EP62_Hinesights Podcast_MANAGING PARANOIA & MENTAL HEALTH: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Kevin Hines:
My name is Kevin Hines. I jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. I believe that I had to die, but I lived. Today, I travel the world with my lovely wife, Margaret, sharing stories of people who have triumphed over incredible adversity. Now, we help people be here tomorrow. Welcome to the HINESIGHTS podcast.
Kevin Hines:
What's cracking, Hope Nation? It is your friendly neighborhood, Kevin Hines, and this is another round of Ask Kev, where you send your questions through to the internet, and I answer them accordingly to the best of my ability. So for those of you who don't know, I live with paranoid delusions that are pretty rampant, overpowering, overwhelming, mild to moderate to medium to extreme, paranoid delusions. One of the things I do to break free from paranoid thoughts and paranoid delusions is to, to weigh in logic into the situation. So when I'm having a paranoid delusion such as believing people are out to get me, trying to hurt me, or trying to kill me, it's very often what I think, I turn to logic, and by turning to logic, you are dispelling the delusion. You're saying to yourself, things like Kevin, has this ever happened before? Of the hundreds of thousands of times you've thought snipers were going to take your life, have they ever? No. How many times does it happen? Exactly, zero. Thus, it's not going to happen. And so this allows me to allow logic into the situation to break me free from the paranoid delusion. Let me give you a specific example of a situation in real-time that happened. I was out to lunch or brunch with my family, my wife, my best friend Jake, I was there with my brother-in-law and his two babies, and I believed that at any moment the staff was going to try to assault us, and so I got my steak knife ready and I had it held backwards and I was going to defend myself and my buddy Jake got me up, took me out to the front of the restaurant and helped me do my, what I call paranoid delusion exercises or coping mechanisms to break free from the paranoid delusion. And what I do, and this is the same thing I do for a visual hallucination as well, it's been taught to me by some of my doctors, the coping strategy for this kind of struggle, I take my hands, I grasp my hands together, like so back and forth. Like this, I press the weight again in the palms against my palm, and I focus only on that weight, only on that palm until the delusion is dispelled. So what this does is it allows you to change the focus from the paranoid delusion to the physical pressure on your palms, and it's called a coping strategy. It allows you to separate yourself from the delusion temporarily so you can recognize that it is in a distorted reality that most people can't see or hear, but that this, what you're doing, is in the real reality, the focused reality, the true reality and adding logic to that, that issue like, OK, when I'm in a speech and I think, you know, five thousand people are going to rush the stage, take my life, which happens often, what can I do to break free from that, that paranoid delusion? And it is truly to impart logic into the situation so I can defeat it. So that's one major thing I do for my paranoid delusions, logic, then the coping strategy is number two, and I also will ask someone directly, is this paranoid delusion valid? Is this legitimate? Is this real? And I will turn to anyone in front of me, whether I know them from Adam, and I'll say, you know, are you going to kill me right now? Are you planning to take my life? Is the audience planning to attack me? Am I going to die? Whatever my paranoid delusion is, I'm going to ask people directly that are in front of me, and it might feel awkward at first to be that bold. But when you're going through it and someone just tells you that's not the case, it is such a huge relief to hear that you're safe. So the benefits outweigh the negative of someone thinking poorly about you or your well-being. One of the other things I must do on a regular basis is talk about my paranoid delusions in therapy so that I can defeat them over time. The therapists are the ones that taught me my coping strategies for paranoid delusions in the first place. Had I not talked about these issues in therapy, I wouldn't know how to tackle them, like, I'm teaching you how to tackle them right now. So therapy and being honest in therapy about my paranoid delusions, significant beneficial help. It's been a significant benefit to my life since the dawn of my therapy programming and since the beginning of me seeking out help in my mental health. So, guys, that's what I do for my paranoid delusions. Paranoid delusions are complex and varying, I want to know what you do for your paranoid issues in the comment section below. What do you do today? What do you do every day to balance your paranoia, to abate it, and to get away from it when you're struggling? How do you survive it? I want to know all about that so we can teach our friends watching today how to balance theirs. Bye guys be well and be here tomorrow.
Kevin Hines:
Margaret and I love sharing stories of people who have triumphed over incredible adversity-. For more content and inspiration, go to KevinHinesStory.com or visit us on all social media at KevinHinesStory or on youtube.com/KevinHines.
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