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PHOBIA LIBRARY

Read up on fear, panic and phobia to get a general overview of phobias and trauma and fear management. Learn mindfulness based self care principles and exercises for managing phobias from my books on trauma and self care.
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​Fear | Function | Thought | Treatment | Coping
For Help See: Fear in the Brain | Fear Dictionary
THE LIBRARY TOPIC HOME PAGES
​​Introduction to Trauma, Fear and Phobia
Part 1: ​Defining Fear and the Fear Response
Part 2: Emotional & Cognitive Functions of Fear
Part 3: Maladaptive Thought Processing
​Part 4: Professional Therapy & Mindful Self Care
​THE PHOBIA COLLECTION DOWNLOADS
​Browse Collection of Phobias by Topic
Download Collection of Phobias
Download Dictionary of Fear and Phobia
Download Self Care Guides for Coping

PART THREE - THOUGHTS
​​MALADAPTIVE THOUGHT PROCESSING
​ Articles defining thought, it’s processing, and the maladaptive thinking of cognitive malfunctions, psychological effects, overthinking and the delusions found within common delusional concepts and thoughts.

THOUGHT DIRECTORY

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DEALING WITH DELUSIONAL THOUGHTS


​A delusion is a fixed belief that is resistant to change despite conflicting evidence. It is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, or other misleading effects of perception.

CAUSES OF DELUSIONS
Researchers aren’t exactly sure what causes delusional states.. It could be a variety of genetic, biological, psychological, and environmental factors. There are shared delusions that are most common in individuals who reside together and have little contact with the outside world.
  • Genetic or biological theory - suggests that close relatives of people with delusional disorder are at increased risk of delusional traits.
  • Dysfunctional cognitive processing - suggests that delusions arise from distorted ways people have of explaining life to themselves.
  • Motivated or defensive delusions - suggests that affected people lack the coping skills in life and the ability to maintain high self-esteem is a significant challenge. In this case, the person views others as the cause of their difficulties in order to preserve a positive self-view.
  • Psychotic disorders seem to run in families, so researchers suggest there is a genetic component
  • Abnormalities in the brain may also play a role. An imbalance of neurotransmitters (chemical messengers in the brain) may increase the chance an individual will develop delusions.
  • Trauma and stress also can trigger delusions. Isolation may make one more vulnerable.
  • Postpartum psychosis: hormonal shifts after giving birth may trigger postpartum psychosis in some women.
  • Dementia: Estimates vary but roughly one-third of individuals with dementia may experience delusions. Often, the delusions involve paranoia like thinking family members or caretakers are stealing from them.

DIAGNOSIS OF DELUSIONS
Delusions distinguish true delusions from other symptoms such as anxiety, fear, or paranoia. To diagnose delusions an examination tests appearance, mood, affect, behavior, rate and continuity of speech, evidence of hallucinations or abnormal beliefs, thought content, orientation to time, place and person, attention and concentration, insight and judgment, as well as short-term memory.

The following are some conditions that may present delusions:

Brief psychotic disorder: People experience hallucinations, delusions, or disorganized speech that may be triggered by a stressful event. Symptoms of this disorder persist for one month or less.

Delusional disorder: People experience "non-bizarre" types of delusions and can usually act normally and don't display impaired functioning. There is an estimated 0.2% of the population meeting the criteria, so it is considered a relatively rare mental illness.

Mood disorders: Sometimes, those with mood disorders like depression or bipolar disorder may experience delusions.

Parkinson’s disease: The prevalence varies widely but many patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease experience hallucinations and delusions.

Schizoaffective disorder: people with this disorder present symptoms of schizophrenia as well as a mood issue, like depression or mania.

DELUSION CATEGORIES

Bizarre delusion: clearly implausible and not understandable to others and they do not come from ordinary life experiences. An example in the DSM-5 is a belief that someone replaced all of one's internal organs with someone else's without leaving a scar.

