So if I believe I can fly, it will happen?
In the biomedical paradigm of the last 300 years, there is no way for thoughts or beliefs to directly affect other people. Our mental state might INDIRECTLY affect people because we often (unconsciously) send micro-gestures or make minute facial expressions that other people pick up on, or our mental state might make us grossly alter our behavior (e.g., make us more reclusive) and people might pick up on this, but we are not transmitting any spiritual or energy waves to these people.
I'm sorry to be such a jerk, but when we try to communicate about PATM to a wider audience, we are already starting out at a deficit: When we tell people that we can cause another person to cough from over 20 feet away, they are disinclined to believe us. It undoubtedly causes them a lot of cognitive dissonance because we are presenting them with a view of the world that just doesn't meld well with their own. People are notoriously poor at living with cognitive dissonance, and the fastest, easiest way for them to resolve it would be to believe that we are simply paranoid.
I like to think that there are some, however, who might be willing to suspend their disbelief and hear what we have to say. But even these benevolent people will have their limits: Even if they've agreed to hear us out, they are undoubtedly looking for any clearly disqualifying statements we might make because they ultimately want to resolve their cognitive dissonance as well - they just have more patience about doing so. Asserting that our thoughts can somehow affect other people, or that we make people react across any medium other than air are clearly disqualifying statements, and if doctors/researchers ever read this thread, all they'll need to do is look at a handful of such assertions to write us all off as lunatics.
For me, PATM is a significant health problem that has drastically changed my orientation towards life, and if I cannot find a way of controlling it within the next couple of years, I'm not sure what I'll be able to do. PATM is not some source of self-stimulating "what-ifs", a theme to riff on, or any other source of diversion; it's a far more serious and distressing problem than the fanciful fiction this forum currently offers would have us believe.