What is a Healthy Dose of Paranoia?

Lexico.com defines paranoia as an unjustified suspicion and mistrust of other people or their actions.

As a member of my family, I think a trait that everyone has is that we are all very suspicious people, we expect the worse from people and we always feel like everyone has an ulterior motive and while reading this you might think that we aren’t trusting because of our paranoia which might be true.

I think our paranoia has made life very interesting and boring at the same time because when we watch movies and series together, you would always hear suggestions on who the bad guy or the murderer is and trust me that we never get it wrong, also when you introduce a partner or friend to my family, they would always know who would screw you over and it does get annoying when they tell you the “I told you so”.

I was having a conversation with a friend a few days ago and we were talking about being cheated on and I told him that well, I always know when I am being cheated on for some reason and he simply said that maybe it was because the person I was with had changed but it wasn’t quite that, I think my paranoia makes me very observant and it is easy to find something when you are searching for it.

Now as much as I would love to say our paranoia is all good and it has made us spies and all that, there is a lot of sadness and distrust that comes with being paranoid because it is so hard to trust even the people you should and it is so sad when you figure out that you were right about a person or situation.

Most people in my family would always say we aren’t paranoid and that we are just good judges of character which is plausible but what differentiates this line?

I think having a healthy dose of paranoia is one of those impossible things that cannot be achieved because when you start having suspicions and you find out that you were right, it can hardly stop.

At this point in life, I am still trying to balance trust with my paranoia because I know that I wouldn’t be changing anytime soon but I would still love to see the good in people instead of the bad most days.

What do you think about the phrase "a healthy dose of paranoia? Is it possible to have a healthy dose?