What kind of mental illness is this?

[Lemon Zing]

For a few years in a trot, if I happen to go somewhere with my younger sister, she incessantly believes people are, for example, spying on her (or us), watching her, recording her, laughing, and so on. This happens practically everytime we go out somewhere, regardless of where we end up. She makes up stories about how they know her ex partner, or somebody else who apparently did her wrong somehow. Yet they are strangers.

Like, if we pass a flat with a balcony, she makes out a person drinking laughed at her, and they must know her ex, but this occurs in places we generally never really go to, and with multiple windows.

In the past, I observed her in car parks at supermarkets, filming randoms and noting their car plates. She had her three kids put with carers over the last decade and a bit.

Our mother passed away recently. On the day of the funeral, she got aggressive in a series of texts and wanted to ban me from attending the burial, and the memorial service beforehand. She agreed to meet me at a shop to get a shirt to put in the coffin, went to the parlour, and threw a hissy fit at me because I was disappointed she never remembered to go to the shop first, which was 5 minutes up the road. She agreed we should, as it could close early. She also made out our mum's ghost played with her hair and so on.

I happened to sell a rare game in a shop recently. A horror game, on the PS2. She got the cash. She made out the game was hers. She doesn't even like horror things. I had the game, but replaced it as the manual had slight damage. But it definitely was not her game. Then the shop took the used copy, but not the other one I still had sealed. They just recommended I list it on eBay.

She then mentioned a grant to do with something, which she apparently wants to put towards a civil case regarding her third child who was taken away by social workers in October of last year. However, the money is not for a court case. It is for something else altogether, so that would be like carrying out fraud if she got that money and it was put towards something it is not meant for.

Lately, she has doubled down on this odd behaviour and began lashing out at a person in a bar. This is once again, due to these delusions. She claimed he was looking at her. He then sat down with us for a bit, before mentioning he needed to catch his train.

In the past, she mentioned wanting to buy mobile data and use a VPN without WiFi, as she believes people access the broadband connection to monitor her web activity, steal her identity, or something like that. And I told her hackers would have an exceptionally difficult time pulling that off on an encrypted network.

Today, she said she thinks that a person emailed these law firms pretending to be her, so her case cannot be taken up. Last week, she made out to me somebody outside set a car alarm off on purpose. But that is just dumb.

I needed a hand to sell stuff today, but she is in a funny mood. She did not even want me coming down to install a PS5 game, but my speed is abysmal. So this is just so annoying. And she said she doesn't want to talk to me, and lied about me emailing law firms. Yet I never even did so.

This is nuts. Right?

 

[tree]

Something like this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia

"Paranoia is an instinct or thought process that is believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety, suspicion, or fear, often to the point of delusion and irrationality.[1] Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself (i.e. "Everyone is out to get me"). Paranoia is distinct from phobias, which also involve irrational fear, but usually no blame.

Making false accusations and the general distrust of other people also frequently accompany paranoia.[2] For example, a paranoid person might believe an incident was intentional when most people would view it as an accident or coincidence. Paranoia is a central symptom of psychosis."

 

[chincey_james]

From what little I know, persecutory delusions can be caused by several mental disorders. For better or worse though, not much can be done unless the person seeks out professional help themselves or becomes an imminent danger to those around them.

 

[Lemon Zing]

Yeah. I gathered it was that. But I only know she had a previous diagnosis for FND, which I think causes the nervous system to act up. She started to gradually recover from that, but now she is waiting on a check up in regards to her hormones being out of balance.

Regardless, I know you cannot get her to admit she has a problem. That's linked to the problem as a whole. Someone finds they are offered support, but with their mindset, it is another form of persecution. So it's a non starter.

Well, I am screwed now with money affairs until my other sister can go with me into town tomorrow to sell a few games in CeX.

I don't think I can rely on my younger sister anymore. So I rang up social care direct this week, who are fully aware of my past problems with Autism Initiatives. But I said to just provide male support workers, and although I don't trust them, I am in no position to be picky.

In an ideal world, I would normally boycott support workers. Not many of them have genuine qualifications for ASD or really anything. I was particularly bedeviled by this one guy who sent me abuse in 2008 about a wrestler. But I won't cast that man's nonsense up again, as it's old news now.

The Covid crisis in 2020 certainly didn't help matters. This decade is going to suck, but only if you let it. Although 2020 to now has been rocky, with a lot of heartache and things just not going so well.

 

[Dagan]

Schizophrenia in a general sense covers all kinds of delusions based on paranoia, insecurities, discomforts, etc. It could be in relation to such, maybe..?

[edit] Okay...the FND may well explain it.

 

[tree]

https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/disorders/functional-neurologic-disorder
FND is a neurological disorder.

Paranoia is a description of a behavior which is considered a mental illness.

 

[Lemon Zing]

Well, I don't remember my sister having these type of mental issues prior to 2008. It really all began when her ex and his family got custody of her first kid, and then her second kid. It just snowballed from there.

