if you're turned around and don't see the pencil at all. 

And so these kinds of thoughts about reality really got me thinking about what I truly value and how I can shape my perspective in a way to be most thoughtful and the most kind that I can be. Because kindness is really important to me, and my insecurities do have a big hold on me, but it's how I balance those out that's what's important. 

Well, in this episode tonight, I talked about paranoia. I talked about how it times it may show up and how it could present in different situations. I talked about how it's your own insecurities that you often project onto others, and I also talked about how social anxiety and paranoia are sort of on a continuum where social anxiety is kind of on the "you think people are judging you" end, and then it kind of can spiral into paranoia where you think people are out to get you. I talked about how reality testing is very important for both social anxiety and paranoia. And I talked a little bit about what reality even is, which is perspective and nuanced perspective and community perspective combined. 

Well, thanks so much for listening tonight. I'm gonna go reality test my friendships now. Have a good night.