Hyperthyroidism and Paranoia

In November 1993, I have been diagnosed for a hyperthyroidism condition; the Graves’ disease. I was then a 25 years old Quebecer studying full time in geography at the University of Montreal, province of Quebec, Canada. I was also working part time as a travel agent in a suburb of Montreal. My doctors were recommending me a radioactive iodine treatment but I have refused this standard treatment in Quebec. Instead I have opted for the control of my hyperthyroidism condition with antithyroid medication prescribed by my endocrinologist. In parallel to my antithyroid pills regime and my periodic medical follow-ups, I have undertaken a journey of personal inquiry and alternative healing.

Experiences of paranoia

In my attempt to get a better understanding of the hyperthyroidism phenomenon and to heal my hyperthyroidism condition, I have progressively journeyed toward the insight in 1997 that I was experiencing paranoia. During these experiences of paranoia of various durations and intensities, I was dominated by feelings sometimes vague or sometimes very precise that certain members of my family and my surrounding, strangers, life, the dominant order, the medical system, the universe and God were mean, sadistic, cruel and that they were conspiring to persecute me and even to kill me.

In Quebec, the main stream medical system acknowledges these kinds of experiences of paranoia in relation with the hyperthyroidism phenomenon. For example, in an article on the thyroid gland published in a Montreal French daily news paper in 1999, a journalist was reporting the case of a woman with a hyperthyroidism condition who was experiencing paranoia:

“Another patient met by Dr. Gilbert, suffering of hyperthyroidism, has developed a paranoid delirium. She perceived plots everywhere, and she was not able to trust anyone anymore. Once she has been treated [for her hyperthyroidism condition] and healed, her behaviour has completely returned to normal.”
- Carole Thibodeau. Comment va votre thyroïde in La Presse, Montréal, dimanche 18 juillet 1999. (Translation by Alain)

Having an insight about being a paranoiac is too simply said! To conceive and to accept that I was experiencing paranoia has been quite a challenge. However, this insight has not been the most disturbing fact for me. The most disturbing fact has been the acknowledgment that paranoia was already active in my life well before the manifestation of my hyperthyroidism. In deed, I had already experienced different kinds of paranoid states in various circumstances of my life many years before the development of my first hyperthyroidism symptoms. As an example, in some of my extreme paranoid experiences triggered by cold and uncaring people or circumstances, I was possessed by a dominant impression that these people were somehow aliens and the life circumstances were governed by Machiavellian people or aliens. I didn’t understand these kinds of weird experiences. I was scared of them and I was in a perpetual state of conflicting debates with them. I was more trying to avoid and reject them then trying to understand them. These weird experiences, that at the time I was not able to acknowledge as paranoid manifestations, were simply a part of my personal experience and view of reality.

With this new information about paranoia, I have then made the hypothesis that my paranoid states were directly related with my hyperthyroidism condition. However, I was considering that my paranoia wasn’t just a simple symptom or development of my hyperthyroidism, like the preceding excerpt on the case of a woman with hyperthyroidism experiencing paranoia suggests it, but rather one of the causes of my hyperthyroidism condition. Since that moment, I have oriented my journey of personal inquiry and alternative healing toward the attempt to better understand my experiences of paranoia.

Many causes involved in my hyperthyroidism condition

Different practices like personal journaling, books studies, body work, psychotherapies, Bohm’s dialogue and Yoga has help me to better understand and deal with my hyperthyroidism condition mixed with paranoid experiences. I have never been prescribed specific medication for my paranoia. I have not been able to find a single psychologist in the public medical system of Quebec that was willing to treat me for my paranoia in one way or another. The two psychiatrists that I have been able to encounter during my journey didn’t accept to treat me mainly because I was refusing to treat my hyperthyroidism condition with radioactive iodine and because they didn’t agreed with my interpretations of my experiences of paranoia.

During my journey towards my healing, I have tried to work with different kinds of health professionals inside and outside the main stream health system of Quebec but I believed that none of them were attuned to the specifics needs that my changing condition and situation were requiring. During that period, I have also discovered that other significant causes were involved in my particular hyperthyroidism condition mixed with paranoid states like stress, physical pains, fears and problematic personality structures mainly.

In my personal journey, I have never encountered a single doctor, endocrinologist, psychiatrist and psychologist in the public medical context of Quebec open to the perspective that stress, physical pains, fears, paranoia and problematic personality structures could play a significant role in certain hyperthyroidism cases. This general absence of openness and support from the public medical system in Quebec for anything that is not in the scope of his own vision of the hyperthyroidism phenomenon caused by an autoimmune disease has represented a major problem that I had to deal with in the course of my healing journey. I now consider that lack of appropriate support from the public medical system and society in general toward my particular hyperthyroidism condition like one of the causes that was involved in its perpetuation.

Ending my antithyroid pills regime and signs of a stable healing

In 2002, at the age of 34, during a medical follow-up I have come up with a blood test that was indicating that my thyroid indicators were all in the interval of a normal state of health. Many months before that particular blood test, after some improving signs in my hyperthyroidism condition and my paranoia, I have cessed, without the authorisation of my doctors, to take any form of medication in order to control my hyperthyroidism condition. Since 2002, I have never taken again any kind of antithyroid medication.

In August 2006, in the anticipation to offer a bone marrow donation to my sister suffering of leukemia, I have been submitted to a myriad of medical tests. My global state of health has been judged acceptable to proceed to a bone marrow donation. My thyroid indicators all tested with special attention has all showed normal results despite the fact that I was going through a period of crisis and intense stress in relation with my sister‘s disease.

Even If I don’t have any form of official acknowledgement of my healing from the medical system of the province of Quebec other then my last blood tests in 2002 and in 2006, I now consider my hyperthyroidism condition definitely healed since 2006. On the other hand, my experiences of paranoia, despite of being definitely less invading and possessive, are still occurring from times to times. But the frequencies, the intensities and the durations of the paranoid states are far lesser then they were in the past. I now have a better understanding of the causes of my paranoia and I don’t considerer my self as a crazy fellow because of these paranoid experiences but more as someone with parts of himself deeply hurt and conditioned. Welcome to my life!

Targeted readers and general context of my personal account

My Union Point blog is one of the means that I’m taking advantage of in order to express and share my personal account of the healing of my personal hyperthyroidism condition mixed with paranoid states. While Union Point is public, I mainly wish to share my personal account with people concerned by the hyperthyroidism phenomenon and opened to the perspective that the hyperthyroidism phenomenon may in certain cases have one or more causes that differ from the impersonal and systematic diagnostic of the autoimmune disease promoted and defended by the main stream medical system.

Could it be possible that some relations of cause and effects in some particular hyperthyroidism conditions mixed with paranoia are misinterpreted? Could it be possible that some complex interactions between causes and symptoms of hyperthyroidism mixed with paranoia are misunderstood? Could it be possible to discover a kind of union point in the experience of some particular conditions of hyperthyroidism and paranoia? My personal account will mainly focus on my own sensed, intuitive, reasoned and documented understanding of my experience of a hyperthyroidism condition with paranoid states and my journey towards the healing of this condition. I will, mainly but not exclusively, situate my personal account in the global context of what I have assimilated so far of the teachings of a contemporary spiritual path named the Diamond Approach.

* Source of the image not noted.

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