Non-bizarre delusion: A delusion that is false, but at least technically possible. For example, someone mistakenly believes that they are under constant police surveillance.

Mood-congruent delusion: Any delusion with content consistent with either a depressive or manic state. For example, a depressed person who believes that the news anchors on television disapprove of them. A manic person might believe they are a god.

Mood-neutral delusion: A delusion that does not relate to a person’s emotional state. For example, a neutral delusion is the belief that there is an extra limb growing out of the back of one's head. It is neither a depression or a mania.

COMMON THEMES OF DELUSIONS
Delusions often manifest according to a consistent theme. Although delusions can have any theme, certain themes are more common. Some of the more common delusion themes are:

Delusion of control: False belief that another person, group of people, or external force controls one's general thoughts, feelings, impulses, or behaviors.

Cotard delusion: False belief that one does not exist or that one has died.

Delusional jealousy: False belief that a spouse or lover is having an affair, with no proof to back up the claim.

Delusion of guilt or sin (or delusion of self-accusation): Ungrounded feeling of remorse or guilt of delusional intensity.

Delusion of mind being read: False belief that other people can know one's thoughts.

Delusion of thought insertion: Belief that another thinks through the mind of the person.

Delusion of reference: False belief that insignificant remarks, events, or objects in one's environment have personal meaning or significance. "Usually the meaning assigned to these events is negative, but the 'messages' can also have a grandiose quality."

Erotomania: False belief that another person is in love with them.

Religious delusion: Belief that the affected person is a god or chosen to act as a god.

Somatic delusion: Delusion whose content pertains to bodily functioning, bodily sensations or physical appearance. Usually the false belief is that the body is somehow diseased, abnormal or changed. A specific example of this delusion is delusional parasitosis: Delusion in which one feels infested with insects, bacteria, mites, spiders, lice, fleas, worms, or other organisms.

Delusion of poverty: Person strongly believes they are financially incapacitated. Although this type of delusion is less common now, it was particularly widespread in the days preceding state support.

GRANDIOSE DELUSIONS
Grandiose delusions or delusions of grandeur are characterized by fantastical beliefs that one is famous, omnipotent or otherwise very powerful. The delusions are generally fantastic, possibly supernatural, science-fiction, or religiously oriented. Simply stated, one who overestimates their own abilities, talents, stature or situation is said to have "delusions of grandeur". This is generally due to excessive pride, rather than any actual delusions. Grandiose delusions or delusions of grandeur can also be associated with megalomania.

PERSECUTORY DELUSIONS
Persecutory delusions are the most common type of delusions and involve a person believing they are being followed, harassed, cheated, poisoned or drugged, conspired against, spied on, attacked, or otherwise obstructed. The affected person wrongly believes that they are being persecuted.

DELUSIONAL THOUGHTS


​Delusional thoughts are reinforced by the misinterpretation of events. Many also involve some level of paranoia. For example, someone might contend that the government is controlling them via radio waves despite evidence to the contrary. Delusions are often part of psychotic disorders. They may occur along with hallucinations, which involve perceiving something that isn’t really there, like hearing voices or feeling bugs crawling on your skin.

​COMMON DELUSIONAL THOUGHTS
Affect illusion: Illusions (misperceptions) associated with or based on changes with mood. For example, at midnight a person may take a shadow as a ghost, but in the early part of night this may not be the case.

Alice in Wonderland syndrome: individuals perceive objects (including animals and other humans, or parts of humans, animals, or objects) as appearing substantially smaller than in reality. Generally, the object appears far away or extremely close at the same time. Alternate term for this is somaesthetic aura.

Apophanous perception: an alternate term for delusional perception. A true perception to which an individual attributes a false meaning. For example, a person may see written "No Trespassing" on a board and may infer from this that intelligence agencies are spying on him.

Autoscopy: a reduplicative hallucination of "seeing one's own body at a distance" and the person sees it from the place where he or she is located. Autoscopy is sometimes used synonymously with out-of-body experience.

