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Support for us people who are debilitated because of anomalistic experiences like synchronicity and psychic experiences etc.


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I first want to say good day to you all and thank you for providing a support forum for us sufferers.

Today I want to talk about the more stranger symptoms of OCD and mental illnesses that are alot tougher to simply ignore and walk away from, and those symptoms are: "strange anomalistic experiences." Being an OCD sufferer for 20 plus years these stranger symptoms have been the hardest to deal with for the last 7 years or so that I have exeprienced them, and have brought me to the point of contemplating suicide because of the difficulty they make for rational thinking. 

Below is the original post that I posted to other forums regarding these exepriences and I look forward to hearing your various opinions on how to best tackle these strange experiences. Thanks. 

"As many of you may already know, many people with ocd and other mental illnesses suffer from strange and debilitating anomalistic experiences like strange coincidences and synchronicities that we can't explain. (Normal people deal with them too, but they're more severe in mental illness sufferers) 

The experiences of these events feel telepathic and psychic like, or like we're manifesting it with our thoughts. For us with illnesses like OCD, they scare us and cause depression, distress, and anger. Many of us are fighting to be skeptic and rational thinkers when it comes to things like the paranormal, but these experiences keep happening and they're driving us insane.

What we go through is what psychologists call magical thinking, and we want to accept that and move on, but our experiences are so strange and debilitating that instead of moving on, our ocd progresses into a form of ocd called "ocd with psychotic features or ocd with poor insight"

Our ocd is so bad that we're on the same level in suffering as schizophrenics.

*I know this is true because of my own suffering and reading about the severe suffering of other OCD sufferers.*

During my research I found out that schizotypal and schizophrenia sufferers also go through these synchronistic/psychic like experiences.

And many theories have been brought forth like too much dopamine causing overactive pattern recognition, among other explanations. But the experiences happen so much and feel so real that the explanations don't add up and im left in severe mental pain.

After searching and searching for more rational explanations, I realized that with these type of things it will be impossible to find a definite answer to.

So after awhile I realized that the best thing that could help me was by finding a place of like minded people who also go through these things as well so we can share similar experiences and find peace.

Before this forum my favorite ocd forum was "stuck in a door" (which is nolonger working) because it had many posts of people going through these experiences. And it really helped me out alot and helped me stay strong without worrying about finding an answer.

I'm creating this thread so that people who suffer from these experiences can have a place to to find relief by reading other people's experiences and to share their own experiences to help others.

I feel like this is one of the most debilitating things an ocd or any mentally ill person can go through. I say that because so many cultures around the world accept the things we go through as already true without trying to find other natural explanations first.

But many of us mentally ill people (despite our experiences) are fighting to be rational, critical thinkers and scientific minded, but because of so many people who believe in this stuff without investigation, it makes it painful for us, because it's hard to find rational dialogue about our experiences.

Many of us want to find a place where others share our experiences and a place where scientific minded people will try to give rational explanations to what we go through.

For many ocd issues the common advice is: accept it and walk away.
But there are certain things that are just too difficult to accept and walk away. To walk away from some things, first we need to know we're not along to give us strength. And this is one of those things.

And I hope this thread can be that place for those of us who are contemplating suicide because of these experiences.

Personally I suffer from many strange anomalistic synchronicity or psychic experiences. I will explain one of them below. Alot of times I feel horrible and like the only way out is suicide. So I look forward to reading other comments regarding these experiences to give me some type of peace.

Here's one of my regular experiences:

A scary intrusive thought hits me, and  then my mind suddenly thinks that the random world "Bob" will be said to confirm that it's true. For some strange reason I can sense Bob being said.  It's like the word Bob will be a sign of confirmation. Then in a split second the word Bob is actually said and I freak out and panic, because these strange things are not supposed to happen. This happens to me multiple times a day. And it's not just words, it other specific sounds and events.

I fight to be rational but It gets so bad that I feel that something supernatural is causing it to happen to destroy my life. And I have to immediately go to google to search for rational answers to get my rationality back.

It all happens in either a split second, or a 5 second window. First the intrusive thought  then the intrusive thought of a sudden word or sound or the thought of something else happening to confirm it as a sign happens right after thinking it. Then the things I saw as a sign actually happens. It never fails.

Sometimes these signs will seem to be caused by my next action, for example: sometimes there is a strong intrusive thought of something bad or good happening and then a feeling that if I turn left or right to pick up something for example, then the specific noise will happen that will confirm the good or bad thought as true. Sometimes the noises feel like they're just waiting for your next action to synchronize it with the sound you're thinking of, so that the universe can show you that it all is real, and that it's goal is to hurt you. It feels as if you're manifesting it into reality.