Then again, I worked a 9 to 5 job serving people at a till and never experienced high anxiety. It was only after I had a panic attack in the autumn of 2009, when my health went downhill. I never felt right after that, developing intense social anxiety despite my otherwise chatty nature. Or I would walk around feeling like my blood pressure was off. But a lot of people online did harass me, my support workers betrayed me, and the occasional person I met up with for real would ridicule me or shun me, or even reveal they had issues themselves. Whatever I did, somebody would just screw me over. Basically, all of that combined caused a recipe for high degree stress. So whatever skills I acquired beforehand, they simply diminished.

Now with my mum being in God's care, I just feel like I need a quiet life in a pleasant area, devoid of troublesome characters. I mean, I couldn't even find voluntary work as a film extra over the last several years, because of people being idiots, my lawyer being useless, and whatnot.

One day, I just said to myself that I am getting old. Being 37 and all. Life really is short. Why dwell on these people? Would they worry about me? Of course, that doesn't really make it any less annoying that people blackballed me to cost me casting opportunities, but I guess you cannot always overcome other people's awkwardness, so what you cannot change, you may just cease to be irritated by.

Looking at old photos of Edinburgh, you wouldn't even recognise most of it now. I know nothing stays the same way forever. But it's like a concrete jungle in 2023.

But I mean, bidding on houses in Edinburgh is a tiresome process. They don't really offer you a ground floor, as this is reserved for wheelchair users. You just have to keep it up, likely for years.

They oversaturate the city with all of these student lets, and so on, when it was probably much easier to rent a flat decades ago.

But who am I kidding? Buying a house would be costly too, so it is just a lot of hassle either way you look at the problem as a whole. Then you have to send them emails, to let them know the password recovery option doesn't send out any reset link. Because I just tried it, and it never reached my spam folder. Then they just do it again. Repeat.

I mean... seriously.

P.S. I miss the spell checker feature that forums used to have. My keyboard really ain't the best.

 

[Rodafina]

 

[Misty Avich]

I had a friend who was a bit like this. She developed a paranoid obsession with her next door neighbours, which all started off with them knocking some tiles off her roof while they were repairing their's, but never held themselves accountable for her tiles. I understand her getting angry about that, but ever since then she's been thinking they're listening through the wall at everything she does and says, and will peer in through her windows and even break into her house.
But from the few things I know about them and have seen, they seem like ordinary people just getting on with their lives. Sure, they're not very friendly but they are not as weird as my friend makes them out to be.
They own their house (I can tell because of the DIY they often do and the extension they built on to their house), and they both work. My friend knows where they work. The man is self-employed and has his own van, and the woman works at a local clothes store.

But whenever my friend sees them she says they're watching her and listening to her, even though to me it's obvious they're not, they're just getting on with their lives. I know what weird, creepy people with no lives are, and they don't appear to be in that category, given they're usually out at work whenever I go to see my friend.
My aunt used to have a next door neighbour who was actually a threat. She didn't work so was home all day, deliberately made a lot of noise, and liked to provoke my aunt and call her names, and was a drug-dealer.

I know some weird neighbours can be more subtle than that and look genuine, but you know when you just know? And I just get that feeling from my friend's neighbours and their lifestyle that they are not a threat. I can tell from my friend's histrionic behaviour that she is just very paranoid about them and constantly thinks their world revolves around her when it doesn't.

I must admit, I do get paranoid when I'm out in public, thinking people are judging at me, laughing at me, whispering about me, focusing on me, etc, but that's more down to social anxiety from bad experiences I've had with strangers in public in the past, not to mention people on autism sites telling me that NTs can know you just by your body language and even if you think you look normal some tiny little hint in your body language will still give you away and make everyone stare and laugh at you. I try to tell myself that is a little extreme and far-fetched but the way they worded it was so convincing, as if to say "that's the answer, they're all laughing at you and staring at you, because you're an Aspie so inevitably your body language screams that you're weird and they will stare no matter what." Which isn't really the most tactful or helpful thing to tell a person who suffers with social anxiety.

 

[MildredHubble]

As others have said, this could be due to several mental health issues. I have bipolar disorder, and before I was diagnosed and given meds, I could also develop some funny ideas about other people and their behaviour. Though I don't think they were quite as severe as the ones your sister experiences. My experiences tended to be episodic though. In other words they would come and go as my mood changed.

The last time this happened to me was over a decade ago, when my mother was causing problems for me. I started to get paranoid that she was sending people to watch our house. Though I suppose since she used to regularly claim she would do this to people, and also claim she indeed had done this, the paranoia wasn't entirely unjustified.

It does sound like your sister could do with some help if these paranoid feelings are having such an impact on her (and others) lives. Has she spoken to anyone or had any assessments?

 

[Lemon Zing]

Well, I know my sis has problems. But I have enough of my own. The way she behaved back on the 27th of September with the hostile text messages was just so out of line.

It seems the hospital are blaming the hospice for my mother's death. I know her situation wasn't great. She had that aortic swelling, kidney issues and COPD. But she responded well to the treatment she was registered for. Then all it took was her visiting that hospice, where they pulled out her lines. She went there for respite, and she liked it because of the location being at the sea. Granton, in Edinburgh.

What gets me is how they could do that without being sued. It just does not add up. But I reckon I'll never get the answers I seek. Only they know what really happened.

