Dealing with other people

I'm a freelance computer programmer and I've a paranoid personality style, not the full blown disorder. The problem is that lastly I feel as I could develop the true disorder, due to my problem of relationship with my customers.

This can sound a bit ridicolous, but the problem is that I also feel very isolated from my friends: I'm working hard to repay an huge mortgage, often working overnight, I'm estranged from my family since so much time - and with good reasons - , so I don't see a lot of people except other freelancers (kind and caring people but no less alienated and work overloaded than me) and mostly customers.

I live in Italy, and we are in an economical crisis. The computer world has resisted longtime but now is affected too. Customer try *everything* in order to get more for less. Recently I've greatly helped my two major customers to merge together, and the buyer of the smallest one, yesterday has served me with this sentence "now that your two main customers are only one, you'd better lower your hourly rate, because you've no other choice. And don't try to freelance in my garden". I was stunned. Instead of gratitude, I receive this kind of thank you. I'm not more costly than your average senior freelance: of course, I'm no beginner and I've no beginner hourly rate. The customer who has been bought was an agency who, for my help in the thing, had donated me some "end users" to care of, just before being bought. Now the buyer - infinitely more economically powerful than me and the bought customer - has said that I must "return" the gift to him: if I don't agree, I would dearly pay the consequences.

I got very angry and I defended my dues, actually obtaining to maintain my actual hourly rate (but I hope he continues to give me to work, which is not granted). But I'm crushed: how anyone can be so callous and unfair?

And since my other customers are only slightly better, how can I manage not to become paranoid in such a situation? I'm angry to the bottom of my guts and still I cannot send him to hell. I'm a woman in a male world and this isn't helping.

And I'm very, very bitter. People can be disgusting. Thinking paranoid does not help me to feel better: actually I feel worse. But how can I overcome such a state of mind which is conforted by so much evidence? Still, I just can't live thinking that anyone - except a few dear ones who do indeed their best, for instance in this story the smallest customers and a few of my colleague slav...ehm, freelancers - is out to get me, it's just not a life worth living. Nevertheless, I see no ray of hope and I feel quite desperate. What should I do or think?

tnx, kj

relax, try meditation

exersice and talk to someone like you are now

mabey start a journal