I know the title makes it sound like I’ve lost it, but I promise that I know how ridiculous it sounds. I know it’s completely irrational to think these things, and I don’t think I completely believe them to be true. It’s like one side of my brain knows I’m being irrational and the other half takes it very seriously.

I’ve been having these ideas for a while, like probably 6 months or so, but the lockdown has seemed to make the thoughts so much more intense, and they’ve started to seriously affect my behaviour. One of my ideas is that people can say a certain word or phrase and if I read or listen to/ process that phrase then they’ll be able to hijack my thoughts, kind of like it’s a trap to manipulate me. As a result if I’m talking to someone and they say something that I think is an attempt to manipulate my thoughts, I just blank my mind so that I don’t think about it and as a result I completely ignore them. If it happens online then I don’t open the message and don’t reply to them. This used to only happen like every 2 weeks or so, but now it’s pretty much every day.

Another thing I believe is that adverts like those on YouTube are also trying to hijack and manipulate my thoughts. So whenever an advert comes on on YouTube I immediately take my earbuds out and look away from the screen until it’s over. I also avoid mainstream media because I feel like it’s trying to achieve the same thing. It’s like everyone else has already been brainwashed and I don’t want to be brainwashed too.

Finally the more recent thing has been that whenever I do something I enjoy like listen to music or watch YouTube or play video games, I imagine a person telling me that what I like is stupid and bad and that I have bad taste and then it ruins the fun I was getting out of the activity. This has been the worst thing because now I feel like I can’t do anything I enjoy because he’ll be there taunting me and he’ll ruin it.

I know this all sounds really weird and crazy, but I promise that I know it’s crazy. I just can’t convince myself to stop thinking it’s real and it’s making me really agitated and upset. What can I do to stop thinking like this? I just want to be able to put my guard down and relax...