Here's an interesting example story:

When me and my ex girlfriend were together we we're texting back and forth while she was at work. (We met online, she lived overseas, and we had never met in person) Suddenly while we're texting, she stops because she gets too busycat work. During this time I take a break myself and I go in the kitchen to get something to eat. So I can take a break with her. I left my phone on the bed. I leave for 2 or 3 hours. While I'm gone, it hits me that she's obviously gonna text me back before I get back into the room giving that I will be gone for so long. The longer I stay gone I start to hope that she has already texted me back. But then a scary ocd intrusive thought hits and says that she hasn't texted me back yet, but that she will do it as soon as I get back settled into my room, and that that will prove that we're all connected or something or that there's a psychic or law of attraction type thing happening with all of us and it will prove that a supernatural force is controlling everything.

After this intrusive thought I'm hoping that she has already texted me to prove this ocd type thought wrong.

But unfortunately when I get back into the room everything happened as I thought it. But with a horrible twist:

I entered my room. My phone was sitting on my bed on the charger. At this point I didn't know if I got a text from her or not.  I was afraid to check it because I had a strong feeling that OCD was right and that she hadn't yet texted me back. A minute had gone by without me checking and I was really anxious.

I think I then checked it and confirmed that there was no text and found myself even more anxious because the OCD thought was beginning to manifest.

While severely anxious I put my phone down on my bed, and opened my dresser in my room and then while looking through my dresser this strong intrusive thought and feeling hits me that my girlfriend is gonna die and that when I turn left to reach for the item i was looking for, she will text me in that exact moment to confirm that it's true. And I pause for a moment in fear, and panic, and anger, and then after waiting for a good minute I try to challenge the OCD by angerly turning left and getting the item, and just like the OCD told me, she texted me! How in the hell does this stuff happen!? Right on cue as if it was destined! The whole time deep down inside from the moment the intrusive thought hit me while I was in the kitchen, I felt like the thought was correct, and that she wasn't gonna text me until I got into my room and settled in for at least 3-5 minutes.

Those moments happen alot faster and more consistant than the example above, but I just thought that was an important story to show the other ways it can manifest.

As I mentioned briefly before that story, it also happens with good positive thoughts. For example: You have a good positive thought about something in your life and then the OCD instrusively says that you're gonna hear something that's gonna confirm it as true, and that it will mean that something supernatural exists. And just as OCD predicted, the sound that it intrusively put into your mind is actually heard seconds later and in that moment you feel that that positive thought is tainted because you don't won't to believe something supernatural is controlling everything. It happens so often that It feels like a evil force is doing this to mess with you so you can't enjoy anything in life. It hits you so hard that you just break down and cry sometimes. It causes fits of rage and anger because you know this shouldn't be happening this often.

It's not just with sounds in the environment and words from people. But it's also with numbers on clocks and any other thing you can imagine. But it's just more constant with words and sounds from people and inanimate objects. I.e. telphone ringing, car horns, heating and air conditioning coming on and going off and radios and TV's. Etc. 

I tried to find rational explanations for these things like the subconscious, intuition, confirmation bias, or just having psychotic breaks from the severe OCD. And in the past I started to feel better with these explanations, but then I realized that it was happening so much that non of the explanations added up anymore,  and i realized it's not delusion, or any other explanation, but that it was actually happening.

A long time ago I read on another ocd forum someone explaining this experience as "automatic coincidence"

And that's the perfect explanation, it feels automatic as if the synchronicity was destined to happen in the sequence.

Or like you're manifesting it into reality. If there is a rational explanation then the only one at this point would be the one by psychologist Kirby Surprise who says that we control 3 to 6 percent of our environment and the other one being quantum entanglement which says that our minds are naturally connected through quatum mechanics.

 

Many people experience these type of things with deja Vu, but I don't experience it that way, (or at least not that often) I just usually get a strong intrusive psychic sense of a word or sound from someone that I didn't choose to think of, and someone says it a second or 5 seconds later.

With these experiences I've been on the verge of suicide and getting closer and closer everyday because of the severe mental pain they cause.

The only reason I'm still alive is because of well known paranormal skeptics that I look up to like James Randi, Michael Shermer, Kirby Surprise, and Susan Blackmore among  many others.

 

In an effort to better understand these experiences and provoke rational discussion I will also like to add that people who do drugs like weed and psychedelics also experience these type of things often. So is there a correlation with a brain suffering from mental illness and a brain that's high on drugs? From my research on drug users who have these experiences, my verdict is that there is and I suggest that we study these people.

