• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Magical thinking

Status
Not open for further replies.

Vee

Confident
I seem to have the most trouble with my magical thinking. It's the one thing that I've had to work the hardest at.

For those of you who don't know, in psychology, magical thinking is the idea that your mind establishes a causal relationship between two situations or events that are not really connected.

For example, I used to have this thought that if I didn't worry about something, it would happen. Such as, "Oh no, if I don't worry about my husband getting home safely, he might get into a car accident."

Recently I've had trouble with major events. I keep having the thought, "If I look forward to event X too much, it won't happen" or "it will get ruined."

I know it's magical thinking. I know I have to fight back against what my brain is telling me, but dammit, sometimes it's just hard! LOL
 
I've not had that myself, but sounds like it's own kind of hell to untangle on top of everything else... do you feel you have made progress with this? This sounds very hard to self regulate with.. and did you have anxiety telling your T about it... We do have some things going on that without being educated or seeking education... half the stuff we expedience, we wouldn't tell anyone... Sending lots of healing energy for you... this has to a super hard one..Thank you for sharing about it, and hope you feel some relief from sharing it... I'm sure you aren't alone and hopefully have opened the door for others to share...
 
I had a lot of magical thinking from the ages of about six to ten. If I wanted something, I hadn't to want it, because if I did want it, that wanting would stop it happening.

I know where at least some of it came from, one of my mother's friends would often say:

"I want, doesn't get"

Which is one way to teach a child never to express needs.

The horrible woman is still as crazy making half a century later. Her husband'so former colleagues all avoid her, One of her now middle aged kids is a narcissist, the other is just completely hard and cold, and has driven their partners into alcoholism.

There was a lot of other stupid superstitious stuff from adults that fed into it as well, Together with threats like:

"if you get into trouble at school, you'll get an even bigger beating when you get home"

which ensured that I couldn't ask for help with any difficulties I had at school

How to foresee getting dragged to the headmaster for no apparent reason? The only things that I could come up with were omens. Unfortunately if I saw one of my bad omens, I was left wondering which direction the now imminent ans unavoidable bad events were going to come from.

I don't really know how the magical thinking eased and went away. I think that I still had some of it when I was about 14.

Sorry that I can't be more helpful on that
 
mind establishes a causal relationship between two situations or events that are not really connected

Every experience is connected each one and everything. Mother earth Gaia... energy... intention..vibrations... there is an invisible realm we humans do not see easily or grasp similar to how idiots do see our invisible injuries and struggling strengths to survive.

I like magical thinking.
 
know it's magical thinking. I know I have to fight back against what my brain is telling me, but dammit, sometimes it's just hard! LOL

Hey Vee, yes! Struggling with this as well. These kind of mindsets were once useful for survival.. thinking with strategy is a way to have control where there is no control. Now even after the trauma is long gone this conditioning is still activated, it is ( the mindset) not aware of the fact that NOW the trauma is in the past... the brain still functions with those same old mechanisms...so maybe making yourself realize that today you are in a safe place. Easily said than done because I am still atruggeling with this too.
 
Thank you for commiserating with me. Yeah, I keep a worry journal, and I’ve noticed how much I do this. I went through and highlighted it, and I noticed some days a lot of the page highlighted lol. It is almost ritualistic at times. And yes, you’re right, it all goes back to feeling safe, which I have a hard time feeling.

I have OCD and because that that I totally get this :( didn't know it had a name, though. Very good to...
Yes, many people with OCD suffer from this too. I wonder if it is as much from my GAD as my PTSD.

Every experience is connected each one and everything. Mother earth Gaia... energy... intention..v...
I do pray. I try to funnel my magical thinking into that so at least it can be more productive.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top