CMan,
once you've answered Joey
to the nearest five years, do you mind saying roughly how old you are?
The belief in being able to control people or in people controlling us, could easily come from stuff we came to believe at age about 6 to 10 years, and maybe a bit outside that too
At those ages, I think it's pretty normal. I think with trauma it can be .... errrm ... let's just say perhaps not too unusual to revert to that in a flashback or when we are stressed.
Likewise:
Paranoia - by who's standards?
The people calling someone who has PTSD paranoid - didn't live through the shit we did. based on our personal life experiences it's an absolutely rational and prudent approach to life
It might be damned dysfuntional for managing to get along with people who haven't endured the initiation rites to this (far too big) club of ours,
but it's still perfectly rational and realistic.
There was a British Pilot who was either shot down (or more likely got brought down by his own bombs, due to the shite British doctrine of ultra low bombing runs even though air supremacy had already been achieved) in the Bush the elder +others V Saddam war
After release from prison, he said that after attending a British boarding school, being held in a third world prison held no fears or surprises for him.
That's the kind of shit that our systems have adapted us to - it's completely dysfuntional for normal life, but it's functional for what we lived through.
hope this helps
@