Confabulation: a confusion of imagination with memory, and/or the confusion of true memories with false memories.

Dermatozoenwahn: an alternate term for organic hallucinosis and delusional parasitosis, the continuous belief that one's skin or body has been infested by parasites or insects. This state cannot be diagnosed if the hallucinatory state is produced while the individual is under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or if the individual fulfills the criterion for delirium. In general, if an individual is under the influence of a drug, or experiencing the symptoms of withdrawal from that drug, this condition is not psychiatric but medical, and termed formication.

Folie à deux: a delusional disorder shared by two or more people who are closely related emotionally. One has real psychosis while the symptoms of psychosis are induced in the other due to close attachment to the one with psychosis. Separation usually results in symptomatic improvement in the one who is not psychotic.

Fregoli delusion: a person has a delusional belief that various different people are in fact one certain person, even if there is no physical resemblance. It is considered a form of delusional misidentification in which the false identification of familiar people occurs in strangers.

Lilliputian hallucinations: characterized by an abnormal perception of objects being shrunk in size but normal in detail.

Paraprosopia: a delusion in which a person believes he or she has seen a face transform into a grotesque form - often described as a 'monster', 'vampire', 'werewolf' or similar.

Paraschemazia: characterized by a distortion of body image. It can be caused by hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and mescaline, epileptic auras, and sometimes migraines.

Pareidolia: a vague or random stimulus is mistakenly perceived as recognizable. A common example is perceiving the image of a face in clouds. Pareidolia is a type of illusion and hence called pareidolic illusion.

Reduplicative hallucinations: a perception of seeing a double. Particular kinds of reduplicative hallucination include autoscopy, heautoscopy and out-of-body experiences.

Reduplicative paramnesia: a delusional misidentification syndrome in which one's surroundings are believed to exist in more than one physical location.

Reflex hallucinations: occur when true sensory input in one sense leads to production of a hallucination in another sense. For example seeing a doctor writing (visual) and then feeling him writing across one's stomach (tactile).

Wahneinfall: an alternate term for autochthonous delusions or delusional intuition. This is one of the types of primary delusions in which a firm belief comes into the individual's mind 'out of the blue' or as an intuition, therefore called delusional intuition.
MORE ON THOUGHT PROCESSING
This content is provided for informational purposes only. Author is not a medical professional. Talk to your doctor to determine what therapy is right for you.
Self care techniques are meant to supplement professional treatment not replace it.
DISCLAIMER OF THE LEARNING LIBRARY

BROWSE PHOBIA COLLECTION​
​Phobia collection is presented in eight themed parts
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PART [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ]

PHOBIA COLLECTION BY TOPIC​
common ~ abstract ~ ordinary ~ bizarre ~ catastrophic ~ psyche ~ icky - academic ~ knowledge ~ education ~ literary ~ art ~ music ~ religion ~ political ~ law ~ order military ~ war ~ discrimination ~ science ~ chemical ~ energy ~ time ~ numbers ~ technology ~ nature ~ environment ~ astronomy ~ weather ~ geography ~ people ~ family ~ community ~ anatomy ~ medical ~ disease ~ emotions ~ senses ~ sensations ~ movement ~ conditions~ love ~ relationships ~ sexuality ~ lifestyle ~ places ~ events ~ objects ~ clothing ~ tools ~ vehicles ~ home ~ cooking ~ food ~ entertainment ~ sports ~ recreation ~ toys ~ games ~ monsters ~ characters ~ spooky ~ nightmares ~ delusional ~ joke ~ fiction

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​OTHER PHOBIA AND FEAR DOWNLOADS:
​Dictionary of Trauma, Phobia and Fear
Self Care Guides for Fear & Phobias​
Phobia articles provided by my self care series Healing the PTSD Mind ​ and my series on mindfulness based self care Be Mindful Be Well​. These self directed guides are written from a trauma perspective but the content applies to the symptoms of phobia like fear and panic. ​Learn and simple self care techniques with mindfulness.
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