Lived Experience Forum

[Pg713]

Help how do you sleep when paranoia flairs up? I have somehow convinced myself that my neighbours in our small country town are conspiring against my family and will attack us while we sleep. I know in reality it's unlikely but there's a part of me that says we'll what if and now I'm exhausted because I'm not sleeping over this. We don't entirely get a long but we haven't had any major disagreements. One neighbour walks by my fence twice a day to walk his dog and he stands there and just looks into my yard, when we first moved here he told me not to talk to 2 of my other neighbours and that one of them falsely accused him of masturbating under their window but once I did start talking to them they knew nothing about it. He also told my hubby about a lane way down the road couple's go to have sex which was creepy. Then we got a cattle dog that has never liked him and when his dog stuck his head through our fence our cattle dog bit it. Now several of my neighbours he is close with don't like us for some reason and the ones he doesn't like have moved away so I feel lonely in this with creepy neighbour walking my fence line daily and calling council on my dog all the time. And I'm loosing sleep over this pathetic situation. How do I manage to put it out of my head so I can sleep 😭

[tyme]

Hey @Pg713 ,

Welcome to the forums!

The fact that you have shared what's been going on for you may be what will help you to sleep tonight. 

I agree that it doesn't feel great to have people around you who are not very friendly. Have you every approached the neighbours to ask if there's an issue? Another idea, could you melt them with kindness?

From my experience, when it feels that someone doesn't like me, I like to approach the situation with openness and put it all out on the table. I find that usually, after all that, there's actually no issue, but in people's minds, a mountain has been made out of a molehill.

What are your thoughts?

If anything does happen, are you able to contact 000?

[Pg713]

Thanks. Everyone has their gates locked so I don't really feel comfortable trying to approach them and when I go near their homes they turn around so they don't have to look at me. They use to wave and at one point were friendly then once our dog bit the creepy neighbours dog no one would look at us anymore and went out of their way to avoid us