Are You Delusional?

A lot of people I work with find that the reason for their unhappiness is delusional thinking. Non-bizarre delusions can be difficult to spot, but the effects are not. Individuals struggling with delusional thinking are quick to anger, have a low mood, and a general unhappiness. Delusional thinking leads to false narratives about who you are, what you can accomplish, and how your life should be. When these things are based in delusion, a lot of the time there are uneven comparisons of self to others. This uneven comparison leads to a delusional belief that you should be able to have something that you are not qualified or positioned for. For example, in Japan the greatest delusions are around work product and Japanese level. Most people greatly overestimate or underestimate themselves based on a comparison to others.

Another indicator of delusional thinking that is quite common is an over estimation of how much things cost that do not have a monetary value. For example, how much it costs you to hold space for your partner or anyone in your life. People struggling with delusional mindsets greatly overestimate the cost. A delusional mind is an extreme internal state. The extremity of the battle between objective reality and delusion is exhausting. It makes it difficult to understand the impact of your delusions on others. When a person is functioning from a place of delusion, it results in them lying to everyone in their life because their actions are not grounded in reality. Delusional people over-commit in grandiose ways.

A good barometer for checking whether or not you live in an objective reality or a delusional reality is anxiety and depression; both are usually the result of a strongly held non-bizarre delusion. When delusions are strongly held, the person holding them experiences cognitive dissonance. Delusions and objective reality are two different, contradictory mental states. These clashing mental states lead to anxiety as the brain tries to reconcile the contradiction created by the delusion when faced with objective reality. The first step of letting go of delusions is acknowledging your thinking does not align with what others would describe as reality. To asses if you are delusional, you can take a skills quiz or any other type of objective measurement of yourself and see how far from reality your estimate of your skills land. Something as simple as a basic math test can let you know how good you are at estimating your own abilities. Guess what your score will be and see how far off the mark your estimates are. This is not a perfect method, but it is a solid starting place.