It still doesn't explain how paramedics said this nurse overdosed her at home. She was already visited by a different nurse that day to receive pain relief, which was in early September while she lay on the sofa. Then to have to be by her side on the ward, rendered powerless to prevent her death.

You see, they stopped her dialysis. With her being unresponsive, she couldn't receive it anyway. But when they mentioned this red form behind my back to my sister, I mean, Jesus. Nobody even consented to this.

One theory I have is that my mum knew she was dying, and perhaps quietly agreed to ending the dialysis. I call it a "theory" because it's a wild guess.

Maybe, just maybe, this was the case. I mean, she came home of her own accord and seemed to be quiet all of the time and staring. But it's all just strange how she never said anything.

You would think a hospice carer could not just remove her lines. But she needed vascular surgery, according to letters my sister found in the house. She wouldn't have been able to be operated on with how her health was. So maybe they advised her to go.

Anyway, I don't want to chase my tail over the situation. If a solicitor is interested in assisting us with a court case, then okay. But otherwise, I just have to move on with my life. No lawsuit would ever bring back my mother either. And I would imagine the NHS would try to lie through their teeth.

 

[Lemon Zing]

She hasn't spoken to anybody. No.

 

[Aspychata]

It's sad how your mother left. I send my condolences. Something similar happened to my girlfriend's father, and she feels he was killed in a similar way. She decided It's too hard to press charges against whoever.

I definitely have had my share of horrible neighbors and it's been predominantly younger people, so it's very disappointing. However, l just keep moving forward. Does your sister hear voices? Anyways, this is a lot you are going thru. Maybe discussing this is helping you understand you may need boundaries with your sister.

 

[MildredHubble]

She hasn't spoken to anybody. No.

Going through a lot of difficult times and bereavement can certainly cause some mental health issues too unfortunately. Sometimes I think this can manifest in some paranoia as sort of survival strategy, though not a healthy one.

There can be lots and lots of things that can cause paranoid ideas. I think the best thing would be to talk to someone in mental health services, though if she's not well, she might be reluctant to do this to say the least.

It's certainly a difficult situation and I wish I could think of something else to suggest. It's good though that you are aware of the situation and are monitoring it.

If things are getting seriously out of hand and you are worried about her safety, you can call mental health services and they can step in. Though this can be a difficult thing to do, in some circumstances it may be the best thing to do.

 

[lovely_darlingprettybaby]

For a few years in a trot, if I happen to go somewhere with my younger sister, she incessantly believes people are, for example, spying on her (or us), watching her, recording her, laughing, and so on. This happens practically everytime we go out somewhere, regardless of where we end up. She makes up stories about how they know her ex partner, or somebody else who apparently did her wrong somehow. Yet they are strangers.

Like, if we pass a flat with a balcony, she makes out a person drinking laughed at her, and they must know her ex, but this occurs in places we generally never really go to, and with multiple windows.

In the past, I observed her in car parks at supermarkets, filming randoms and noting their car plates. She had her three kids put with carers over the last decade and a bit.

Our mother passed away recently. On the day of the funeral, she got aggressive in a series of texts and wanted to ban me from attending the burial, and the memorial service beforehand. She agreed to meet me at a shop to get a shirt to put in the coffin, went to the parlour, and threw a hissy fit at me because I was disappointed she never remembered to go to the shop first, which was 5 minutes up the road. She agreed we should, as it could close early. She also made out our mum's ghost played with her hair and so on.

I happened to sell a rare game in a shop recently. A horror game, on the PS2. She got the cash. She made out the game was hers. She doesn't even like horror things. I had the game, but replaced it as the manual had slight damage. But it definitely was not her game. Then the shop took the used copy, but not the other one I still had sealed. They just recommended I list it on eBay.

She then mentioned a grant to do with something, which she apparently wants to put towards a civil case regarding her third child who was taken away by social workers in October of last year. However, the money is not for a court case. It is for something else altogether, so that would be like carrying out fraud if she got that money and it was put towards something it is not meant for.

Lately, she has doubled down on this odd behaviour and began lashing out at a person in a bar. This is once again, due to these delusions. She claimed he was looking at her. He then sat down with us for a bit, before mentioning he needed to catch his train.

In the past, she mentioned wanting to buy mobile data and use a VPN without WiFi, as she believes people access the broadband connection to monitor her web activity, steal her identity, or something like that. And I told her hackers would have an exceptionally difficult time pulling that off on an encrypted network.

Today, she said she thinks that a person emailed these law firms pretending to be her, so her case cannot be taken up. Last week, she made out to me somebody outside set a car alarm off on purpose. But that is just dumb.

I needed a hand to sell stuff today, but she is in a funny mood. She did not even want me coming down to install a PS5 game, but my speed is abysmal. So this is just so annoying. And she said she doesn't want to talk to me, and lied about me emailing law firms. Yet I never even did so.

This is nuts. Right?

I am no doctor but that sounds like schizophrenia to me.
She sounds like she needs help.
Hope you or someone in your family is able to support her in getting the help she needs.

 

[Lemon Zing]

I'll be keeping my distance from her for the time being.