How to Treat a Person With Paranoid Personality Disorder

Living with a person with paranoid personality disorder can be quite difficult and even exhausting, especially all, when there is not enough information about this condition and good guidance to be able to do it. Why is it so difficult to deal with a person with paranoid personality disorder? This is because people with this disease have a lot of distrust towards others, regardless of the type of relationship you have with them. They are people who are always alert and suspicious of absolutely everything, even if what they suspect is something irrational, so to be able to live with them and even help them, it is necessary to know in greater depth about this disorder. That is why in this Psychology-Online article, we are going to provide you with more information to finally offer you a series of useful tips that can help you to know how to treat a person with paranoid personality disorder.

Index

1. What is Paranoid Personality Disorder?
2. Paranoid personality characteristics
3. Treatment of paranoid personality disorder
4. How to Treat a Person With Paranoid Personality Disorder - 6 Tips

Paranoid Personality Disorder It is an alteration of the personality in which the individual who suffers it has a pattern of suspicion and mistrust of others, no matter how close your relationship is to the other.

The symptoms of this type of disorder are usually identified during adulthood, however, in some individuals they can be identified earlier. The constant distrust they have towards others and the frequent worrying that they may be hurt and that they may be deceived and / or betrayed by the other, causes these people to remain in a state of alert all the time and with a high degree of anxiety.

It is for all these reasons that over time they become people who can be considered cold and who flee from contact with others, they also prefer to attack first than to be attacked. They live frustrated and tend to have a very bad character, so they generally do not treat the people around them well.

People with this disorder have a number of characteristics in common, so if what we intend is to help or know how to treat a person with paranoid personality disorder, it is necessary to be informed. Some main features of this type of condition are the following:

• Belief that everything others do will be done against them.
• Unable to fully trust someone, so they constantly doubt the loyalty of close people.
• They are usually quite spiteful.
• They tend to be on alert all the time, so they are rarely relaxed.
• At times, they are usually quite aggressive.
• If they have a partner, they suspect that he betrays them without having a real justification.
• They are easily offended and attacked.
• They tend to have a bad temper.
• They behave in a distant and cold way with others.

Before mentioning what treatment is applied to people with this type of disorder, it is It is important to mention that it is very difficult for a person with this condition to want to consult or ask for help. But why is it so difficult for them to ask for help? Quite simply, because of his own paranoia, it is almost impossible for him to even trust the medical staff. Next, we are going to briefly mention what the treatment for this type of disorder consists of.

Psychotherapy

The goal of psychotherapy is to eliminate as far as possible the symptoms associated with paranoid personality disorder. To do this, the patient must be extremely involved and determined to improve because otherwise the intervention would be doomed.

Some of the techniques that are normally used in psychotherapy are, for example, the cognitive restructuring, with which his negative and inappropriate thoughts are modified and that lead him to maintain certain behaviors such as avoidance, aggression, etc., and are replaced by more objective and more assertive.

The person is also trained in social skills with the purpose of improving the relationship with others, as well as improving the perception it has towards people. On the other hand, you are also taught to perform relaxation exercises that you have to carry out constantly in your daily life so that you get used to being less tense and stop being in a state of alert all the time. It is worth mentioning that depending on the individual situation, some people also require pharmacological treatment.

As we have already mentioned previously and, above all, if we live with a paranoid person right now, we are very clear that it is very difficult to deal with, it may even be that at some point, you may be feeling worse than the person who suffers from this disorder. However, in case we have to deal with her constantly because she is an important person to us or with whom we are forced to deal with a long time, there are a series of recommendations that we can follow to help ourselves and also try to help her in the possible. Some of these recommendations that will help us to know how to treat and live with a person with paranoid personality disorder, are the following:

1. Encourage that person to attend a professional, either with a doctor, psychologist and / or psychiatrist. It is recommended that you do not tell him directly and that you go little by little testing the waters, first, to realize how aware he is that You need help, then how willing you are to do something to be better, also pay attention to what type of professional you have less distrust etc. Take into account that, on many occasions, you may be complaining of some other discomfort that is an indirect consequence of the disorder and that this is what can motivate you to seek help and not precisely because you detect that you have this type of condition, so this you can to take advantage of.
2. Remember that this person has a disease. On many occasions, we enter the same game and react to the provocations that the other may be doing us person, however, it is important to remember at all times that this person is sick and that is the reason why he acts So.
3. Do not respond to his aggressions, better avoid him (a). Whenever that person is being hostile and aggressive towards us, the best thing we can do is avoid them, rather than confront them or try to calm them down. Simply, leave the place where she is and after a while, when she has calmed down, have contact with her again.
4. Try as much as possible to be empathetic. This means that it is advisable that you listen to that person and take an interest in them, for example, you can ask them how they feel, be nice, etc. However, we should never allow that person to say or do things that harm us.
5. Keep calm. Although it may sound complicated, it is necessary to learn to keep ourselves as calm as possible, especially when we have to constantly deal with this person. For this, it is advisable to train ourselves in relaxation exercises, meditation and everything that helps us feel more calm and at peace with ourselves.
6. Take distance. If it is a person, such as a co-worker, a neighbor, a distant relative or, simply, that it is not so important to us, the best we can do is to distance ourselves from this person. If it is someone you are forced to see every day even for a moment and you cannot avoid it Therefore, a good option is to remember that you have a disease, continue doing what you are doing and avoid going out affected.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to How to Treat a Person With Paranoid Personality Disorder, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.