How do we heal the paranoid, distrusting people in our lives (ourselves included)? Take my mother-in-law, an ardent anti-abortionist. Why do such storylines appeal to her? She watches crime shows. Her and my father-in-law love Jeopardy. She suffered a traumatic childhood. After her mother’s institutionalization, she was separated from her siblings and placed in an orphanage. These experiences live on, I suppose, informing her relationship to narrative. Let us spiral in “sound-star tetrahedrons,” as does Mei-Mei-Berssenbrugge in her poem “Singing” (A Treatise on Stars, p. 82). Let us visit the Santa Fe Institute. Berssenbrugge credits the latter with talk of “ETs, … coincidence, spirit molecules, time tunnels and quantum uncertainty” (88).
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Trance-Scripts 
The answer to that first question seems to me to be that you don’t. There’s little we can do for others that they won’t do for themselves, and we seem only capable of doing the best we can for ourselves with the little knowledge we have. If we find ourselves in an atmosphere conducive to healing, then it is up to something found in a definition such as that of life or consciousness. It is automatic and beyond our understanding.
Recently, for no reason that’s immediately evident, I’ve found myself on the outside of myself and, so, of emotions triggered in particular situations. I’ve become better at observing and choosing how I respond. Very liberating. (The paranoia lurks in the background tempting a return to the comfort of familiarity – hahahaha).
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You’re probably right (though the utopian in me still wants to keep searching). As you say, there’s little we can do when those who are paranoid don’t want to heal; but perhaps we can help to arrange settings conducive to that desire.
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