What ever is in those drugs that's causing their brains to experience these things must be the same thing that's in the brain of a person with a mental illness.

 

Ironically after I calm down from these OCD/synchronicity attacks and I see a little rationality, I find myself facinated by all these experiences, because I wonder how is it possible for a simple brain to do all of these things!

If anybody else sufferers from these things please share and give me some type of peace that other people are in this fight with me.

My goal with this post is to find rational people who have dealt with these experiences in the past or who are also dealing with them currently, so we can look at the rational explanations I provided, and have rational discussions regarding what most likely is happening here so we can promote a more peaceful mind in sufferers.  I'm mainly looking for skeptics who went through this before but who over came it and remained skeptics.

 I look forward to hearing from many of you.

IF THIS POST WAS TOO LONG TOO READ THEN HERES THE SHORT SUMMARY:

I'm Debilitated and sometimes suicidal because of anomalistic experiences like synchronicity and psychic phenomenon and looking for support, and a rational discussion based off the scientific sources I provided. I'm mainly looking for skeptics who went through this before but who over came it and remained skeptics to give me strength to overcome it myself.

But I will like to add that although my rational side has been weakened by my illness, I'm still a rational thinker at heart, so I expect rational discussion here based on the sources I provided, thanks.

Edited by Ashley
AF: Edited post at users request.
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Hi Musicmatters

There is an interesting book which covers your themes. It is by Paul Chadwick and Paul K Chadwick called Schizophrenia - the positive experiences. Paul Chadwick was a man who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was a leading geologist with articles published in leading journals such as Nature.  He retrained as a psychologist. He no longer defines himself as schizophrenic.

Paul K Chadwick is a leading clinical psychologist who has published self help books on psychosis and paranoia. And is actively engaged in research.

I have personally met Paul Chadwick on a number of occasions and was intrigued by his narrative. 

I cite their history to give them authenticity.

Paul Chadwick talks about synchronicity in the book quoted and other things which he has written. Psychotic only means unusual experiences. People tend to close off from discussing its manifestations. In fact a common theme on forums is a fear of unusual experiences.

In the UK the Division of Clinical Psychologists  has opened up debate about these issues in a number of publications for the general public including one on psychosis. And demystifying the idea. In the UK a number of hospitals have taken up the approach. The comorbidity of OCD with depression is high but it is also quite high with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and bipolar. 

I have not read or viewed your sources but you flagging up the issues seems very relevant. 

I too am a strong believer in rationality.

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Thanks for your reply. I would love to say more regarding it. But right now I'm very confused, and stressed out because I just noticed that my external links were removed. I added the links/sources to make the discussion more interesting, and so us sufferers of these experiences can learn more about what could be happening. 

I previously posted this in another forum without adding links/sources and I was told that I should add them to get a more interesting and rational discussion going. So I'm really confused why the moderator decided to remove them. 

Hopefully she can understand how important those sources are for a dicussion like this. Please keep in touch, thanks. 

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I find it strange that on another OCD forum called "stuck in a door" there were alot of OCD sufferers who had these experiences, but I only got one comment so far here. I hate that that forum got shut down years ago because it was definitely a relief to find other people with the same experiences. 

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11 hours ago, Musicmatters said:

I find it strange that on another OCD forum called "stuck in a door" there were alot of OCD sufferers who had these experiences, but I only got one comment so far here. I hate that that forum got shut down years ago because it was definitely a relief to find other people with the same experiences. 

Hi Musicmatters,

I'm sure lots of people have had these kinds of thoughts, I definitely have, but it may just be that it's not easy for most people to talk about them, either because they find them too distressing to put into words or/and because they fear that going into depth about them may only encourage them to obsess over them more. Also it's not always beneficial to group 'types' of OCD together, since all OCD-sufferers are experiencing the same disorder, just with different thoughts/themes and compulsions :) Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to hear from people who can relate to and understand the particular themes you're going through, of course! Just that going into details may not necessarily be helpful for some people, at least that's my interpretation. Supporting fellow sufferers and being supported is always useful, but it can be tricky not to kind of pull others into your own OCD cycle without meaning to, if you get what I mean?

I can totally relate to these types of thoughts, I've suffered with them on-and-off for years. Sometimes the thoughts don't bother me at all, other times they threaten to drag me into anxious turmoil. But I'm getting better at not giving in to their demands :)

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On 04/07/2019 at 01:18, Musicmatters said:

But right now I'm very confused, and stressed out because I just noticed that my external links were removed. I added the links/sources to make the discussion more interesting, and so us sufferers of these experiences can learn more about what could be happening. 

