Suspiciousness is a personality trait closely associated with anxiety. It is characterized by anxiety, unpleasant excitement, obsessive fearful thoughts, suspicion. Suspicious people are often shy, distrustful. Sometimes suspiciousness can help prevent any dangerous situation, but more often this trait poisons life. How to curb it?
Excessive suspiciousness in most cases arises due to low self-esteem, increased anxiety, due to the abundance of internal fears and fears, due to mistrust of the world. A suspicious and anxious person depends on outside opinion, reacts painfully to criticism and remarks, feels lost and insecure in any stressful situation, and sometimes in the usual conditions of life. However, this dubious personality trait is associated not only with certain emotions and feelings.
Psychologists believe that the degree of suspicion and anxiety depends on how well a person's memory is developed. Obsessive thoughts, primarily associated with fear, arise when a person does not remember what he is doing. In such a situation, various simulators and exercises that strengthen memory will help to reduce the degree of suspiciousness.
Additionally, suspicious people are often completely immersed exclusively in their anxious experiences and fantasies. They can think about many things at once, performing any actions completely automatically. To cope with suspicion and anxiety, you need to learn to consciously perform any actions, accustom yourself to “be in the moment”, to live “here and now”. Concentration training will help with this.
To cope with anxiety, it is worth turning to various relaxation methods and meditation. In addition, meditation techniques can help develop mindfulness as well.
Struggling with excessive suspiciousness, you need to give up dark fantasies. Building up negative scenarios of any situations in your thoughts leads to the fact that the level of inner anxiety increases. The more a person winds himself up, the more suspicious and distrustful he becomes.
If painful suspiciousness is based on internal fears, any traumatic memories, then they need to be worked out. It is not always possible to do this yourself. Then you should seek advice and support from a specialist - a psychologist, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst. It is important to understand that sometimes excessive suspiciousness is a symptom of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, and then you cannot do without working with a specialist.
A psychological technique, which is based on bringing your own fears and experiences to the point of absurdity, can help to cope with an unpleasant state. One should not try to suppress or drown out anxieties and worries, but "inflate" them to such an extent that they look comical and ridiculous.
Keeping a diary will help free your head from obsessive thoughts. You need to write down all your experiences, worries and anxieties in it. It is worth describing the frightening situations and how they ended. In most cases, excessive suspicion will not be justified. And if it is difficult for a suspicious person to rationally analyze life situations, then re-reading the diary entries will allow you to look differently at events and the results from them.
For a suspicious person, it will be useful to develop the habit of literally thinking through their actions and deeds literally step by step. For example, "now I will go to the kitchen and turn off the stove." In some situations, it is necessary to say the action plan out loud, and then proceed to its implementation. For greater effect, you can always carry a small notebook with you, entering in it all the information about what has been done.
