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Magic/Superstitious Thinking??


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Hi everyone.. basically I feel as if I reached a crucial point in my recovery process last night. I accepted that I have been a slave to this disorder for too long already and that my attitude and behaviour has to change if I am to truly get better.  I accepted that the probability of my intrusive thoughts being true is unlikely and that it is time I put it all down as being a symptom of OCD anxiety and accept that they are indeed just thoughts with no real meaning, like my psychologist and other mental health professionals have said. Of course I still do not feel 100 per cent certain that this is the case and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still afraid but that's ok. I have been strong and tried to resist most of the compulsions today that I would normally give into with reasonable success.

However, this morning whilst I was driving into work I was listening to a quiz on a radio station. I don't know why but for some strange reason I decided to guess the number of questions out of 10 the lady had got right and told myself that if I had guessed the correct amount it could be a sign from God that my intrusive thoughts were completely false and I was going to be ok. In this instance I guessed correctly and felt a wave of comfort wash over me. Much later on in the day when at work I answered a phone-call from a customer and detected an accent from a particular part of the country, the same part of the country where the person in my most recent intrusive thought comes from. Instantly my brain seemed to panic and I had racing thoughts begging that the lady wasn't from the same area as it would tempt me into ruminating about my intrusive thought again but also that if she was it could be a sign from God that this intrusive thought was true. Of course whenever the lady confirmed her address my fear was realised and the panic set in. I know this makes no logical sense and I was playing a risky game with my thinking but the thoughts were just so fleeting in the moment they almost felt automatic and now I have gotten myself tangled up.  This kind of thinking is new to me and I have not made this links before. I know it probably sounds really silly to base whether or not thoughts maybe true or not on such unrelated factors but I was left almost afraid to answer another phone call in case it would be someone from the same locality again and my brain would accept it as another sign etc. I apologise for the rant but would just appreciate some advice from those of you who may have heard of this or experienced it and have any tips on  how do  stop myself from getting caught into a cycle of allowing my anxiety to be ruled by external sources that can never be controlled,now that I've already got drawn into this web of thinking. I think maybe my faith in God may be a factor here also and the fact that I'm deeming things to be a sign from him and wondering why he would send me signs that thoughts are true if they aren't etc.  Basically how the hell do I distance myself from these theories and get myself untangled?   

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Hi Oceanblue, 

That's great that you're ready to start tackling the OCD head on and are acknowledging the detrimental impact it has had on your life. I'm in the same boat! :boat:

I also totally empathise with the magical thinking element of your OCD as I experience it myself. I used to have intrusive thoughts that God was telling me to avoid certain people/places because otherwise something bad might happen... it s all OCD and nonsense but it's still very tricky to cope with. 

Unfortunately I don't know how to deal with it yet so cannot give any helpful advice other than to say that I'm rooting for you to get better! 

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19 minutes ago, Oceanblue said:

I think maybe my faith in God may be a factor here also and the fact that I'm deeming things to be a sign from him and wondering why he would send me signs that thoughts are true if they aren't etc.  Basically how the hell do I distance myself from these theories and get myself untangled?   

I don't think faith is a problem, or even relevant.

The problem is you're interpreting your thoughts in a particular way to avoid feeling uncertain.

Someone with faith who is thinking rationally doesn't interpret random events/thoughts as being signs from god. They recognise thoughts are their own creation and correctly interpret them as just thoughts without any kind of power to predict or dictate what happens in the world. They keep their religious faith separate from their day-to-day thought processes.

Believing your thoughts have special meaning is just the normal process of trying to make sense of the world temporarily gone astray.

Interpreting a thought as if there was some kind of supernatural power or magic going on is a way to avoid the discomfort of uncertainty. A denial of the reality that life is random and we are in control of almost none of it. 

Fixing the screwed up thinking starts with accepting life is full of randomness and meaningless coincidence. Recognise that this tendency to find links between meaningless things is you trying to comfort yourself that the world isn't scary and unpredictable. 

The world is unpredictable, but when you stop thinking you need to be able to control (or explain, or understand, or find meaning in) everything then the uncertainty of it all becomes unimportant and stops being scary.  

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Thank you BelAnna..I am rooting for you also and hope you get better from this soon! Thanks Snowbear..your post makes perfect sense and I can see now how I was trying to establish meaningless links in what will always be an unpredictable world. It’s just mad how my mind has become so irrational and seems to distort even the simplest of scenarios into a major reason for panic but I guess it’s just the anxiety playing mind games once again.  

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I too have magical thinking. In fact, i have had so many many many different themes over the years. Once I have rationally dispatched one, it morphs into something else even trickier to 'solve'. I think although I've had some success I'm still not going about it the right way. I now expect my OCD to morph which is a big help in itself as I don't get so caught out. But I'm still working on the proper solution!

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