(Lighthearted) minor intrusive thoughts or a sign that I've lived before?

[BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz]

This is totally daft, and I'm not generally "woo" but I have two recurring thoughts and wondered - is this intrusive thoughts (on a very minor scale) or signs that I've lived and subsequently died this way before?

Since moving into my home 4 years ago, I've literally never walked out of the kitchen with the cooked meal without a fleeting image in my head of the oven (directly behind me) exploding in a big gas ball. It never happened in the last house (oven on the side to my right). I caught myself tonight thinking why on earth do I always get that image? It never even occurs to me day to day. Never when I'm just going in and out of the kitchen.

1. When I attended secondary school there was a big wide staircase outside, concrete steps, and every single day when I left the main doors, I got a fleeting image of falling down them and getting seriously hurt. As above, it never ever even played on my mind outside of this. Even going up the stairs, never came to mind etc. It was like it was a fresh thought, not a remembered one, every day.

I returned to that school recently for the first time in 20 years, oblivious to the previous memories and as I walked out the door, bam, it hit me.

I don't have any other instances in life when things like this ever come to mind.

Did I previously die in a gas explosion with the oven right behind me? Did I previously die falling down a tall wide set of concrete steps? If so, both of them must have been fairly recently so I don't think I spanned too far back in history

It’s just the architectural layout causing these sensations — you feel vulnerable turning your back on the oven, probably having seen some film with an explosion blowing someone through a doorway, and the school steps clearly evoke some half-conscious memory of slipping or falling. Both sensations deepen every time you are moving through the spaces in question. I feel oppressed and suffocated in the hallway of my grandmother’s house — I think it’s just a quirk of the space that happens to me all over again each time I’m there.

100% the previous you was exploded down a set of stairs.

I definitely drowned once.
I get the heebie jeebies everytime I'm on a plane that it'll crash into the sea. Not bothered about crashing or fireballs, only the sea.

Shudder

Yes the oven exploded behind you throwing you down the stairs to the wine cellar you were a cook in the kitchen of a large stately home like Downton Abbey the memory will never disappear it will always be there but you can now relax knowing for sure it was your past life and not an omen. Or maybe you are just a bit of a worrier with an imagination definitely one or the other anyway hope that helps.

I have recurring dreams about being in a tsunami. It started before the Boxing day Tsunami so it can't even be from seeing that on the news as a teen.

I also have a memory of being at my grandparents and playing in a hot pool, outside in a huge park/garden with my dad. Except my grandparents lived in Nottingham so I can't think of anywhere that would fit.

I do sometimes wonder if it is a past life thing or just a very vivid imagination or memories of dreams.

What is the point of a post with most of it crossed out

It’s not crossed out on my screen. None of it is.

Nor mine

I have imagined bumps in the car or crashes (but not serious ones) eg if it's foggy or heavy rain and I can't see the edge of the pavement well and imagine what would happen if I clipped it.

My mum had a weird sort-of similar experience. A recurring dream of crossing a river on a very distinctive, wobbly rope bridge, and falling into the river and drowning.
Then she visited somewhere she had not been before and saw the exact same bridge. She walked across it (can’t say I would have done!) and did NOT fall in. She never had the dream again.

Sorry OT, but it's crossed out on mine too. I'm on the app

As for the OP...see you saying you think you lived in the same house and the oven exploded or is it an oven elsewhere? Because if it's the same house, there's probably a way to find out.

You might be a real time ghost whisperer.

These are also quite classic intrusive thoughts, I get them like this like intrusive images/ sensations which are usually when I feel in danger in some way. Eg. I have them about driving a car into a wall before I turn, falling off a cliff when I'm near the edge, the gas exploding when I turn the cooker on or off etc. they are really horrible, but I've learned to filter them out better now by just accepting they are a quirk of my wiring. When my stress and anxiety are lower and I'm sleeping well I get them less, but when I had a new baby they were especially terrible, this was most true when I had my first baby because I was an anxious new mum and had never been sleep deprived like that before. I think a lot more people get these kind of intrusive thoughts than admit it to anyone.

I think the kind of intrusive thoughts you have depend on the way you think. Personally, my thoughts are both visual and narrated, the best way I can think of it is the beginning of the shawshank redemption, that's how I read books, there's the narrator and the images. Other people I know can't see images in their minds eye and/ or don't have an internal narrator. It was amazing to me to discover that everyone didn't have the same internal process to me. But I think because this is the way my mind works, my intrusive thoughts can be like stepping into a film scene whereas other people it might feel more like the thought is there own, mine is like I'm somebody else for a moment when I have them. It's hard to explain, so sorry if that was confusing! But I have these too instead of a logical thought or feeling, eg. I'm scared because I could fall, instead I feel as though I have already done it and feel it as though it's another me's lived experience, not my own emotion. It's just the way I process it

@RainbowCrayons are you feeling overwhelmed by anything in your waking life? Dreams of tsunamis can have that meaning. I used to have recurring dreams of walls of water post-uni when I was trying to find my feet / a job / somewhere to live / deciding if my relationship was right. Overwhelmed!