Different forums have different policies on links.  While its true they can sometimes provide useful perspective and information, many forums have policies limiting links at all, or limiting what kinds of sites can be linked to.  Its very difficult to regulate a forum and having to check external links to make sure the content fits within the policies of a site (like this one) would take a lot of work.  Ideally yes we could have external links, but unfortunately the moderators and administrators probably just don't have the time to check them.  Its not anything personal against you (or any of us) its just making the best choices they can under the circumstances.

Your intentions are obviously good, I don't think anyone would question that, so try not to worry and stress about it.  Do your best to carry on with this (and other discussions) anyway.  

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BTW here is the policy regarding links for this forum:
 

Quote

External Links Policy
The OCD-UK forums are a first and foremost a discussion forums, therefore it is the policy of this forum that we do not allow new or recently joined users to post links to external websites (external websites are any non OCD-UK website). This is policy is in place to prevent new users joining to simply post links for self-promotion or personal or commercial gain.


Occasionally it can be helpful for forum users to be directed to helpful OCD articles on external websites, so we do allow experienced forum users to post links to helpful OCD articles, provided the external websites are non-commercial and generally mirror OCD-UK philosophies in terms of treatment.


Fundraising Links

OCD-UK is a charity that relies on kind donations and fundraising to support our work. The forums themselves cost over £1000 a year to run.  For this reason we are only able to allow links to fundraising pages that are fundraising for our charity (OCD-UK). We hope you understand why we have this policy in place.


https://www.ocdforums.org/index.php?/guidelines/

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  • 1 year later...

This is a very distressing symptom for some people with ocd. It's distressing because there actually are strange experiences that happen that can't be rationally explained and to make matters worse 80 percent of the population strongly believes in religion and other supernatural things. They believe in it like gravity and promote it with the same confidence as if it was just like gravity. Because of that, this is a hard symptom to overcome.  And the truth is In this world there are strange psychic type experiences that we can't explain, and that could easily reinforce a supernatural belief system. 

And because of that when these type of things are fixated on it can easily lead to delusion and ocd with psychotic features.  

Searching "coincidences" on this site brings up alot of results so there are alot of people who are suffering from this, so because that Im writing this comment to bump this post up higher for those who need help and support for these issues. 

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On 02/07/2019 at 22:48, Musicmatters said:

But the experiences happen so much and feel so real that the explanations don't add up and im left in severe mental pain.

As a scientist (a statistician in fact) I would say that this is complete and utter nonsense. Just because you PERCEIVE these events happening a lot and they feel “real”, does not mean that the most simple and obvious explanation does not add up (ie. they are coincidences). It may “feel” like it doesn’t - but such a “feeling” is not an objective measure of the accuracy of the explanation.

“After searching and searching for more rational explanations......“

Here in lies your problem: if you understood the statistics - you’d see that this explanation is perfectly rational. But instead you are trying to use “feeling” to measure this - which is poorly defined and unreliable. It’s like a juror using their gut feeling about the way a defendant looks to say whether they are guilty or not - instead of looking at the actual evidence.

The reason I know this - apart from me being a statistician: I do it with my OCD as well - we all do. Instead of looking at logic we get obsessed with the way something “feels”. That is just wrong.

I worry about contamination. Even when I can demonstrably prove that something has been perfectly sterilised without any doubt at all - using all objective measures of cleanliness known to science, it still “feels” dirty. Do I like this? No. Does it cause me great pain? Yes.

However I do not follow your train of thought that the science must be wrong or irrational as it “feels” funny. I disagree with what many OCD sufferers seem to think: that their perception must be absolutely correct and everyone else must have got it wrong (in this case thousands of scientists).

The problem is actually ME. It is how I respond to a memory of what may have been on said item. It has no basis in reality. I will not waste my time looking for an explanation that “feels” right (as it sounds like you do). I look at myself, see how my brain is making incorrect assumptions and work on fixing the way that makes me feel.

Edited by OxCD
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I have intrusive thoughts and know how crippling it can be to my rational thinking. A month or so before COVID reared it’s ugly head, I started getting this feeling of mortal dread, like something terrible is about to happen to the world. When it came the dread lifted from my mind. Such an odd feeling, especially being an anxiety sufferer. I’ve never believed in the supernatural, not to say I’m not spiritual, however this is the first time I felt a weird connection with the psychic world and may pay attention to it more if the feeling were to return.

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