Real fears or just anxiety/OCD/paranoia?

Hi everyone

I have a lengthy history of severe anxiety, OCD, panic disorder, stress-intolerance and a few other things. Suffice it to say that for me, every day is a HUGE challenge on many different levels.

One of the components of this (which may be related to my OCD) is this constant and overwhelming fear and paranoia that I am always being tracked and that there is some huge "investigation" going on behind the scenes. Rationally, I can't really imagine this would be going on since I am a strict, by-the-book, hard-working, tax-paying, Mr. honest-Abe citizen but in this day and age (and with all of the high-tech), it's easy for one to become overly-paranoid I suppose.

Here are various things that seem to feed into (and even "confirm") my paranoia...

1) Really strange neighbor moved in a year ago. Every time I have ever gone out, he comes out and looks at me. The timing is too perfect and has happened too many times to be a coincidence. He asked that his computer to be worked on and a month later he says that he hasn't even looked at it yet leading me to believe that the only reason he sent it over here was to get "intel" on the bug he planted in it.

2) An old friend came over to the house some years ago and asked to use our bathroom even though he was less than a mile from our house. He was in their forever and the whole thing just seemed strange. Naturally, after he left, I went all over the bathroom looking for a bugging device.

3) I went to a government website one day (that I've gone to a million times before) and as I left it, I happened to look up and noticed that the history icon in my browser was depressing itself. I spent weeks thinking that government site must have stolen my history information and was spying on me.

4) For a few years I was always asking my room mate if he was poisoning me and many time, even asked him to "take a bite" first.

5) On a recent visit to the vet to have my dog vaccinated, the vet assistant came in with a camera and took a photo of my dog. Later, I would obsess that she had taken a photo because "something was wrong" and that she was going to show it to animal control or that while pretending to get a photo of my dog, she was actually trying to sneak in a photo of ME.

6) Got ID'd for the first time in over a decade when I went to pick up a prescription and the lady treated me kind of coldly and different than she normally did. Had all kinds of paranoid thoughts about that one!.

7) I sometimes see cars driving through our neighborhood. A few times, one of them has either slowed down or stopped in front of our house making me paranoid and suspicious. The other day a police car stopped next to an abandoned building just 30 years from our house with another car behind him. They sat there forever and I kept looking out the window imagining they were spying on me with some listening device.

8) I put out a bunch of old computers (by the curb) for the garbage collector and shortly afterwards, I looked out of my window and saw a new-ish looking white van and some very well dressed man loading all of these computers into the van. I obcessed for days about this one and imagined he was some secret agent who was planning to take the computeres back to his lab and have them "analyzed".

9) If I don't hear from a government agency I should have heard from in a timely fashion or too much time elapses, I start having all the "what if's" and worrying that something is "wrong" and why I haven't heard from them yet.

I'm constantly working myself up into a frenzy by thinking about various things (like the above or similar) or putting together imaginative scenarios in my head. The more I read the news, the more these thoughts are triggered. Every day I read about some new-fangled high-tech device used to spy on citizens or invade their privacy in some way. I'm no conspiracy theorist and I don't think the government is "out to get me" but when you read about new laws that are being passed each day and the things that are going on in the world, who wouldn't be fearful and paranoid?.

I also have a religious phobia that God is always punishing me or trying to find excuses to punish me or using the devil to "set me up" so he can punish me, etc. This obcession seems to either have some truth to it or be one huge coincidence because, sure enough, every time I engage in any form of intimacy, lie, curse or commit almost any sin, the punishments come in never-ending waves that just about drive me mad and no amounnt of asking for forgiveness seems to help. As a result, I have a ZERO sex-life or really any kind of life at all and even writing this makes me fear God will punish me for "tattling" on him or because I didn't get my story "exactly right".

All I have said here is just the tip of the ice-berg. So many things that seem out of the ordinary happen in life every day. What I have a difficult time doing is differentiating between the things that I really SHOULD be worried about and the innocuous little coincidences that are not what they appear to be and are thus nothing to get alarmed over.

For the record, I'm also a hypochondria and worry about diseases, have Tourettes, Agoraphobia/fear of people, etc but that is for another day.

Anyone else have this type/level of paranoia (as I have described it here)?. What does this sound like or could there really be something to all of these things?. Anyone else here experience similar events that made their spidey senses tingle just a little bit or am I truly going out of my mind?.

Thanks for the input as it is greatly appreciated!.

- Seth

I suffer from OCD as well. Let me tell you. If you excercise on a daily basis it nourishes the mind and washes out all of the toxins and goes a long way in the healing process. This my friend gets the serotonin and endorphins going so then you won't have OCD. As long as you workout the OCD won't be beside you bugging you. I know this from experience. But if you stop working out the OCD comes right back.