What do you think this is all about? Weird happenings.

[HelenInHeels]

My friend had meningitis some years ago. Since then she's "seen" a photo of herself and her older sister on a daily basis (in her mind's eye of course). They are about 4 and 5 on the photo. She's convinced there's some message from her deceased mother that she wants her to be dead and be with her. I've told her it's nonsense and things don't work this way.

For example why would her mother choose that photo? The sister never "sees" it so she thinks the "message" is for her alone. They have another sister who wasn't born when the photo was taken. I said, why does your mum want you and not Sister 1 or Sister 3? She'd no answer.

I've told her I think it's all coming from her subconscious but she said "I don't deliberately think about it" Well no, it's subconscious...

I don't believe for one second it's a message from her mum. Her mum has been dead a long time and I don't believe dead people communicate with living people to say they want them with them.

Any ideas about this?

It’s sounds like she’s got some ongoing trauma about being ill enough to have potentially died and it’s turned into an intrusive thought pattern. Survivor guilt is very common in near death experiences.

At the very least she needs to speak to a therapist about this - likely the first course of action would be CBT but she may need meds if the intrusive thoughts have now become an ingrained thought loop.

Logic unfortunately goes out the window when it comes to manifestations of trauma and intrusive thought.

@Over40Overdating Thanks that's an angle I'd not really considered.

PTSD after a traumatic illness, especially one which could have killed her, isn’t unusual. It sounds like this is something that could be dealt h with as suggested above by CBT or other therapy (EMDR).

Her mother does not want her dead but she has suffered a dramatic trauma and should consider therapy for sure.

@Over40Overdating I don't understand the term survivor guilt in this context. I've only ever seen it applied to things like the tube bombing, 9/11 and other tragedies where several people are involved.

@HelenInHeels it can also be applied to people who have had near death illness.
It’s quite complex and not widely acknowledged or understood.

I don’t know your friend at all so this is nothing more than assumption - but if she had a near death experience and lived but her mum died, somewhere in her head might have been the thought ‘why did mum die but I survived’.

This has now become her fixating on her mum wanting her - not either of her sisters - to join her in death. Her guilt at living through her experience when her mum didn’t make it through hers, is manifesting as ‘mum wants me to die too’.

It’s not a logical process. Surviving a serious illness, especially if you have cheated death, is a seriously traumatic experience. Some people react by seeing life as too short to sweat the small stuff, some people move on as if nothing happened, some people can’t deal with the trauma of understanding how close they were to death and that they will one day be in a situation where their death is inevitable. Some people feel guilt because they are not ‘grateful enough’ to have lived, especially if their lives have been changed by their illness in a negative way.

In very extreme - thankfully rare - cases people kill themselves.

Meningitis is a brain disease isn't it? So it must have effected a certain part of her brain that deals with memory. And visualisation. There's probably a couple of different parts of her brain working together to create this feeling. Like a visual deja vu? It's almost certainly down to slight damage from her illness on those areas. Maybe ask her to look at some research/medical info about what the different parts of the brain do and what happens if they slightly malfunction.
Could she speak to a meningitis support charity?

A friend of mine’s husband had a stroke about 18 months ago and although he has physically recovered well, the mental scars remain. He has been diagnosed with PTSD, depression and anxiety - ironically he is a doctor so he understands the mechanisms of health all too well but really struggled with the idea of dying at 50, leaving his wife and kids etc. I know therapy is proving very helpful to him.